Sunday is a great day for noodling around ideas inspired by the photography/art quote I have chosen to chat about. Amazingly it’s already Labor Day Weekend. Where did the summer go. (Guess it’s time to put away the white outfits?)
Today’s quote is from Elliot Erwin who I think expresses the feelings of a lot of photographers, including me, in that if we weren’t doing photography for a living we’d be photographing for pleasure. There is a tendency to at times take this thing that we love, and due to the need to make a living from it because we choose to become professionals it becomes a labor instead of a love.
One way I combat this is to assign myself personal projects. It could be creating a specific new to me type of art with my camera and Photoshop, approaching a person with character and asking to photograph them or just going on a photo hunt for grins.
If you are like Elliott am me grab your camera for a little while this weekend to start playing like you used to when you were still an amateur and bring back the love and leave the labor for another day.
“I am a professional photographer by trade and an amateur photographer by vocation.” Elliott Erwitt
PS Just as I have found to have learned the most when first attempting to create photographic images by experimenting I see my personal projects extending my photography skill-set and adding to the tools in my professional quiver.
