Passion vs work

Passion is energy. Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you ~ Oprah Winfrey

Over the past few years I've been working on understanding myself and the way I live my life. I've learned a lot about myself and my passions and one important discovery I've made is that photography and any kind of art must stay only as a hobby for me. I'm unable to split things into work images and fun things just for me. It all ends up as work.

• Then the way I think about art or photography changes 
•  My subjects change 
• How I approach a subject changes 
• The way I feel about the work changes and it sucks the fun right out of it for me. 
• I also hate self promoting stuff and managing sales, it all starts to feel like that's all that it's about and the art disappears into the distant background. 

I guess I'm trying to say that art for me has to be fun for my creative juices to flow. The stupid thing is that I knew this when I left school but it was pushed into the dark recesses of my mind and ignored. I never took art into higher study and I never attempted to turn it into a career because I knew it would become a chore and the fun would disappear. I could have taken my tech drawing classes to a higher level though. Drawing house plans and kitchen designs felt different from the art side of things. More controlled and detailed and it had to be accurate unlike art that is so much better when it is looser and flows and has your feelings and emotions in it. Maybe that's what separates it for me. Work is controlled and has constraints put on it from other people and art is free flowing and as soon as I add someone else's wants into an image or start to add a budget, promotion or any other business side effects it kills the free flow.

I wonder why it can take years of banging your head against the wall to finally learn something that you already knew from long ago? I ran my thoughts on this past my mother who is also trying to sell photographic images and she agreed with me. She told me that she hasn't taken any family photos this year at all when in the past she would have taken loads. Purely because her mind is now focused on photography as a business and the fun side has now gone. Perhaps it's a genetic thing with us?

Human nature says that when we do something there has to be something in it for us to want to continue it. A payoff if you like. When I take photos for fun I generally take more images of my family and friends and the beautiful places we have visited together. The images serve as reminders of great days and the payoff is high for me. The same happens when I paint or draw something for myself while I'm out somewhere or even at home. The art transports me back to that time and place, all the sights, sounds and smells come with it. However, when I take photos for work I'm concentrating more on technique, camera settings, best angles etc and when I look at those images those are the memories I have of that place. Memories of rushing to catch the light in the early morning, finding a great angle and then shooting and moving on before the light changes. It's a different process altogether from strolling around a lake with family on a beautiful day, laughing and enjoying everyone's company and capturing the magic moments freely as they arise.

I've had days in the past where I've gone on a family trip and when I've gotten home and looked back through the photos I've realized that I haven't taken any photos of my family while we were out. In fact some days I've realized that I've spent my day miles behind everyone else shooting things while everyone else has had fun without me! Where was the payoff on those days? The money earned from those images certainly wasn't worth the loss of interaction with my family. Perhaps part of the problem is that I don't like to take people pictures for work so if my mind is in work mode I don't shoot people including my family on a day out. Don't get me wrong, I do like to take pics of my family but I don't want to sell them so they are definitely not work.

So I was wondering how do you balance your passion vs your work? How do you switch off the work mode when you're with family or do you somehow manage to balance the two? I'd love to hear your ideas on this.

Enjoy life and travel light :)

A bright new future

Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful ~ William Morris

The image above was one of the break through moments I had recently while working in my pocket journal. I've been struggling for years with clutter and over the last couple of years I have really started to look at 'stuff ' in a different way. It took a long time though for me to realize that my stuff owned me more than I owned it. This may sound strange but I've found it to be true. My stuff rules my life. I have to pay for it when I buy it, then spend lots of time and/or money looking after it, and even then it's not finished with. I may have to pay someone to take it away, or spend time listing it to sell, or spend money dumping it or donating it. Then there is the inherited stuff that has the emotional ties to it, you can't just dump 'great whoevers' stuff can you? Not to mention wedding keepsakes, birthday presents and other gifts etc. Add being an artist into that mix and suddenly you have piles of art and craft stuff added to the house as well.  Don't get me wrong I'm not a hoarder like you see on tv with stuff piled to the ceiling and no room to walk around. We can see the floor in every room but the cupboards are full and there are lots of books, toys, art supplies etc stored in extra storage spaces around the house. The kitchen cupboards and drawers are full and I won't even mention the garage/workshop area.

I've had enough of clutter and I want to make some big changes starting from today. So from now on my blog is going to be a bit more of a mixture of topics. I hope you don't mind. I want this blog to be a record of my art learning and decluttering along with sharing some links to other interesting art and minimalism blogs and any tips and tricks I find along the way. I really enjoy these minimalism blogs Becoming Minimalist and Zen Habits and also Miss Minimalist and the art blogs that are listed here in the side bar in my favorite bloggers list. There are loads of other great blogs too but I haven't yet found an artist minimalist blog. I guess it is a hard niche to fill because you have this urge to declutter things but it can be hard not to collect things to add into your mixed media or other art works. I'm not sure if this will even work but I'm willing to give it a try. 

So I think with new beginnings should come a new blog title. Say goodbye to "My first artist's journal and blog" and say hello to "Simple Life, Simple Art"

Have a great week :)

Why I left microstock

For me, the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity 

~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

I've recently pulled all of my images from a microstock site and a few people have asked me why. I hope this helps to explain my motivation behind my move.

Although I have only recently returned to drawing and painting as a way to express my creativity, I had, for the past three years, been learning about photography as an art form and trying to find ways to improve. I guess if you suppress your creativity in one area it will always find another way to come out. 

I had always thought that photography was going to be my creative outlet after I read a book about Robert Capa. It totally got me hooked on photography.

I bought my first 35 mm film camera in 1986, around the same time I gave up my painting, and a month later bought my first film SLR. I happily used these and captured many pleasing images, mostly on slide film until my first child was born in 1999, where I realized that it was getting really expensive to take so many pictures of my son and when money was especially tight one year I sold all my gear. A few months later I bought my first compact digital camera and used it for taking mostly family photos. 

Fast forward the next few years and several camera changes and in February 2009 I heard of microstock photography and bought a Canon Rebel digital SLR and uploaded a few shots. Most were rejected as non-stock worthy, hardly surprising as I hadn't researched what microstock agencies wanted before I uploaded. I laugh about it now but at the time it was rather soul crushing ;) I uploaded images for about a year before I realized that I'd totally lost my enthusiasm for photography. It had stopped being fun and started to become a rather boring chore, I'd even stopped taking my camera to family occasions which is a shame because I can never go back to take those missed family moments again. I stopped uploading then and did a lot of soul searching before I could decide what to do next. 

My problem? 

What I wanted to shoot wasn't what was selling well in microstock and what was selling well, I didn't want to shoot. I'm not into shooting models brushing their teeth etc or hammers and things isolated on white backgrounds. It's just not me and I'm guessing a lot of people out there feel the same. I think it comes down to this, I don't want to shoot an advertising shot to sell a product, I prefer my shot to be the end product, a piece of art I guess. I prefer the art side of the business to the commercial side and microstock is more on the commercial side so it wasn't for me. My art shots sold through the micros but not as well as they sold elsewhere as a finished product. 

Which brings me to my blog post here today.  I felt I had come to a crossroads and needed to make a final decision on which way to turn. One way would mean continuing as I am, creating images I want to using a mix of photography and painting and finding a market that appreciates them as they are or the other path which would mean investing in lighting and better equipment and sinking a lot of money into a direction I really didn't feel comfortable in. I chose the first one, I like to follow my own path through life I guess. The best part is that my 13 year old son also wants to join me on this path. We share a Zazzle store together. The polar bear fishing on the top left of the following image, and also the "Play hard" hippo on the bag 2nd from bottom on the right, are his creations. 

This is a link to our store http://www.zazzle.com/wildmacnz

I hope that you will be able to understand my reasons for leaving the micros and perhaps if you also feel that you have reached some sort of crossroads in your own work, this may give you the courage to try something new, to make your own path going forward because we all have our own unique gifts to share and should be able to share them in a way that makes sense to us.

Have a great week :)