Almost all photographers come to photography because they love it but somewhere along the line it becomes work and the joy can fade. It becomes a job to figure out how to make our initial passion thrive so we keep the joy even when it becomes our job.
Photography is a unique art form in which the only thing keeping anyone from practicing it is how much money they can afford to invest in equipment. Essentially this opens it up to being a very competitive and oversaturated field. For practicing photographers who make a living off of making photographs this competition, over saturation drives them to push, push for new clients and creating work which may support them financially but not creatively.
Creativity in photography is what most photographers find joy in, it is what drew them to the technological art form to begin with, but keeping that creative drive while running a successful business is the challenge.
Taken by Exposure One Studios in 2024. Hillard, OH at Darcy’s Dahlia in their gardens.
Photographers are contracted to create work for their clients and this contracted work the style, location, and look is often solely dictated by the clients wants and needs. This isn’t a bad thing after all being able to create to a clients needs is what allows photographers to have thriving and successful businesses. But that doesn’t mean our clients needs fulfill all of our creative needs.
This is why often photographers post images and blogs on their passion projects. The images they take to fulfill their creative needs, or bring them peace. For instance I am an equine photographer, I absolutely love photographing horses but sometimes even for something I love, I need a creative outlet and break from it. For me that is usually nature photography, focusing on flowers and macro to stretch a part of my brain that doesn’t get used as often when photographing horses.
Other photographers have other creative outlets. Nature photographers may turn to portraiture, or street photography . The universal truth is everyone of us has something that we do or turn to in order to keep our creative alive. Because quite simply we enjoy them. I enjoy spending time in flower fields photographing bees and flowers. I enjoy being out in nature with no one and nothing dictating how and why I am shooting other than my joy for being there and doing it.
So if you are a photographer struggling to find your joy in photography because you are burning out on your regular work look for the relaxing subject that you can shoot just for you. And then do them because you enjoy them.