With each passing day, Lila Fine Art Photography and I as a photographer are becoming more and more refined in the sense that, who we are and who we want to be, are becoming clearer. However, it has required facing fear and letting go of the safety nets.
'I am who I am'
What is the 'it' in my approach to photography, that is likely a very poor business model, but I will not compromise?
Human connection and authenticity. Great images are the byproduct. They are made great by the story of the human in them. Unfortunately (financially), the time required to capture that just does not make for a highly profitable business model, for now. The choice is whether to stick with it, and ride out the storm not knowing if the edge of the Earth is on the other side.
The Fear
I don't want to be like the photographers that are financially successful because they shoot weddings and events. High volume shooting and editing, and stress of the day and pace of the event are not conducive to producing great meaningful images. It would not make use of what makes my work what it is. It would also drain the life from something that I love and that has carried me through incredibly tumultuous changes in our lives. On the other hand, weddings and events are the most likely to provide an income in the short term. It is a realistic choice, and one that is very tempting to accept, but at what cost?
For a time I was very fortunate to afford to do just what I want with my photography as a hobby in parallel with a well paying job as an Engineer, but that financial comfort has gone now. I accept that. It is over. The safety net I had built through an engineering career of 11 years can't healthily continue. Let's be honest, there really was no safety net. It was all a facade like the false sense of security working for a large company gives you. That thing we call job security. A couple of coughs and sneezes, and companies (like humans) acted in self-preservation because they are run by humans only concerned with self-preservation. Job security was gone.
I have chosen to publish this now. My entire life, I would not normally do something like this. I had always felt that if I focussed on positive outcomes, they would not happen. If I was pessimistic, success would be a welcomed 'surprise'. Another facade. Today I have learned to let go of the future. The facade I had lived was that it was possible to grasp it at all. My mind was analytical and binary. I wanted to control my future, but as a result it controlled my present. I have learned to let go. There is no safety net. There is no disappointment or surprise. There is only here and now, and that's where I need to live. We will cross the next bridge when we get there. Easier said than done some days.
Normally we see these sorts of stories after a person has become a success. I am putting it out there now. Whatever comes is going to, and we will either look back having succeeded or not. I accept that. What is success anyway?
I find it ironic that over two years ago, before even embarking on this journey, I wrote my first blog post. It was about Authenticity vs. Societal Acceptance, and two years later I find myself plagued by the same conundrum. At the time I spoke from a position above my 'safety net'. Today that net is gone and it is a whole different perspective. The article is linked below. For the record, EVOLVE; The Neo-Mentorship space that I started at the time, never took off. I do not regret that. Had it worked I would possibly never had known the fulfilment that photography could bring.
The road travelled
I picked up a camera just over two years ago as a form of therapy for having been diagnosed with bipolar. Conventional thinking is not to talk about either my experience (or lack thereof) or having bipolar. Note: 'Having' not 'being'. It did its job for what I started out doing it for. Doing it as a profession was not even a consideration. I didn't think I would ever be 'good enough' and really at that time, I expected to soon make my way back to my engineering career. It was, after all, the more 'realistic' career.
I need to take a moment to just say that I am not going to end every sentence with, "I mean no offence." Believe me when I say nothing is intended to offend anyone. It is just my experience thus far. Someone, somewhere will feel offended no matter what I do. That is society today.
Nevertheless, photography was fast becoming a passion. I was seeing things in the world in compositions and moments. Things I never noticed before. An artistic, deep and meaningful side of me was awakening that I did not know I possessed. I was drawn to landscape photography first, then nature and soon developed an eye for the interplay of light and shadows. About a year ago I joined Westville Camera Club which has helped me develop my technical skills immensely. At the time, I swore I would never photograph portraits. People do suck sometimes after all. That was because I didn't yet have enough confidence in myself to stand up for my photography when challenged by people on the work I produced. Landscapes and animals have no qualms about how round their faces look or how big their nose looks, despite that just being the reality of who we are.
Conventional thinking is not to talk about most of what I have so far. "It will drive customers away", conventional thinking of marketing degrees and MBA's chant. It is not what people want to hear.
Nothing revolutionary has ever come of the stuff that people want to hear. At the same time, it is strongly refuted at first and sometimes never progresses past that. We are a species resistant to change. Nothing ventured nothing gained though right?
Within the first year of my photographic journey, I was approached by a writer from the Sunday Tribune to capture some images for an article and later that year a Milky Way shot of mine was published as a monthly winner in Getaway magazine. Yet still I did not believe in myself. Not constantly at least. Not even for the most part. Joining the camera club helped. It is yet early days but with every gold, merit and salon acceptance I started to get more confident in my work.
As far as people go, I had grown to love capturing street-style images of people. Candid images of people in their environment, with emotion attached to them, but still not able to tell me how to change how they looked in the images. All the while my tolerance for the stress of the technical industry grew and grew but how could I let go of a decade of industry experience, a Masters's Degree in Engineering Management, professional registration (Pr Eng) and 16 years of study? It was nonsensical. And after all, I was surely not experienced enough.
The thing about experience is that the concept is not as relevant in some professions as others. In photography, our work is subjective. There are rules to a degree, but people either like what you produce or they don't, and it can vary from image to image. Today I have made peace with this fact, when I am not drowning in low confidence as comes with the depression aspect of my affliction. I doubt myself from time to time. Human nature on steroids in a depression. However others, and I, look at my images and have mostly good things to say. Perhaps my unorthodox perception of reality is appealing to others outside of my mind?
Speaking to the People of Tomorrow
At first, and as the reality of photography becoming more to me than a passion and hobby grew, I tried selling my landscape images, writing a blog and even making YouTube videos. All the things they say you should do to get going in 2023 at the time. I picked up valuable skills and experience to do those things, but something was not right. One of my landscapes was 'purchased' by an old family friend to hang in their house. A proud moment. Acknowledgement. Yet no more than that. Making videos made me learn Da Vinci Resolve. I grasped it quite easily, and making videos helped me get uncomfortable and thus grew into accepting myself, my appearance, my voice. The blogs, I think were the most enjoyable, hence I am here writing still. I did it for the wrong reasons, 10% of which still exist. ie. for you and other people to read. Worse then, I did it with the aim of driving traffic to my site, as the tutorials and gurus said you should. But when it didn't, as much as I had hoped, I thought it was a waste if time. Also people these days preach "quick impact, hook, close blah blah blah."
It was only when I had realised that I was speaking to the wrong people that I saw what I needed to do. I was not speaking to the people of 'these days' I was speaking to the people of tomorrow. This meant trusting that my ideas, whilst perhaps not mainstream right now, have the most potential for growth. Most importantly, they resonate with me.
The hardest part is believing in it whilst it is so new and perhaps different to the current norm. Doubt really sets in when you get inquiries for the things that are not part of your approach but would be immediate income. The issue with accepting those is they are short-term wins at the expense of the long-term vision you had for your work. They also put you into a competition pool that first of all you don't want to be in, secondly is saturated and most importantly is not sustainable if you stick to your method which in my case is very time intensive, the outputs are fewer but of the highest level of detail. I put every ounce of myself into building and creating each image individually. Not many people are doing that in the market, but it is just the way I want to work. The reason most don't do it is that it is certainly not as profitable and will only serve a niche market. As a result I have recently declined to shoot any bulk-image events, like weddings for example. I passed it on to fellow a photographer.
So what is the 'it' in my approach to photography, even as a business? Human connection and authenticity. Great images are the byproduct. They are made great by the story of the human in them.
Whether this is going to work, I cannot say for now. In the words of Bluey (S04 E49 - 'The Sign'), "We will see."
See you next time.
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