I’m an amateur photographer and getting better every day. Is it because I’m satisfied with making ‘amateurish’ looking photographs? I hope not. The word ‘Amateur’ comes from the Latin ‘amare’, meaning ‘to love’. I do what I do because I love doing it.
Let’s contrast this with a professional. Oxford languages says this about a professional: “a person engaged in a specified activity, especially a sport or branch of the performing arts, as a main paid occupation …”. Of course most of us wouldn’t consider ourselves professionals because we don’t get paid, right? But are we trying to get paid with validation on Social Media? I don’t want to suggest that validation is meaningless, we all need validation to some degree. But why do you make photographs?
I read an article the other day, “Talented Photographer That ‘Nobody Knows’ is Ready to Quit“. At one level I thought ‘yes, quit compromising what you love in order to make it a career’. But as I read further I was sad to read that the photographer wants to quit photography all together. There’s no doubt that we’d all like to get paid to do what we love, but the challenge is to keep doing what we love once we start getting paid instead of compromising what we love in order to get paid. Read that again, slowly!
I have been making photographs for 45 years now and I went through this very cycle a couple of years ago, I would tell myself ‘why bother, the photographs I make are certainly no better than what I see on (fill in social media platform of choice). It was discouraging. But I finally realized, I was expecting to get ‘paid’, and I started to hate what I did because I didn’t want to make what I thought were necessary compromises in order to get ‘paid’. Now, after following and reading more of the likes of Alister Benn and Guy Tal, I am a much happier photographer. And by the way, I’m finally getting paid. Not in dollars or even likes, but paid in the enjoyment of the activity itself.
“Photograph because you love doing it, because you absolutely have to do it, because the chief reward is going to be the process of doing it. Other rewards – recognition, financial remuneration – come to so few and are so fleeting…Take photography on as a passion, not a career.” – Alex Webb
So I would challenge you, whether you are an artist a writer or play sports, make being an amateur your goal. You might just be surprised to find it rewarding all by itself.