“If you love what you do, you won’t work a day in your life”.

I’m sure that most people are familiar with this old adage.

It’s an optimistic outlook on life and your career choice, and I can attest that I personally held on strongly to this belief prior to my pursuit of professional photography as a full time occupation.

I still think that the statement is true, but believe there are certain caveats. In the business of photography, it is your responsibility to offer a professional skill-set to a client. They hired you because they liked the way your images looked over your competitions. Therefore, there is always an element of control that you have over the product because it is to be developed in the realm of your vision and style. The only “issue” is that the actual subject matter is dictated by the client. While this is not a huge issue as you are still required to use your creativity to develop an idea, you don’t have total artistic control of the work at hand as it is being commissioned.

Now there are some instances where you do have complete artistic freedom to develop images from scratch, but those opportunities are few and far between. Perhaps that is why you hear about many professionals becoming burnt out because they had set out to create “art”, but then the realities of business restricted their sense of creativity.

That’s why I think it’s important for anyone who has turned a passion into a career to step back from their “work” once in a while and truly create something for themselves. I don’t get to go out and take many personal photographs for myself nowadays, simply due to scheduling - but any chance that I do get, I take it. I try to always have a camera with me and make sure I continue experimenting and creating things for my own enjoyment. It’s not something that is going to make me money, but it brings me happiness and fulfillment.

Balance.