Why is it that I’m a professional photographer today, instead of a computer programmer, doctor, accountant or any one of a number of other professions? This question regularly pops up on photography forums and in magazine interviews with photographers and the answers often make interesting reading. However, until now, I had never really considered the question in any great detail in relation to myself.
While out walking this morning, I was thinking about this subject in some detail and thought it might make for an interesting article. What I wasn’t prepared for was how a memory from the past would surface and just how emotional I would feel in relating the tale…
Some of the answers I’ve seen to the question of “Why did you become a professional photographer” include:
- “I have a deep passion for photography…”
- “I love working with people…”
- “Seeing and capturing the image is exciting…”
- “I’m driven to be an artist…”
- “Photography allows me to express my inner me…”
- “I’m a failed computer programmer…”
Those are all great answers (with the exception of the last one, which was just to see if you’re paying attention), but they mostly have to do with the reasons for continuing to work as a professional photographer rather than the reason for becoming one in the first place.
Also, we could still be dedicated amateurs and yet give exactly the same answers to a slightly different and simpler version of the question, “why are you a photographer?”
So, I decided to think back to see what distant memories I could dredge up from the silt of my life to account for the reason why I’m in a profession that’s notoriously difficult to earn a living from. What I found was quite interesting and, for me, unexpected…
Firstly, unlike many famous professional photographers, I never consciously intended to become one. I entered the profession almost reluctantly in the year 2000 at the age of 38, after spending over 15 years tied to a desk as a computer programmer and project manager. I had developed an interest in underwater photography through my main hobby of SCUBA diving. A friend of mine enjoyed my photographs and persisted in pestering me about going professional. At the end of 1999, he finally convinced me to open an underwater photography center at one of his dive shops in Egypt (a whole different story).
But, of course, that isn’t WHY I’m a professional photographer now – it’s simply the HOW. To figure out the why of it, I had to dig a lot deeper to find the answer; all the way to 1969 in fact…
I was just 7 years old at the time and the world was a far different place back then, full of “magnets and miracles” as Pink Floyd might have put it. This was a time when Concorde was just learning to fly, and Neil Armstrong was about to make that small step on the moon. Anyone my age will understand when I say we were brought up in a world of technical optimism, together with the excitement of exploration & discovery – and, of course, the likes of “Thunderbirds” (that really doesn’t have anything to do with the story, but it does seem to exemplify the state of that era).
So, at 7 years old, my first camera came along – a Kodak Brownie 127 – at the time I thought I’d been given the keys to the world! Still, there was no open declaration of, “I’m going to grow up to be a professional photographer!” Instead, I definitely wanted to be an astronaut or, failing that, a fighter pilot. 40 years later, and I’m not really sure I’m ever going to make it as either one!
I loved that camera – my dad taught me how to load the film and also why it was a bad idea to remove the film in bright sunlight in order to see my photographs without first taking it to a lab! I guess my mind was 35 years in the future, thinking I could see my images right away.
The camera traveled everywhere with me. It went on family vacations to Europe and I wore that thin strap around my neck as proudly if it were one of Mark Spitz’s 1972 Gold Medals. My fondest memories include the regular weekend trips to our caravan in Snowdonia, with days spent in the mountains of Wales and on the beaches there. Even today, I can still recall the smell of the mountain air, the damp woods near the streams and the salty air of the beach.
Then, one damp and windy day in Wales – at Borth y Gest beach near Porthmadog to be precise, the camera took on a mind of its own and, like Tolkien’s One Ring, decided to take its leave of me by throwing itself into the ocean. I’m sure that was the case, because I can’t think of any sane or sensible reason why anyone would throw a perfectly good camera into the ocean deliberately. It was as though the ocean reached up and took it from me, but of course my parents didn’t really see it that way. Like Bilbo Baggins before me, I was somewhat distraught at the loss of my precious camera, and I’ve thought many times over the years about what happened to it, wondering if anyone ever found it. Maybe it’s still there, caught in a crevice or buried in the sand with its ruined treasure of my photographs from that fateful day.
Of course, other cameras eventually replaced it, but I could never quite fully recapture the thrill of that original Brownie. Although the actual camera was lost, it did leave behind something that’s mightily difficult to define in words. As hard as I try, I can’t find the right words for it. Maybe it lurks somewhere in my photographs, a subconscious desire to express some thought or concept in a medium other than speech. I don’t know for sure, but the seed of what I am now was probably planted firmly at the time that camera flew from my hand, to be claimed by the angry Atlantic…
Years went by, I studied my way through school, attended university and eventually became a computer programmer. I actually loved my job very much and enjoyed the challenge, but the seed planted so many years ago kept growing and eventually led me to accept the new challenge of becoming a photographer for a living, this time as an underwater photographer. Now that I think on it, was my subconscious mind trying in some small way to find what I had lost? Of course, finding the physical camera itself was not at all likely, but it does seem rather like a metaphysical journey, a metaphor for the search for what was lost that day in Wales.
But, the ocean definitely wasn’t finished with me and, apparently, it has a sense of humor too. To date, the cruel sea has robbed me of at least four cameras – from flooded camera housings, unexpected waves and, of course, that original incident in Wales. Now don’t get me wrong, I really love the ocean and everything in it, but I do wish it would quit taking my camera gear off me. I still can’t walk on a beach with a camera and feel totally safe…
On the other hand, being an underwater photographer might have simply been my unconscious attempt at taking the fight back to the water, in effect saying to the ocean, “Look! Here’s my camera, safe in its protective housing (most of the time at least) – and you can’t have it – it’s mine!”
It’s been some time since I was last in the water with a camera and I now photograph weddings, portraits and commercial subjects for a living, which I enjoy tremendously.
Today, I have to say I’m very happy in my role as a professional photographer. To be sure, at times it is a difficult profession to be in; it can be very hard to make a living at it, and I know I could earn easier money sitting at a desk writing computer programs. But, I’m content and happy in what I do.
As to why I became a professional photographer, it seems evident that I had little choice in the matter – and I say that with absolutely no sense of regret.
It’s simply what I was born to do. A slightly careless boy and the sound of wheeling seagulls on a windy beach in Wales sealed my fate one day. I do remember it was very cold at the time, but now I feel the true warmth of it in my love of what I do and I observe it in my clients’ eyes when they see their photographs for the first time…
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