Hobbyist Angst

I don't really know at what point the momentum carrying my hobby of photography began to falter but it did. There was a period where I was considering throwing care to the wind and saying “hey, I’m an artist” but reality caught up at some point and now I'm back to focusing on my more marketable skills, like writing (ha ha).

The term artist is relatively meaningless. Having your art appreciated is totally dependent on getting others to agree with your view that it is worthwhile You can catch people's eyes through stunning imagery, but there are so many stunning images in this world that it's hard to say yours is any more important than any other.

Photography is worse because you aren’t really creating anything. You are merely capturing something, and the real art is being able to leave out everything except what you want to be represented in the photo. And while I’m not bad at that, and I’m developing a bit of a knack for taking decent pictures, I’m certainly not confident enough in it to claim I should be paid.

And so it becomes a hobby. And something about hobbies that has become pretty clear to me in my life, whether it be running, photography or anything else is that people don’t really tend to care about it unless they also do it. And none of my friends are really photographers.

So I’m left where I am. I love to take pictures of parties, and I think I provide a service in doing so. But when it comes to my pictures of nature or other things, how can I believe that people care about it when they’ve got so much to care about. So I’m left with 450 pictures taken on my walk at the Elora gorge and nothing to do with them and nobody to show them to.

Ah well, they're pretty to look at anyways.