This post is the first I write on my new status of not being a photographer anymore. At least, no longer a professional photographer, no longer trying to make my living out of it. Officially, out of that job. It’s been cooking the whole week. I think a short introduction is in order.
By the end of 2010, I was still struggling as a photographer to get a consistent flow of paid assignments. I still strongly feel the most important tool of any freelance photographer is a good networking, not really good photography. Magazine work, for example, would require a fast thinker that can provide top quality images in a very short notice and with very little time. In practice, that’s bullshit, it doesn’t happen. Usually you have photographers who get labelled as slow working ones, who produce high quality imagery, and many ones who can provide good enough photos in a short notice. And that’s key. Good enough. In short notice, without much time to think over the assignment, study the subject, create beforehand, it’s all down to improvisation and inspiration. And sometimes, a huge baggage of references to copy. The end result, as anything like that, is sometimes good, sometimes bad, and usually, just good enough.
The reality of the business is, takes a long time to build a proper business network. Takes a while to get a reliable flow of work that could keep you afloat. You need that to even dare try advertisement work. Because it also needs you to build a network of business contacts. And takes time to get in. And, like any trend or network based careers, one bad word at the one exact second with the one wrong person can destroy an opportunity. It’s dancing on eggs every single day. Every job is your last job. You did great, doesn’t mean you’ll be called again. You did badly, also doesn’t meant it’s the last time they’ll call you. Depends on many factors, one of them, how you are perceived. As I grow older, age urged me for a resolution. And at the same time, I feel photography as I learned, is being crushed by technical advances.
Also by 2010, I felt I needed to improve. Become better, in many aspects. I saw I lacked many of the knowledge that fellow photographers outside Brazil learned in college, but the Panamericana School of Arts is incredibly lacking on curriculum. You will, depending on the teacher, learn how to handle the camera. And by your own effort, could also develop your eye and sensitivity. But by all means, it’s shit compared to any real art school, and it’s not even a graduate school. It’s only good if you want to know how to handle the camera, and on a practical level, and that’s it. Something I didn’t know when I signed up. I also was looking for something fast and without fuzz and it was perfect. Seemed perfect. Only downside, you’ll leave it’s doors a craftsman of photography. Like a good craftsman, you’ll be able to yield your camera as a carpenter may yield a chisel, and create intricate tasteful carvings on the chair you’re also building. But you will not be formed an artist. There is very little depth to understand what you’re doing in any level past the emotional raw one.
As the world moves on, very few people want or will pay for a hand crafted chair with intricate handmade carvings. People want mass produced chairs that are cheap and you can sit on right away. People want to pick things from a shelve. Only the really good craftsmen still sell handcrafted chairs, and I knew I wasn’t one of them. I wasn’t the very best. And I wanted to become the very best. I started looking by my birthday in 2010, for a college curriculum that could add to what I was as a photographer.
But I don’t use pot. I don’t like drugs. Pure art schools in São Paulo are, sorry, mostly excuses for kids to go get high. And what’s the life of a visual artist? It’s depending on people thinking you’re hip and new and buy your art because it’s of good taste to have in your walls. It’s a trend-based market, and would not help solve my problem. I would just evade from one universe in which you need a dense networking work to be able to make money, into a bigger one, that included the first one, but on top of networking there was also trending. You can feast one day and starve the next. Then, I remembered Arnaldo Pappalardo, one of the very best photographers I know, is an architect. I started looking at the curriculum, and more and more it made sense that perhaps Architecture and Photography could be things that go hand in hand. I have also always loved architecture, and I have a new passion about green building and technology, since we have been wanting to build our first home around that envelope.
On the other hand technology will change photography as a business. The photographer will continue to exist as painters do today, and the commercial side of it will be absorbed as “Still Photography”, and become a portion of the tools of the trade of the Cinematographer. Or videomaker. Or any label you want to toss here for someone skilled and prepared and with know how to work a video camera. Which is also a good carpenter, who learned how to use powertools and more complex machines. Who may also someday, be subdued by technology, except when it comes to film as an artform.
I think the death of commercial photography will be the day magazines are no longer printed on paper. The requirements, from now on, will be more and more to, in the same commercial assignment, provide high quality stills from the printed media, and on the same mood and language, high quality professional videos for web, digital magazines and, why not, TV. The hardware is making it possible, the SLR is becoming a high end digital video camera. Limited, yes, but that’s only a matter of time. Photographers who don’t make the leap into full fledged filmmakers are walking to the tar pits. Those who do, are walking the path of ever constant investments in more expensive software, equipment, training, practice, time spent on each assignment, on an ever shrinking budget. The budget will shrink simply out of basic logic. Every leap in technology that made it more affordable filled the market with more people trying, and in consequence, more competition, some good, which lowered the overall price. Not every assignment requires masterpieces, they require “Good Enough” material. More and more the margins to stay ahead of the game are slimming. It’s not just that it’s hard, it’s that for now, the evolutionary curve in terms of cost x profit for the next 20 years seem really bleak, unless for those who can figure out some way of dodging it, which will be the next leap in business success in the field.
But I was still on the “find work not to starve” part of the market. And that’s never a good place to be at. By the end of 2010, I decided to give myself 2011 to become a full fledged professional photographer. 2011 would tell me if it would be worth to still pursue photography seriously as means of supporting myself. At the same time, I would prepare for the admission exams into architecture school, as by the time I had decided to study as an architect in 2010, it was too late to take the exams that year.
That is how 2011 was spent. Studying and looking for gigs as a photographer. And I nailed one, in a big food magazine. One past it’s prime, still trying to become an important one again, and after working there for a whole year, I can say, it never will again. The problems it carries are far from the press room and right in the heart of the publishing company. Everyone works in fear, because of the higher ranking professionals that pretty much decides everything with a thumbs up or down, and nothing gets done without their decision, and people there don’t manage to grasp a logic on the inner workings of that mastermind. So, evolution doesn’t take place, as everyone plays safe. And any place everyone plays safe, can be at best, a very mediocre place. Usually, it sucks and remains below average. My experience there in restaurants was, after saying I shot for them, hear “But aren’t they in complete decadence?” or a very shocked “is that magazine still running?”. I got worried when one reporter implicitly said something on the lines of “don’t expect to be paid frequently”. Yes, they still owe me money. I’m still working on getting that sorted over next week, but if I can’t, whatever, won’t die from it. I guess that’s 2011 in a short. I managed to get into a place I wanted and it was nothing like I hoped it would be. The fear of doing something wrong, because nobody knew what they wanted, references were confusing and mixed, lacking of a food stylist in important shoots, and so on, tossed my work in mediocrity as well. What I did was good on it’s best, so so on it’s worst, and I wasn’t happy or proud. The one photo I did as a form of “This is what I want, this is what I like, and screw what they think” they published crediting someone else. Oh well, so be it.
I did not manage to have both my feet solid and stand up as a professional photographer. I was not, by the end of 2011, someone who could support myself as a professional photographer or hope to achieve that someday. At the same time, the more I looked into architecture, the more I liked it. I took the admission exams and I made it. I didn’t feel I would, I was scared like hell, I was feeling I flunked, but I made it.Yes, I’m very afraid of starting over again aged 36. But I still fooled myself thinking I could work as a photographer during college. Peter Parker style. Peter tried. He never graduated in college and became a low-pay photographer for life. This week, I noticed if I tried the same, I would risk the same. I saw the curriculum. To work, I would need to skip classes to meet assignments, even if occasional. I would be screwing the future to stay faithful to the past. That didn’t make sense.
And, costs me around US$240 a month to keep my business running. Without taxes. That’s the base cost of hosting a photography site, and paying a charted accountant to take care of my business papers, which is a legal requirement. Over an year, that alone adds up to US$2880. Over the five years of college, US$14400. That, without making a penny. Just to keep it open, for any “what if” reason. That, without taking into consideration books, photoshoots, gear. The new 5DMk3 is coming out, and I would love it as an upgrade. What for?
Last year was the year I made the most as a photographer, but with late payments and interests, investments in software and new gear, gasoline and legal paperwork, plus the fixed cost of a charted accountant and hosting, I spent more than I made as a photographer.
It just doesn’t make sense. People closer to me know damn well what I can do with US$15K. And that’s just from cutting fixed costs that are simply useless if I’m not with a decent flow of work. A flow of work I have been trying to achieve for the last 4 years and failed. Yes, I’m closer and closer to making it, but right now, close is not good enough, and also, for how long?
Yesterday, I phoned my accountant asking him to bill me the costs to close down my company. With that move, I will be unable to send invoices. After all the HELL I had last year to have it fixed to be able to ship invoices and costs, I am closing it down. That was normal, I didn’t really feel it.
Today. Today I shut down my site. I closed my online portfolio. I almost cried. Taking my online portfolio down is when it dawned on me the size of the step I was taking. Those closer to me know very well the full dimension of this.
But now I will focus on architecture school, that’s where the future lies, I learned a lot on these years being screwed as a photographer, mistakes I do not plan to repeat on architecture, and I won’t stop being a photographer. But I will stop wasting time seeking it as a career. At least, for now. And closing down my portfolio was the last bridge to blow, not to keep dragging this ridiculous and unjustified cost around. As a friend suggested a while ago, it’s about time I stopped peeing in my own pockets.
One step away from the crossroad taken. Page turned.It’s done.
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