Dealing With Creative Highs And Lows
I’m at a weird phase of my photography journey at the moment. I’m experiencing short periods of activity during wedding and engagement sessions, involving emotion, creativity, and commitment. These times are the absolute best. I’m doing what I love, feeding and nurturing my passion and improving my knowledge and experience. But unfortunately these “highs” don’t last forever. Eventually, I have to come crashing back down in to the less glamorous and certainly less fun real world of the 9-5 day job.
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy my day job. It’s better than most. But there is no comparison between the emotional and creative roller-coaster of professional photography. When I’m shooting, planning or otherwise doing anything involved with getting my little business of the ground, it wakes me up, gives me energy and makes me feel like I’m doing something truly worthwhile. Every portrait session, every wedding or client meeting gives me hope, energy and confidence. I feel better, I feel more like well…me. It’s a indescribably positive feeling.
But it never lasts. At this relatively early stage in my journey, these photography milestones, these emotional highs, can be anywhere from a few weeks to a few months apart. I have a lot of downtime on my hands. Just coming off the high of the last wedding I shot, but weeks to wait until the next one.
This dipping in and dipping out is hard. Not having the portfolio to build your business overnight is hard. Not feeling like you are as committed as you could be is hard. Watching other wedding photographers you admire shooting amazing weddings every single weekend while you are stuck in the real world doing the housework and browsing twitter and is really, really hard.
Right now I’m stuck in-between. I get to experience these little teasing glimpses of what my life could be like as a full time photographer. It’s almost cruel. Dangling the thing you want most in front of you, just out of reach. The positive person in me sees it as a challenge, a potential for development and growth and something to work towards. But the other part of me wants to scream in frustration. Why can’t I just do what I’m doing now and multiply it by say 15. That should pay my bills and let me quit the day job, right? It sounds so easy.
As with everything with life, there is no easy route. The real trick is to be positive, be patient, be honest and above all work as hard as you possibly can.
I’ve now spent enough time experiencing the work and ethos of a range of photographers to recognise he skills I need todo do this. It’s extremely rare for me to ever be confident about something. But this photography stuff comes so naturally to me. I’m not the best by any means, but I’m certainly good enough to make a success of this. If I had the right opportunities, and a decent bit of luck, I know I could take my business where it needs to go. If I did this every day, I could succeed.
No more day job. No more boring real world. No more downtime. It would be a manic, busy, crazy, rewarding, challenging, learning, creative experience every single day, and I would absolutely thrive in it.
