There was a time when I would have proclaimed myself a real photographer. I didn’t just have the right equipment, but I knew what I was doing, took thousands of photos, and even sold some pics.
Not only would I likely need to wipe the dust off my SLR right now, I’m not even sure where I would start to build back into the whole photographer lifestyle again.
There are a bunch of reasons I don’t take many pics anymore.
I mean, I seem to have ranked these but they are all kind of equally impactful. At some point, each of them has had a huge impact on how I feel about clicking the shutter button lately
First, and obviously, my photography hobby shifted to art. As in, rather than drag a big heavy camera out into nature to snap more photos of the river valley, I started dragging out big heavy watercolour and art sets into nature instead. I used a camera, but I used it to take reference photos. You do that for a couple years and suddenly you realize that the habits of dragging a bulky camera along on walks has transitioned into something else entirely.
Second, social media used to be my jam. Back when the sites were actually about sharing and building community around creativity, it was still fun to take lots of pictures to build an online profile and portfolio. As the sites transitioned in ad mills and rage-baiting micro-vids, my effort to share my photography turned from a fun hobby into a hustle gig that I wasn’t willing to scramble. I stopped posting as much, and too I didn’t blog as much so didn’t need pics to accompany my posts, so my biggest client—me—suddenly wasn’t shipping as much.
Third, and the reason I would often tell other photographers in commisseration of our mutual struggles was the perpetual expectation that I was the guy with camera at events, at work, at volunteer gigs, on travel outings, everywhere. I became the defacto documentarian of everything and it was tough stepping away from that without hanging up the whole camera rig and just not bringing it. I get that this was a little selfish of me, and even might come across as mildly disrespectful to friends and family who were probably just trying to respect my craft and give me chances to participate, but it does get in your head that maybe your only worth is because you own a camera.
And finally, I would tell you that my subject matter has shifted. I picked up the photography habit first because I was in a new city and then later because I was a new dad, and then even later because life was full of photographable things. But as I alluded to above one can only photograph the river valley so many times, and then too, the kid became a teen and her willingness to be my goofy subject and model waned to raw annoyance, and the whole part where I travelled with a big old camera rig turned into a post-covid, travel light, just slip the good-enough phone camera into my pocket for snapshots mode. Heck, that iPhone takes hellagood pics ninety-five percent of the time.
Does all this make me sad?
A little bit. I mean, like running, photography brought me to many places and gave me a whole bunch of interesting opportunities to interact with the universe. It was an excuse for long walks on novel trails. It was a skill worth honing and which showed measurable progress the more I practiced it. And it definitely complemented my blogging.
I haven’t given it up, either.
Part of me is writing this because, well, in being all introspective on things I was pondering dusting off and charging up the camera later this week. It is spring and the trees are budding and the world near me is about to flower up. I will definitely dig out my art supplies, but maybe some quality time with the old SLR should be on the agenda, too.
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