The week I nearly quit photography
Just over a year ago, I nearly quit photography. It sounds dramatic really and at the time it was surprisingly unsettling, however I’d come to a crossroad in my photography – as I have done with many other things – and reached one of those points where you are forced to either properly commit to something, or just let it go.
Oddly enough, this mini crisis came about because of my increasing interest in Infrared photography! In a combination of idle curiosity and a wish to try something different, I had been dabbling with IR for a few years, using filters with my Nikon D90, requiring long exposures of around 30 seconds to get an image I could then work with. After starting out with a cheap old scratched and battered slide-in Cokin IR filter that let light in all around the edges and caused massive hotspots (which made most of the images unusable), I was finally starting to get really quite pleasing results after upgrading my filter to a screw-in Hoya R72 IR filter. However it was still a bit of a hit and miss process. It took a long time to set up the camera, a long time to take the image and then a long time to process an image, all for a result that, whilst still pleasing, didn’t really seem to resemble the infrared images I’d seen in books and online! but my interest was piqued! I was doing something different – something few people did! I researched and refined my techniques and improved the resulting images, but finally started to feel that my equipment was holding me back if I was to continue. It was time to consider getting a dedicated Infrared camera.
The most desirable option for me was to convert my current Nikon D90. The problem is that, once converted, the camera can no longer take normal colour images. So, if I wanted to take normal photos, I’d need to buy a new camera to replace the D90. Hmm… OK, this is potentially turning into a bit of an investment! Therein lies the problem….
I’ve been taking photos for over 20 years, and been taking digital images since 2003. I’ve got over 100,000 (yes, ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND) photos on my PC that I’ve taken since 2003. Up till last year, in all that time, the only person that had really seen them was me. Most of the photos were rubbish, some of them were ok, the occasional one was maybe, grudgingly, good. Even if 1 in 50 photos were ok, that’s 2000 photos that were probably worth spending a little time and effort on to see if if could make something of them. And I did! I processed some of them and they looked OK! and yet I still left them to gather virtual dust on my hard drive, because I had no faith in my ability as a photographer. So what was the point?
What was the point?
Why spend a fortune on a new camera, and another to irreversibly convert my old one, if I was going to do nothing with the resulting images? I’d already invested a HUGE amount of time, money and effort in my hobby, and had nothing to show for it!
What was the point in investing? It would be a waste. If all I wanted to do was take snaps and capture personal memories but do nothing with them, then I might as well sell my kit and use my little compact camera. There would be no point upgrading unless I actually tried to do something with my photos. At least show people! Publish them to the web! Have a little faith in myself! But I clearly didn’t. As with many things. A week isn’t a long time really to hum and haw about whether to quit a hobby or properly commit to it (and I’m talking about a hobby for god’s sake – it’s certainly not life and death!) but my hobby was important to me and as someone who tends to over-think, to ask such fundamental questions about something I considered a core part of me was really quite unsettling. what was I so scared of?
I like to think that sense won out, and it was a conscious decision. I’m so pleased I did publish my work for people to see, and Flickr has been a particularly useful and positive tool! I’ve had so many positive comments and it’s helped me look critically at my work, as well as compare it against others. It doesn’t stack up too badly I don’t think!