I’ve heard this before, but haven’t found it the case personally. I started work in manual jobs and messing around with computers was my evening hobby. Many years later, I now do IT as a job (partly from gaining skills from that hobby) but also have continued it as my primary thing to do when I’m not working. I was worried when I changed into this career that my hobby would become too much like work to be enjoyable, but I’ve not found that.
Is this the same for other people, or am I unusual in doing something in my off hours that’s so close to my career? I’m genuinely curious to know if others have found the same or whether they found another hobby.
Programmer turned photographer turned back to programmer.
I was really enjoying the online photography scene the 2000s and early 2010s. I used to do street photography, ask interesting people to take their portrait, blag a press pass and take photos of up and coming bands (“sure why not” is a crazy answer to “can I inexpertly point my flash directly at Florence Welch as she performs her last tiny gig before stardom”).
I started doing work for wannabe models (ModelMayhem mostly) and from that got requests to do paid personal events, eg weddings and engagements. Especially when I moved abroad to places where I was basically self employed, this was a nice little occasional gig. But it was work. Regardless of why they chose me, they wanted their photos to look the current fashionable way, they wanted them by a certain date, they wanted specific moments and they wanted them perfect even if they weren’t perfect in real life. It sucked all the fun and creativity from it.
Coupled with the overloading of the internet with (elitist snob coming) mundane and repetitive photography content and the death of discussion and appreciation of thoughtful photography, it eroded my love for it on both ends.
I’m old and have kids now, I’m trying to get back into it. It’s hard to build back up that courage to take out a camera and snap a photo. Before it marked you as unusual, but at least as potentially an expert or artist. There was a percentage of people willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. It seems these days that like many “democratised” things, putting extra effort into something seems to be heavily discouraged and denigrated as elitist. And I think just in general a 40-something with a camera does not get the benefit of the doubt that a 20-something used to. I’m hoping it swings around again as I hit proper old age, just a harmless old weirdo with a DSLR.
Interesting, thanks for sharing.
My father was also an amateur photographer who went professional - doing lots of weddings and events. He got quite frustrated with that too, even though this was back in the 70s. Even then, the customer usually had a strong view about what they wanted, which gave him little leeway to be creative - much as you describe. He also found getting paid at the end of the job really difficult, so much so the combination forced him to give it up, and that pretty much killed his love too. Sold most of his cameras and lenses and all his darkroom equipment.