Professional or Hobbyist?

I’ve spent most of the last year and a half making the beginning efforts toward becoming a professional fine art photographer. By that, I mean that I have begun trying to make my living by selling my photographs. I’ve taken the approach of marketing to art galleries and selling my work through them.

After that year and a half, I have to say that I have had a very good reception from the galleries I’ve approached. I’ve experienced very little of the soul withering rejection that artists are told to expect. I’ve had some other forms of recognition that have been nice, including publication in Lenswork Magazine, a magazine cover for the Michigan Quarterly Review, a nice one man show at a non-profit coming up this winter, and a nice two man show at a commercial gallery last winter. Sales have been alternately good, and not so good, depending on the gallery and the time of year.

I have every reason to be encouraged on one level. I have some work that I’m quite proud of, but I have much more work to do. I’ve had some pretty disruptive events in my personal life over the last few years, including a divorce (still very much ongoing), and my mother suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. I’ve not gotten as much done as I might have hoped, but I think I’ve done well considering what’s been happening in my life.

Yes, but…

All of this is prelude to my saying that despite some encouraging events, I am feeling a bit discouraged, and thinking seriously about whether trying to be a full time professional is the right choice for me. So why the discouragement? Well, first of all, I get to spend very little time photographing. I am working so hard to focus on marketing my work, that I allow myself only very occasional trips to shoot, and those have been pretty brief.

I’ve made only five three or four day photo trips in the last year. I’ve gotten some nice images from those trips, but it’s hardly the rich creative life I would like. I haven’t gone anywhere spectacular. I’m watching my budget, so I only drive to locations, and I sleep in a tent whenever possible, which hardly makes the trips luxurious. There’s definitely none of the relaxed creative time that you might expect a professional to have. I don’t feel like I can just take time to go somewhere and explore with the camera. I am thinking about portfolio, and consistency with my existing work, and if I’m honest, I’m thinking at least a little about what my galleries will want to show and what people might buy.

I don’t do that too much, mind you, because I am not interested in making photographs that are just marketable. I want to make art that’s personal to me, or there’s no purpose in doing this at all. I can find better ways to make a living if I want to. I’m in this to make art that speaks to me, and hopefully to other people. I’ll sell images that I’m not wild about, if someone wants them, but I don’t feel wonderful about it.

In fact, that can be a source of some discouragement. I show galleries a variety of work, and they choose what they want. It can be discouraging when they select work that is not my favorite, that I feel is not expressing my personal vision.

Too Dark?

But then, with all the challenges and sadness in my life over the last few years, I feel like my vision has gotten rather dark. I wonder whether anyone will be attracted to the work, even if it perfectly expresses my self for the moment. Another source of some discouragement. I feel like I probably need to make a major change in what I’m shooting and how, but any photographer will tell you that that’s not an easy prospect. Changing subject matter and presentation takes time. You have to feel your way into new things, and when you’re trying to be a professional, time is something you have too little of most of the time.

The Professional Life

So, why is that? Well, you have to choose between photography and marketing and production and delivery of work. Marketing can mean traveling to a new city and calling on galleries. It can mean a lot of time spent creating and updating portfolios of images to show to galleries. You can spend a lot of time creating Blurb books, writing in a blog like this, emailing contacts and galleries, mailing things. You name it.

And then, you need to visit your existing galleries regularly to make sure that they see new work and remain enthusiastic about your work. You are battling for wall space with many other artists, and the gallery will show work that is fresh and exciting to them, not something you did six months ago and now seems a little stale to them.

You will also spend a lot of time printing, mounting, and matting and framing prints for galleries. You’ll make a lot of mistakes while you do this, so you print and re-print. You have to stay on top of printer and monitor calibration, so there’s more work to do, and more ruined prints. When you secure a new gallery, you have more work to print and mount and frame, all of which is done at your expense and with only the hope that the gallery will be able to sell effectively. I’ve learned that there are galleries who can sell, and those that can’t. You do your best to guess which is which when you investigate them, but sometimes you just have to try one and that can be expensive.

And I haven’t even begun to investigate really distant galleries in big cities, where the process is much harder. More travel, more expenses, very competitive environment, and then more shipping or delivery expenses if you are successful.

So of course you can hear my discouragement in the above, but those are the realities of the business. I need at least twice as many galleries representing me as I have now, and they’ll have to be much better than some of the galleries I presently have in order for me to have a hope of making any profit, let alone a living from my efforts. At present, when sales are good, they are just enough to offset all of the expenses of travel and printing, and framing work for galleries that can’t sell the work. When they’re bad, I lose money. I’m not sure that even with more galleries, of good quality, that I will be able to make a profit. I might, but I might not.

Return to Being a Hobbyist?

Part of what’s prompting this thinking was an opportunity for me to maybe do some work in my previous occupation. That work paid me very well. It was not bad work. It was nothing I loved, but it wasn’t bad. It was somewhat creative, could sometimes be interesting, though generally didn’t mean anything to me. But I’m wondering now whether I might not actually get to spend more time photographing if I did some of that lucrative work part time and photographed more in my free time. I might actually get to enjoy the photography more because there would be no pressure on it. I could go where I wanted and take my time, without worrying about immediate production. I might actually be more of an artist than I am as a full time professional.

It wouldn’t be easy to return to this former profession. I’d have some re-learning to do. It’s been a while since I did that work. I can’t say that I would look forward to it. I think I’d have real trouble motivating myself to do the marketing of that business that would be required, despite the fact that it might make me financially comfortable, and allow me a lot of freedom. It just seems like such a let down to consciously choose to return to work that has no meaning to me. But then don’t most people do work that is fundamentally meaningless to them? But does that make it right to do that?

Or Keep Going?

There remains the possibility that if I keep my nose to the grind stone on my photography that I will find more productive galleries, that my prices might rise to a point where things are more profitable, that an audience for my work would develop and my sales would get steadier and more substantial. Maybe I would be able to do less marketing work and more photography. Certainly the lack of photography in my life is a big problem. I’ve had enough success that it would be a real shame to walk away from this effort before I persevered for a while. I need to try those big city galleries. I can keep building the number of mid-sized markets too. But I must keep doing strong creative work, or I will wither and die, and I’ll have little to market anyway. It takes really strong work to get attention in a crowded marketplace.

So, for the moment, I intend to keep moving forward with my marketing. I see that I need to allow more time for the photography. I’m starving creatively and it’s hurting my motivation. When I was a painter, I worked every day, even if for only a few hours. With photography, I need to travel to find the kind of locations I need. I’ve shot everything I can imagine shooting within a few hours of my house. I probably need a local project, no matter how prosaic it might seem, so I can shoot at least once a week, maybe more.

I could consider doing some still life work, or find something else that does not require travel. I love shooting the remote and wild places I’ve been working, but I have to open up a bit to allow for some other work.

Create More Joyous Work

And I probably need to shake off the sadness of the last few years and do some work that’s inviting, inspiring, enriching to people. There’s a place for the kind of stark work I’ve been doing, but it will take a pretty sophisticated audience to buy that work. It’s not going over the average person’s couch.

I have some ideas in that vein that I’ll share here once I begin on them. I do still want to shoot the lakeshores here in Michigan in the early winter. I think there will be some beautiful things to be seen as the ice develops along the shore, but they won’t be happy pictures, most likely. I’m thinking more of flowers, maybe portraiture. We’ll see.

Is Fine Art Always Sad?

I wonder sometimes if fine art almost automatically has an air of sadness to it. Maybe you can’t take art seriously if it’s pretty, or light in mood.  I certainly have no trouble finding that element of sadness. I’ll have to see if I can make joyous or beautiful work.

Anyway, I just thought I’d share some of the reality of this process with you all. I’ve been very encouraged, very excited at times during the process. I wouldn’t want to discourage anyone from undertaking it. There’s a lot to be gained from it. I just don’t know if it’s the best thing for one’s creative life. You end up subjecting something you love to the pressures of commerce. It can be tough to keep the relaxation, the spontaneity, the joy in your photography. But I intend to keep trying for some time yet.

Mediocrity or Greatness?

I’ve recently been reading Stephen Covey’s new book the 8th Habit. He has an illustration in there where you have a choice of two paths in life. One moves in the direction of the known thing, the path toward mediocrity and compromise. The other path moves toward greatness. Which path do you think we would all like to choose? Which one do we choose, and what is the price of completing that path?Easy to start down it, not so easy to stay the course and reach the destination.

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