| Joined: | Mon Apr 2nd, 2012 |
| Location: | South Lakeland, UK |
| Posts: | 4066 |
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I have loved photography for as long as I can remember.
All with zero returns, No prints sold, no magazine shots, no published pictures at all except 1 on a web site.
The market is just saturated , too many camera phones and people just blasting away with the button down and saying "i'll fix it in photoshop"
tons of people that want your pictures but then want all the work for free..
I'm just tired and defeated ...Im even thinking on selling my gear
For me life and hobbies ebb and flow. Life is like that, we have our ups and downs. I too have loved photography since I could hold a camera, a Box Brownie of my parents.
This is where the question I mentioned recently in another thread arises. At what level does our love become a hobby and when does it become a job? (Profession???)
I have had a few images which I have been paid for but certainly less than even covered my time taken, let alone covering my expenses. For me to have an image published is reward enough, it's a hobby to me, yet I use photography in my work, so that isn't a hobby, that is gainful use. I use it to record progress, record things that are to be buried, like sewage pipes, foundations, structural steelwork etc. and to show clients surveys of exactly what faults are in their buildings, cracks, subsidence and deterioration so they can understand what they are paying for without clambering up scaffolding and over roofs or into the confines of their foundations. That is the professional aspect of my photography, nothing glamorous, but it helps pay for the hobby side of things.
More recently (last ten years?) I have been taking photographs of commemoratively named plants with the aim of including them in a 'book' (probably digital) I am working on, so some of that work will eventually be published, one way or another.
Of course people will want your stuff for free, that's normal and of course people will blast away with their iPhones, taking vast numbers of crappy photographs which will never see the light of day, photoshopped or not. Unless it's a picture of the president slipping down a flight of stairs on his bottom, in which case it will probably be worth $$$$. But that's not even a once in a lifetime shot.
For me the joy of photography is to make a lovely image I am proud of.
____________________
Robert.