To the average viewer, photography hugely integrated into Instagram seems very easy. Gone are the old days where one has to make efforts to create their art and display them, nowadays all one needs is to take, edit, or take a photo, add filters and uploadektir. But any person, who ever tried to take a photograph of sunset and get something like an orange smudge on the viewfinder, will know that there is much more to this job than can be seen on the surface. What has happened in the photography industry is that it has created this glamour and glamourized the general public into a notion that they only need to spend a few thousand bucks on a dSLR and they are going to get National Geographic quality photographs. So let’s pull the curtain and see why photography is one of the most rewarding, yet the most frustrating things that one can do.
The Technical Labyrinth That Never Ends
Do you recall when you were sure comprehension of the exposure triangle would give an all-encompassing answer to all the photogenic inquiries? That naivety did not last for very long, huh? The world of photography is a vast well of technicalities that one can fall into. And when you think that aperture, shutter speed, ISO are enough someone mentions focus stacking, hyperfocal distance or inverse square law of light.
The Financial Black Hole
It should therefore be noted that when it comes to photography, one thing that cannot be evaded is the fact that the art of photography can be costly. Ridiculously expensive. That “entry-level” DSLR setup? Just the beginning of your financial descent. After you have purchased the camera body you will also require lenses (one is not enough), filters, good tripod, memory cards, extra battery, and a bag for all the items.
When your wallet finally catches up, they will bait and navigator you into believing you actually need that fancy macro lens or simply that faster prime because ‘it will take your photography to the next level’. And maybe it will— but to what degree? It is even possible for photographers to get obsessed with the acquisition of photography equipments much as those who are obsessed with designer shoes and bags may seem financially sane.
The Time Vacuum
There is no such option that tells you that photography becomes so time consuming. This is the time hyper-sensitive images have to be sorted and mainly, it takes five hours to that after a single one-hour shoot. Photographers shooting landscapes know only too well that to capture soft, warm, golden light at dawn they have to wake up before the sun, drive to the location the day before, or the night before. And wedding photographers? 3; those people effectively give up a number of their weekends throughout most of the year.
The Social Media Comparison Trap
There is nothing as detrimental to one’s photographic egos as going through the insta feed. This can be said through photos, with better equipment, in better places, with more followers. That is why the constant stream of perfect images makes everyone’s own work looks horrifyingly bad in comparison.
What these handsome feeds do not portray are hundreds of discarded photographs, hours spent on post-production, expensive travels and sometimes blatant photoshopping for that seemingly accidental snapshot. photographers have set unrealistic goals with the help of the availability of social media through which they keep on looking for spectacular shots that leaves them with imaginations that are hard to fulfil.
When Clients Don’t Understand Your Art
Should you dare into the world of paid photography, you already met the infamous The Client From Hell. They’re the ones that demand high quality like the covers of the selected magazine and at the same time expect quality images for as many burgers as they will pay you, the project urgency is the best edition with every shot taken in the basement because, hey, is well lit here as the palaces of Venice.
The bitter truth is that many individuals still do not have no clue into the professional photography. What they know is the end product but they are not concerned with several years of training, several thousands invested in equipment, and the time used in post production. This creates tension when speaking about the price, such concerns as when a client believes that stating ‘You can use this in your portfolio’ is a sufficient form of compensation.
It is always a challenge to train the clients on how to be polite, especially when correcting them. The photographers who are destined to make a career as photographers are far from always being the most talented – they know how to manage expectations and at the same time, meet their client’s need.
The Emotional Rollercoaster
Whereas some other professions oscillate you between the twin poles of euphoria and depression, nothing does it quite like photography. One day you’ll take what you consider your perfect photo in the sense of being the one to beat all others while the next day you wake up to the realization that that picture is trash. One can lose confidence quicker than the dew under the sun in a hot summer morning.
This rollercoaster can be drawn to creative blocks which can even persist for extremely long time. Different people have their creativity at different levels; sometimes it just surfs and producting is only aggravating the situation. Every photographer has been through a photoshoot session where they return without anything they can boast of and wonder if indeed they have lost whatever drive they used to possess.
Still, such emotional swings only enhance the euphoria of the upswings that follow it. Finally when the lighting is perfect, what you want to capture, how you want to capture it and the perfect technical setup it is simply breathtaking and that feeling is plain mid addictive. This is the background of what we all look forward to when we embark on the challenges despite the fact that there are many difficulties encountered.
Finding Your Voice in a Crowded Room
Since there are nearly a billion photographers globally and around 2.5 billion pictures in a single day, standing out from the crowd to some Autonomous version of being able to develop his or her own unique photographic style is like shouting your first name out loud at a rock concert . Many a photographer may ask how one can make something new from a location that seems to be photographed to death – from above, from below, from the side and every possible way in between?
Perhaps the biggest reward of photography might well be the search for one’s own vision. When the photographs that you make are the one that could be identified with your approach, with your vision –this is when photography move from being a hobby, or a career or something to doing art that speak to other people about what you see.
Why We Keep Coming Back
However, due to all these challenges you mentioned or perhaps because of them, photography is known to be one of the more stimulating outlet that is still open to people today. It requires one to take a step back and observe all the things within him or around him/her. It catches the instances in a specific point in time that otherwise would not be captured forever. It also still lets us put forward our own point of view, which more often than not is quite different from those of other people.
So yes, photography is difficult—beautifully, rewardingly difficult. And that’s exactly why we can’t stop doing it.
