PHOTOGRAPHY, LOVE IT OR HATE IT!

Now that I am back home in the UK, I'm starting to go through the 8,000
pictures shot over nearly three months, eight weeks in Australia, and four
weeks in Japan. As ever, it's a daunting task just to edit them, so I tend
to do what most freelancers do at these moments: have another cup of tea,
read a magazine, etc, anything but get on with it. But in the end I have to,
and this self discipline is the most important asset for anyone who's a
freelance, no matter what they do.
First I put them onto a lightbox, passing over each sheet of 36 exposures
very quickly. This gives me the overall impression and lets me see the big
picture. Then I go back over each sheet again, but slowly and looking for
the frames with selling impact. What is that? I wish I knew for sure, but
after a decade doing this I think I am beginning to understand what makes a
picture sell. But then again, sell where? There are so many markets out
there today. A look at the magazine racks in shops will tell you this, and
they are the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Today, with selling pictures
online, I have made sales into areas there is no way I would otherwise have
been able to access or even know about: Hungary, Spain, France, Korea, China
and even the USA are some since the start of 2004.
Sadly, because the Nixvue Vista 30GB portable hard drive I bought failed so
spectacularly, losing the 250 pictures I'd already downloaded and erased
from the CF cards, I won't be doing anything with those. Besides the time
spent taking the pictures (wangling my way into Japan Airlines Business
Class lounge at Osaka, shooting Brisbane at night), this is a real potential
loss of future income of course. So I only used the Fuji S2 Pro digital from
then on when shooting in difficult lighting conditions, at a winery in
Australia where they were harvesting grapes during the night with just
lights on the tractors for instance. But I can't get hung up about the loss,
it's just one of those things, but you do learn from mistakes. I now think
that the link between the digital camera and computer when out in the field
is the missing one, and my experience backs me up. One day the whole process
will be solid state, no moving bits that almost always go wrong, roll on...!
So now, when I get 'slidelagged' over the lightbox, I take a break and just
do something else, but that will most likely be sitting at a computer, and
yes, looking at more slides but on a screen.
In the end, like a lot in life, being a photographer means loving the good
bits and hating the boring ones. It has its ups and its downs. But hey, I
wouldn't swap it for anything else!
Happy Shooting!