Do you actually enjoy photography? Are you getting into photography for the right reasons? Read this to find out

Doing photography for the right reasons?


 There are many self-styled “photographers” on Flickr, photo.net, photosig.com, and other online sites. Almost without exception, they are LOSERS who feed on the “comments & critiques” they get, from other losers like themselves.
Anyway, almost all of them profess an incredible “passion” for photography, particularly landscape photography. This is almost always a scurrilous LIE. We’re writing this post to help YOU discover whether you’re doing photography for the right reasons.

1. Do you actually enjoy photography? Would you still do it if you weren’t able to post the photos online for “critiquing” by others?
This is the most important point of all. Far too many get “involved” in photography for nothing more than the inane pleasure of reading the “hurrahs!” from other, semi-anonymous losers on a variety of online sites. This is NOT photography. Ansel Adams didn’t have, or need, Flickr or photo.net. Neither did Galen Rowell, Carter-Besson, or any other famous photographer. Flickr or any other online “critique” site is nothing more than the needle that delivers the heroin to the drug user, the drug being “comments & critiques”. If you can’t enjoy your photography for yourself, and need to post it online, you are wasting your time and money. These are tough economic times. Your money is far better spent on building a rainy day fund, investments, education for your children, or other meaningful pursuits. Spending thousands (sometimes tens of thousands) of dollars in pursuit of Internet adulation is sheer stupidity.

2. Have you sunk yourself into a spending pit? Are you trying to make money from photography?
Like any other drug addict, the vicious cycle of addiction leads to the adoption of harder and harder drugs (to keep the high going). Photography may start out with a Nikon D40 and the kit 18-55 lens. Because the “users” of Flickr and photo.net are almost never real photographers, but a bunch of LOSERS, they judge others based on the camera & lens they use, or the amount of “noise” or detail in the photographs, or whether they did a good job of stealing someone else’s composition. Anything but the composition and artistic validity of the photograph, which these losers would not be capable of evaluating, in any case.

This leads the impressionable and gullible to “invest” in fancier equipment, often in misguided efforts to “earn” the respect of the LOSERS on these sites. Let’s break down the usual progression of equipment purchases:

Step 1: Nikon D5000, 18-55mm lens, 70-300mm lens, cheap tripod: about $800-900

Step 2: Nikon D300s or D7000, decent superwide lens, mid-range lens, semi-professional telephoto: $3700 (!)

Step 3: Canon 5D Mark II, 16-35mm II, 24-105mm, 70-200mm F4, mid-range tripod: $6300 (!!!!!)

The average American doesn’t have $1000 to spend on meaningless crap that won’t produce anything
of value, much less $4000 or over $6000. And this doesn’t even include printers or anything else these turkeys buy to make themselves feel like “real pros”. Which should tell you a thing or two about the assholes out there who buy thousands of dollars in photography gear to use to steal the compositions of real pros, and compete against at a subsidized level. 

 The worse part? No amount of Internet comments or “print it & hang it!” hurray’s is going to pay back that Visa bill when it comes due. So the average bozo, stuck with all those bills and all that money spent for nothing, starts worrying about the hole he’s dug himself into. Which is where the selling of workshops and the offering of images on microstock sites, and elsewhere, comes from. Now it’s not fun anymore. It’s just one more tedious job he has to do, but of course the LOSER has to plaster on a smile and claim that he enjoys “teaching” workshops or whatever else he does to stop the tsunami of red ink. 

 And of course, since these turkeys have no business acumen of any sort, and aren’t paying all the bills a real business pays (like say, taxes or business licenses), they severely undercut the real businesses, offering images on microstock sites for 25 cents a download, or prints for $75 for a 20x30, or workshops for $100. 

 Is that what you want to be doing with your spare time? Running a pretend business that bleeds red ink? Cheating on your taxes because you don’t charge enough to run a real business? And worse of all, putting real businessmen out of work, due to your selfishness and addiction to meaningless comments & critiques?

3. What does photography mean to you? Is it a means of reflection and pleasure, or a source of addictive activity?
 Ansel may have spent months in the backcountry, looking for the perfect shot. He didn’t need to rush home from Yosemite to look for a wifi connection to “share” his latest and greatest. For many real photographers, enjoying their own work was enough for them. Selling the images was mainly a way to fund the continuation of their passion, not an end in itself, or a tool for bragging rights.
And yet the turkeys you see in national parks, lined up 10, 12 at a time at popular viewpoints, each thinking they’re really hot stuff, can’t live a day without a Internet connection to “share” what they think is their astute vision and their view of the world. They imagine themselves rugged individuals, explorers, and wilderness advocates. Their expensive websites promote these lies. All these losers constantly toot their own horns. 

 And yet the real photographers of old, those men & women who captured the scenes that grace coffee table books, were nothing like this. They could spend a week meditating and smoking their pipe at the side of a lake. No rush to get back home and post the images on some meaningless website. Instead, they could pen their thoughts slowly and precisely, unencumbered by worrying about workshops or photo tours, or ensuring the world thought they were the best in the world, or walking up to strangers and boasting about their “talent” and publications.
And photography should be the same for you. A source of peace & tranquility, a way to establish a connection with nature. This has nothing to do with finding wifi to post your stolen copy of Art Wolfe’s famous image so you can jerk off to “comments & critiques”, or that “epic” sunset you had to “share” with your loser buddies, or flogging your bogus workshops online because you were stupid enough to spend $10,000 on photography gear, and now the bill is due.

Conclusion:
 Think very carefully before stepping too far into the trap of photography. It can be a lot of fun with a small camera and a kit lens that helps you capture what you see, without being expensive and giving you ideas of “going pro”. If you are looking around for ideas on going pro, or buying marketing ebooks, or taking workshops, you are never going to be a professional photographer. You are never going to sell more than a few hundred in prints or a few hundred in images. You are going to waste valuable time and money, frittering it away in search of meaningless online praise and affirmation that isn’t worth the electrons used to display the characters. The truly talented don’t need all the bullshit out there, being sold to gullible morons with huge egos. The talented can create books with iphone camera images, and publish those images in magazines and newspapers. 

 And the worst part, in the end, isn’t just the financial damage you’re doing to your own wallet. It’s the damage you will do to real professional photographers, the ham & egg type that sell images to newspapers, magazines, and online venues, who use that money to feed their family and pay their bills. Why let your ego guide you to a destructive place where you use your money to destroy, instead of create?