Just Take Your Camera
I know it’s been a while but I hit my own creative slump recently. I spent 3 and a half years studying Photography for a BFA and I finally graduated in December 2022. Those years studying were so fun and it opened me up to so many different photography types and styles, to the point of trying most of them. When I graduated, our professors essentially told us that now that we are finished with school, we should be set up to immediately start using photography as a way to start up our own businesses, building on what we started in school. For myself, I built up my photography business on the hopes of shooting golf courses and country clubs. I had myself pretty well set up as well, shooting for around a full year at the Galveston Country Club in South Texas, and I shot everything I could at that course. I shot the Bar, Clubhouse, employees, the golf course, and even the groundskeepers and maintenance staff. I made a lot of very meaningful connections and I started trying to build on that as soon as I graduated. But alas, that didn’t happen.
After I graduated, I kept shooting, but the frequency became less and less until I almost just completely stopped. I began focusing more on my day to day, “normal” job and put my photography to the way side. Then I started to notice something as time went on. I started feeling like I was missing something every time I went somewhere. I realized pretty quickly, it was my camera. I know, I know, “but your phone has a camera!” And you wouldn’t be wrong. My personal opinion (PERSONAL OPINION) is that shooting with a phone isn’t meant for professional photography, its more of a last second, “Oh, thats cool”, piece of equipment to quickly whip out, take a quick, not well framed shot for the memory, and then move on with whatever your doing. But, at the same time that I realized it was my camera that was missing, I remembered something my professor for Black & White Photography said. “Just take your camera with you. It doesn’t hurt you and it costs nothing. For all that you know, you could end up with an image that makes you a millionaire.” I am well aware that this is a bit of an exaggeration, but he wasn’t wrong. Where is the harm in taking your camera with you?
So, that’s what I started doing.
Now, I am writing this while on vacation in Georgia, and we went all over the place out here. We even took a sunset river cruise one of our first nights here and what did I not take with me? My f*cking camera. Now, in my “defense”, the weather showed it was going to be terrible. Heavy cloud cover with a pretty high chance of rain. In other words, there was no expectation whatsoever that there was going to be a visible sunset. This, obviously, was not completely true.
The Forgotten Camera - Taken with an iPhone 13 Pro Max
As the iPhone 13 Pro Max image shows, there was in fact, a sunset. And the moment I saw that bright, beautiful orange start peaking out of the clouds, I knew I had messed up. This was just another example of a moment that I should have brought my camera. Maybe I didn’t need my full kit, even just the body and a simple 24-105mm f/4 would have worked just fine for this. So, rather than having a nice, 60 megapixel (Sony a7R IV) image that I could work, I now have an over auto-edited iPhone image; great for memory keeping, no so much for sales or printing.
If you’ve been in a slump like myself, or just having a tough time in general finding something worth while to shoot, just take your camera with you when you go somewhere. Even if its something small like a walk in your local park, around your neighborhood, or going into town to wander, just take it with you. You never know, maybe you’ll take a million dollar image!