The No Excuses Project: Photography as a career

There is no doubt in my mind that nature photography is a key part of who I want to be professionally but you wouldn’t always know it by my actions.   It’s something that has always delighted me from the first picture when my dad held the weight of the old Polaroid with my mom as the reluctant model.

Like anything artistic there’s no guarantee that hard work alone will have the desired results but it’s a certainty that doing nothing at all will not get you there either. I have tried some things that really haven’t panned out which I take as lessons steering me in the right direction but only excuses explain why  I’m not moving forward on the remainder. Specifically to take new pictures on a regular basis (weekly), compile photographs from my grand road trip into a book of some sort and to more actively participate in the market by submitting for artist calls of all sorts.

Here are just some of the excuses I know I’ve used in the last year:

• I don’t know what to do (or where to start) so I do nothing
• I must not be good enough (even though I’ve gotten plenty of positive feedback)
• I don’t have the right equipment (there’s this other lens… and I don’t have Adobe InDesign…)
• I’m not in the mood (here’s the kicker – mood is the primary distinction between a career and a hobby)
• It has never happened before (did you notice I’m not famous yet?)
• I can’t afford it (framing costs a lot)
• I have too many other projects (if I know it will take a long time to see a profit, I let more immediate things take precedence)

Working through the individual excuses over the last several months has let me recognize them in myself more clearly but hasn’t eradicated them entirely. I’ve lessened the impact of some and made some progress on this goal. But there’s still work to do!

Next week: what I plan to do to get this goal back on track

Technorati Tags: common excuses, crafting a creative life

Tags: common excuses, crafting a creative life