It's Hard Work

    One of the most frustrating aspects of trying to live as an artist is people devaluing your work. By devaluing I mean when people, organizations, and businesses either want to pay you next to nothing or with the promise of exposure. The amount of people who think that being a photographer ends with the taking of the photo is astounding. They give no thought to the decades of learning and mastering the art of seeing, editing, and printing, or the further skill of finding your own vision and syncing it to the camera. Besides the skill you also need equipment and space. Cameras, lenses, film, scanners, printers, paper, ink, lab fees and or chemicals, digital storage, back ups, print archives, and the hundreds of other little things that tie it all together. To add further insult to those of us who began this journey well before the smartphone was invented is the over saturation of photos due to the digital age and social media. I'm not sure if photography can ever be saved from the sea of shit that is today's internet.