how much is photography...

airfrogusmc said:
Writing, painting, photography, creating, all comes from the same side of the brian and all all related. I shoot commercially to support the family, it buys me equipment and supplies a base from which I can do my personal work. I have had some success with my personal work over the years but not near enough to pay the bills with and have any standard of living.

Heres a great quote by Weston and I agree with everything except I don't hate the commercial work I do as much as he did.
"When money enters in, - then, for a price, I become a liar, - and a good one I can be whether with pencil or subtle lighting or viewpoint. I hate it all, but so do I support not only my family, but my own work." - Edward Weston
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I gave up on being a painter because art dealers were trying to commodify my work. What's the point of being an artist if people are going to dictate what you can do? Anyways I drew the line and went for a secure day job to take care of myself.

Cal
 
Calzone said:
I gave up on being a painter because art dealers were trying to commodify my work. What's the point of being an artist if people are going to dictate what you can do? Anyways I drew the line and went for a secure day job to take care of myself.

Cal
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Yes, agree and thats why I have my personal work. Most of the commercial work is a collaboration and not 100% mine. So for my creative sanity I need to have something thats all mine. Without my personal work I would have been burnt toast years ago. I find the streets so challenging in so many ways. To see when the visual elements like repeating shapes, leading lines, overall form all come together in a fraction of a second to become a photograph and the ability to not only see it but to be able to capture it is truly an amazing discipline and one I'm sure I will not tire of anytime soon as I am just starting to get a grip on it. To much modern street work are just people on the street without any of those visual concerns and I feel the overall art form has suffered because of it and all photography has suffered becasue of a lack of concern for those issues. A good image is a good image and those are all part of what makes up a good photograph. To many think in terms of cookie cutter rules and not what is best for the image at the moment of exposure. Learning how to use the language we all communicate with should be a primary concern and frees you from rules but often that isn't a primary concern for most. Maybe it never has been. Thats just one thing that separates the extraordinary from the ordinary.

Galleries are motivated to sell work and often fabricate excitement over what they are trying to sell as the latest and greatest (both work and artist) because of financial concerns. Funny how time and history has a way of weeding out the riff raff but thats not what makes galleries money now. Sad...
 
Calzone said:
Anyways, life=passion and know I have a rich life.

Cal
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Yes....Life without passion and love is empty indeed.

Great creative work of any kind is an honest expression of the way the artist feels about life in its entirety. De Carava said You see me you see my work. You see my work you see me. I agree....
 
Photography makes me happy.

Cameras do not make me happy. Lenses do not make me happy. Nice prints make me happy.

Even mundane, boring gigs provide satisfaction when I deliver the final results to clients.

Personal work is more difficult and frustrating, but in the end more rewarding.
 
Joe, there are days when it is the only thing I think about, whether it's working on a camera repair, or out shooting photos. Then there are days I just have to leave it alone, to get something else accomplished. But it's nice to be retired (not by choice) so I have the time to say "To heck with everything else, today I'm shooting pictures!".

PF
 
back alley said:
...a part of your life?

i have been at it for a very long time and sometimes it's less than others but...it's always there.

if i could retire it's all that i would do!
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I find my photographic life more and more defined by my search for the holy grail of bags. :p

I got a early appreciation for photography back in the late 40s and early 50s as my father was an avid amature. Once in a while I got to use a box camera of his, and go the camera club meetings. Dabbled a little more in the late 50s after his death, then just snapshots over the years until the mid 70s. I have shot more or less depending on what else was going on in my life, but like you and others, it's always there.
 
oftheherd said:
I like a man who knows how to get his priorities straight. :)
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Luckily, I do not dislike my job. It is interesting and well-paid. But I do it not out of passion but to make money for other things, mainly support my family. Like many people, I suppose, what I REALLY wish I had was more time for my wife and kids and friends and...
 
After a decade of photography-driven and gear-driven, almost compulsive web surfing, I'm now shifting back to a more balanced view on photography, and am finally taking up writing again.

Currently I'm researching and reading up for a novel, and have started writing already. The idea and basics to the story have been on a shelf for three years, it is time for the story to materialize. Revisiting poetry. Mostly reading and maybe trying my hand on it once again, after more than a decade.

Photography-related skills continue to be my m.o. when it comes to seeing the world and incorporating what I saw into images and stories.
 
A nice positive thread to start the day. Photography for me is the creative outlet I crave each day. Is Friday morning here in NZ, tonight after dinner I will sit down and work out where I can shoot the sun rising tomorrow. Will check all my android apps so I can identify where I can get an unobstructed view but also somewhere with other interest. Then decide what to take RF, DSLR, MF, or all of them what film, what lenses filters etc then pack it up. Up early the next morning load my Triumph Rocket III and off to location and shoot. Back for late breakfast with my wife and then download pics or develop film. I love the whole process the planning, the gear, the ride, the shooting, the processing and developing. I have 20 of my own photos on the walls of my office and I regularly rotate them with new stuff. Have to admit though I am a gearhead:)
 
photography is probably what saved my life

i had a very dark childhood, pretty long story really. Was diagnosed with clinical depression at 12 and was hopped up on all kinds of meds since then. At about 18 I quit taking them altogether and searched for something to take my mind off of it.

I found a point-and-snap camera at CompUSA when they were going out of business, it was a Canon model. That turned into a Rebel dSLR, which then turned to a 5D.

That 5D made me fall in love with the 24x36 format, and I wanted to try film. My best friend had an old Nikon 35mm and I bought it off her.

I now have probably 8 35mm's including 3 rangefinders and a 645. I just recently acquired my first interchangeable-lens RF, an old FED-2 which I brought back from the dead.

Feelsgoodman.
 
Fascinating and sometimes complicated responses to a simple question.

Although most of my hours are devoted to what helps pay the bills (i.e. teaching college), photography has come to dominate my psyche to an uncomfortable degree.

Randy
 
In my youth my hobby's had to be competitive, bass tournaments and then got into drag racing. But my photography is just for me, no dates, no dead lines. Older and maybe a little wiser.
 
I hope to live long enough to make one good print with which I can find more things I did right than wrong -- a print that pleases me so much that I don't feel like finding anything about it I would do differently.

I've made pictures that pleased me compositionally and graphically, but I've yet to make one that I was pleased with in terms of tones, grain, exposure, etc. So, from my perspective, I have a lot to learn and much to look forward to in the future. I'll never get there, but the journey is kind of fun (when it's not frustrating).

A day without something photography-related is usually not a good day. Joe's idea of a retirement filled with photography sounds good to me. I can go without shooting an image every day, but a day where I don't edit, print, catalog, study, etc., or simply look at photography just feels like a missed opportunity. Fortunately, my life is full of work and my family, so even those days, are still good ones. (If all else fails, there's always some time wasted on eBay or the classifieds here, pining away and feeding GAS pangs.)

For now the only thing that I could imagine making me give this up would be blindness.
 
hats off to you for both the courage to move your life in that direction and the courage to share your story here. a lot of us don't embrace change so well. your story inspires.

j-dogg said:
photography is probably what saved my life

i had a very dark childhood, pretty long story really. Was diagnosed with clinical depression at 12 and was hopped up on all kinds of meds since then. At about 18 I quit taking them altogether and searched for something to take my mind off of it.

I found a point-and-snap camera at CompUSA when they were going out of business, it was a Canon model. That turned into a Rebel dSLR, which then turned to a 5D.

That 5D made me fall in love with the 24x36 format, and I wanted to try film. My best friend had an old Nikon 35mm and I bought it off her.

I now have probably 8 35mm's including 3 rangefinders and a 645. I just recently acquired my first interchangeable-lens RF, an old FED-2 which I brought back from the dead.

Feelsgoodman.
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