Clever you are indeed, Mr Andy Capp, to have started this thread. And baited the hook for us to nibble at your tasty bait.
Like most of us, I take photographs for the joy it. Or to put it another way, for the joy I get from taking photographs.
For me, anything further by way of analysis would be to overthink it.
In various times in my long life, I've entertained thoughts (= fantasies) of becoming a 'professional' photographer, setting up a studio, specializing in this or that (everything from real estate to modeling portfolios to kids' portraits), but after having analyzed the realities of all that, I decided it wasn't worth the bother or the effort of going pro. As wiser minds than mine have often written, one should beware of turning a passion into a profession.
I own a reasonable amount of good gear. Also a small home darkroom, which once was a complete film processing-printing setup but after I retired I decided to downsize this to about 40% of what I originally owned. Alas, this 'kit' has sat unused since the Covid pandemic struck, with the exception of one or two times a year when I psych myself enough to process the rolls of (mostly long outdated) B&W films I've accumulated. I then scan the best of these - I once did the entire lot I took, but after filling up several portable hard disks with huge TIFFs of images I basically had no interest in and haven't returned to even look at since, I decided to brutally cull my 'keepers' to only the best I had taken, to be scanned mostly to email to friends or family or make an occasional print for our walls.
I have friends who thrive on Let's Pretend scenarios. They have fallen for the marketing bullcrap most camera manufacturers put out, and spent thousands, even tens of thousands, of expensive cameras and lenses to create the 'image' in their minds of being a professional. One friend built up a kit of three Olympus DSLRs and 16 lenses, then bought a 'pro' backpack large enough to carry the entire lot when she went out to capture her beloved Velveeta landscapes. A few years ago she went bushwalking with this kit and fell down a steep hill, breaking her right ankle. A year of expensive operations and a long convalescence followed. She is now back at it, limping around bush trails in the Dandenong's of Victoria (Australia), but she is doing what her heart guides her to, and she has wisely opted for a smaller (if just as expensive) 'pro' backpack with only two cameras and six or seven lenses. For her, the unending cycle of joy continues.
This may seem as if I've written her story with derision, but I well realize that almost all of us have entertained similar ideas and ideals at one time or another. Of selling photographs, running a photo business, earning one's living with cameras. Yet for most of us the reality is different. Pro fantasies, amateur realities...
Given my earlier comment about overthinking the matter, I'm aware that in writing all this I've most likely fallen into the same trap that I described. But I find that having put these thoughts into words and posted them have cleared my own thinking about my approach to, and my philosophy about, my photography.
To quote myself again, I take photographs for the joy of it. Selfish? No. Self-indulgent? Maybe, but in my view, not really. Satisfying? Yes!
So I will go on taking photographs. Until I'm no longer able to. Then a decade or more of culling, deleting, captioning, keyboarding, and (sigh) scanning, will keep me occupied until I'm 90 and most likely no longer care, if I'm still around to indulge in such pleasurable feelings.
www.saturdayeveningpost.com
