Happy Tuesday friends,
I hope your summer has been going well! The summer is flying by but I am fully satisfied that I am squeezing every ounce of sunshine out of the days as they go by. ;) My favorite thing about Summer is how long the evenings are. In the late fall and winter days golden hour is around 4:30 pm and the night is completely black by 5:30. What an amazing difference in the summer where images like this one are taken around 9:00 pm!
This is at Vallecito lake near Durango. My session was over and I stuck around for this picture as the view of the mountains across the lake was too glorious to leave just yet.
This year has been different for me in terms of portraiture. At the end of last year I felt utterly and completely spent. Burned out. Doing portrait work for me has been one of incredibly mixed feelings. It culminated in the symptoms of carpel tunnel that I began to developing at the beginning of the year. Working with people is a mixed blessing, like any job you get the chance to meet incredible souls, beautiful people who appreciate me and admire, support and love the work that I do and put into your session. And then you meet people who will try to take advantage of you, talk you down and be cruel just to get a better "deal". I've worked with people for mutual brand exposure - I photograph them and give them complimentary (i.e. free!) images and they in turn agree and sign a contract stating they will give bountiful credit to my work. These same people have taken the images and then turned around completely disregarded our agreement, failing to even tag me in the pictures being posted or credit me in any way. I learned the hard way to no longer show people all their images in a gallery for them to choose from after I found images screenshot and cropped with my watermark no longer present on it. "Stolen images" from the gallery so they wouldn't have to pay for the extras they wanted. I've slaved over galleries, including extras for clients, putting heart and soul into their session only to send it off and never hear anything back. To say that it's discouraging would be an understatement. It's difficult for me not to take these types of situations personal. Everything about my work is personal. I don't think people fully realize or maybe even care, how many hours go into their session and what the broken contracts, or stolen images actually mean or translate. As a stay at home Mom, I went into this fully hoping and believing I could make it work as a part time job to contribute to our family finances. I was so naive in thinking it would ever be a part time job! all of the behind the scenes part of running a business made this an easily 60+ hours a week job. I believe that when the symptoms of carpel tunnel hit it had a lot more to do with stress levels than it did physically. I took a complete step back not only from social media but my business. Interestingly, the intense pains in my hands vanished after a few months.
I'm at the point now where my passions are ever bubbling, overflowing. I love photography, I love being outdoors, meeting new people, being inspired by the amazing community around me. But I've had to draw a stark line boundary wise in my portrait work. I take a much smaller number of clients, usually only by referral from clients I love and respect. This was a hit to our finances and honestly I'll have to be looking for another source of income to keep the contribution the same. But it's been worth it in many other ways, peace of mind and soul. Taking that break gave me the opportunity to really step back and examine why I do what I do. Why do I love photography? How can I eliminate anything that is souring this creative process for me? What can I do to create boundaries so that creativity isn't squelched? And how can I make this into something profitable enough that it justifies the time spent in doing it?
Still finding the answers to these questions but moving back into what I love which is more outdoors and family time has been crucial to healing both physically and spiritually.
Time and time again I'm drawn back to my Flickr community. The life that is shared here, the stories that come with it, you fellow photographers who are doing what you love for the sole purpose of creating. I love you all to pieces. And the kind comments I receive here are a healing balm on my soul. So thank you - a huge thank if you've made it to the end of this abnormally longer epistle, and thank you for just being one of the voices on this page who support me in doing what I love and continue to be a home here on Flickr.
Much love always, Rachel
Loading contexts...
