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Treating Photography As a Hobby |
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Written by Jim Hunter, Editor-in-Chief/Chief of Operations
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Sunday, 05 March 2006 |
It's about time we started to take photography seriously and treat it as a hobby. -Elliott Erwitt
Just in case everyone hasn't noticed, I love quotes. The other day, during the course of a discussion on one of the professional photographer forums, I was somehow reminded of this quote by Elliot Erwitt. I have no way of knowing exactly what Mr. Erwitt had in mind when he made the statement but, it reminded me of why I got into photography in the first place. It was fun!
Over the years though, photography has slowly gone from being fun, to being a job. I'm sure, like many others, I had begun to only think about making images that were highly marketable as stock, finding a creative way to express a client's ideas during assignments or trying to make images that would somehow be memorable. Without realizing it, I had lost the fun aspect and photography had become a job, though it's still a job I wouldn't trade for anything.
This is where digital photography can come to the rescue. By making it cheaper and more practical to free ourselves of pre-conceived ideas about what images we should be making it allows us more freedom to experiment and try out new ideas. In other words, to shoot just for the fun of it. After all, we no longer have to worry about wasting a frame of film since we can just delete the images we don't want or download the card and start all over. So, the bottom line is that it now costs us almost nothing to experiment, to just play and have some fun again.
I have found that just playing around with a digital camera has brought back the almost childlike feelings of excitement I had right after buying my first 35mm camera. What fun it was to just make photographs with nothing more in mind than pleasing myself. I could photograph anything I wanted in any way that I wanted. Even the failures were fun because occasionally something totally unexpected happened and I learned from these mistakes. Often times what I learned was what not to do or what didn't work. Other times I discovered a technique that I could use in the future.
The bottom line for me at least, is that digital technology has now allowed me to give myself permission to just go play, to have some fun. It has given me the opportunity to free myself from self-imposed restrictions and to once again make photographs for no other reason than the shear pleasure of doing so and this in turn has stirred the creative juices.
Now, it's time to take Mr. Erwitt's advice to get serious about photography and go have some fun.
© 2006 Jim Hunter, All Rights Reserved Bio Contact
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Last Updated ( Sunday, 17 September 2006 )
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