In the know
Granted I’ve not being doing photography for a long time. I didn’t wake up with a camera in my hand, or decide to go and do a basic photography degree straight out of university. I, in my younger years of wisdom, spunk and attitude, decided that earning money, glorious money, was the way forward.I too was sucked into the world of investment banking, global law firms and large publishing houses.
Looking back, having that spunk-filled attitude to life wasn’t so wrong. I’ve become far more grounded when it comes to knowing how the real world works. The reason I’m mentioning this is Hin Chua’s utterly brilliant post entitled ‘The Insiders‘.
Hin talks about his move from Australia to the UK and not wanting to go down that route of freelance photographer (a.k.a the starving/crying game) in a big city.
I’ve often thought keeping a healthy balance between earning some money and taking images is important. Nothing kills creativity like not being able to pay rent or buy food.
What Hin did was photograph his workplace, work colleagues etc. He wasn’t alone and included some links to other photographers who have created utterly amazing work whilst doing jobs not normally associated with photography.This in itself is a fantastic idea. Everyone new to photography as a career should get a real job, one that pays a monthly salary on time and allows you to hone your skills.
Corey Arnold worked as a fisherman in Alaska (hello, balls of steel sir!), Juliana Beasley worked as a stripper and captured some scenes that many would never get to see, or actually admit to seeing them, if you know what I mean?
The best part about everyone featured in this post is that they are all keeping that balance between living and surviving and at the same time being highly creative.
I too have been documenting the world of hacking. It honestly has some of the most amazing characters I’ve ever known. You think IT nerds are intensive, you’ve seen nothing until you’ve been at some of the blackhat conferences.
All images © Juliana Beasley / Hin Chua
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
There are some dame good part-time photogs out there, look at magnum photog Larry Towell he works on his farm 9 months of the year and spends the rest working on his doco projects and yet he is regarded today as one of the finest photographers of our time!
More and more photographers are financing there projects with money from commercial jobs so does it really matter if that commercial job is a photo shoot or painting someone’s house or doing there taxes?