The Photography Story They Never Tell You
By Peter Irungu
Photography has this amazing feeling it leaves you having, when a good photo comes to life, frozen in moment. That’s what attracts you when you first fall in love with it. Your eyes keep wondering looking for that sweet spot, that golden sun ray, that teardrop moment or that grin if the burst out laughter is not forthcoming, that small moment changes everything.
My story in photography is not any different from many of us who are barely starting out. You get inspired by someone, from then on it’s a constant daily dose of stalking that artist to find out what gear he uses, where he likes to hang out when he likes to shoot, what he likes to shoot, it becomes an obsession. Eventually you realize there other even better photographers out there, who have even better gear and travel to even more amazing places and their images become part of your bucket list of things you would want to capture.
So after all the admiration phases were done I moved on to the reality that many beginning in photography encounter, the reality that it has never been a rosy business. Getting equipment is always the first huddle. They will tell you to start with your phone , but that gets old when you realize your phone can’t take that night shot you saw or zoom in at 200 meters. So you decide to get your first camera after months of saving and a lot more borrowing. Here the battle of brands come in and you go with popular opinion and you become the obsessed #Team{InsertBrand} ambassador. You now graduate to become an Amateur, you have no idea how to get that client yet, it hasn’t gotten to that stage yet, so you start with shooting flowers in your backyard, or your earphones on your reading table next to your Macbook with a coffee mug next to it and graduate gradually to portraits of a friend or a younger sibling.
Later you come to the realization that you weren’t getting as many likes or “wow you’re a great photographer” compliments in your months old Instagram and Facebook pages. Here is when you start your research on what you’re doing wrong. Research engulfs you. You start learning a lot more of what you can do with your DSLR, at this stage you’re shooting less, reading more, the google student you become. YouTube tutorials, pdf pages, and screen shots anything you can save for later. And so the journey begins into the boring side of this business. You will try so hard to replica every fantastic shot you have seeing of your ever growing list of photographers you look upto, realizing how hard it is not only shooting but editing. You cannot afford that editing software, you torrent it making sure it has a crack key. For every shot you take, it takes equally as long to get it finished and ready for the world to share and not get credit for it.
If you get stuck in why people don’t like what you’re shooting, you start questioning yourself. Self-doubt becomes your daily fight. Most people who love your work will probably never critique it. You need those naysayers, but their too scared to tell it to your face, they know you will make that personal. The professionals, well most of them anyway, won’t either. They don’t like putting the beginners down, they’ve been there they know how it feels. They will tell you good job, but keep shooting. Those endless workshops, talks, meets, seminars all help but they never really tell you how to make money. Here is where many quit or just say I shoot for fun.
If you haven’t quit by now, you probably have sacrificed too much to look back. So for every self-doubting moment you have, passion will always be the overcoming emotion. So you shoot, shoot for free, they will have pity on you and offer you tea, the next free shoot they will offer you lunch, the next transport, the next phone credit, but you don’t mind it’s a learning curve, exploitation becomes an experience. From experience comes lessons in business. You are barely getting by always mad at people who want it for free, clients who didn’t like what you took because you missed one moment out of the many you didn’t, self-doubt pours in again, but you keep on because you have come that far.All you’re hoping for is that one day, that one client will come so you keep on.
I really wanted to write on the rosy or emotional story on how I began my photography journey until today, but I realized that would probably not be as rosy, so I decided to write to what we go through every day. This has been my story of photography, still is. I quit all the time, but I try to feed myself with good photos, people with passion and an obsession with being like the people I look up to, that keeps me going. I see it in my friends who are my fellow photographers many I cannot tell to just keep on but I hope they can read this and keep on. You’re not alone.
“Success is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm” — Winston Churchill
Originally published at akomanet.com on September 1, 2015.
