Always ON
The other day I was sitting in my chair, laptop on my lap and an upload in my Lightroom CC ready for a session of selecting and editing. Next to me my iPad Mini balances on the arm, an old episode of the Flemish programme Liefde voor Muziek in which Suzanne and Freek sing Clouseau’s song Passie. I need that distraction beside me in order to concentrate on my passion.
I am always on. As a street photographer and as an entrepreneur, father, marketer, husband, friend, in no particular order. My head is like a motorcyclist crossing a motorway interchange at rush hour. Absorbing knowledge, developing ideas and daring to look two steps further while the business account dries up and your smile is wider than your face allows.
As a photographer you are never only a photographer. It is fine if you photograph as a hobby, because then you can get on with it in your free time. That is a given. If you make your hobby your work, then you are always working. The pressure is a good deal lower, mind. Note: only if you can hold on to the passion for photography and carry it with you in your camera bag.
If you photograph for a living, it is useful to have other hobbies. They may sit right next to each other. Watching films and analysing the light, or drawing with shadows. But closer together than that as well. As a portrait photographer you can perfectly well photograph landscapes for pleasure. A different beast, as the Americans say. My hobby is street photography and my work is giving street photography workshops. That comes very close indeed, but even that is allowed.
I am always on, but I will be the last to complain about it seriously. I look for a new route in a new city while in my head I am peering over my camera. In the distance a man comes along on a cargo bike and I decide to go panning with the workshop group. It starts to rain and it suddenly strikes me that with a slightly slower shutter speed the rain makes minuscule streaks against a dark background. I take a notebook out of my bag and quickly write something down, while with my other hand I touch the shutter button on my camera. Imagine if I missed something.
I am always on and honestly the only trouble it gives me is that I sometimes get tired of it myself. Physically. To bed early, with a small fear that the burnout is round the corner again. Which of course it is, so hitting the brake with good music or good conversations matters a great deal. Getting out of your own head for a moment. Going away for a few days makes less sense, because then I want to photograph anyway. Then I have to photograph anyway. A city not photographed does not fit in my book.
If you are always on, perhaps you should simply give in to it. Not that I know anything about the thinking behind that or have any solid scientific grounding for it. But I go to bed at night without brooding and fall asleep the moment I decide to close my eyes. I do not wake up at night to write ideas down, or pace a dimly lit living room. No glass of milk is ever drunk at night. I stay on until it runs out and I really have to sleep, and there is something comfortable about that too. And giving in to being on seems to help creativity along.
The photographer is a dreamer. You probably recognise it. You dream of an exhibition, a book, a prize won or some other point on the horizon. I think the dreamer is always on as well. The dreamer nurses frustration and hope. The dreamer steps over a failed photo, because he always wants to keep learning. The dreamer protects the photographer, and keeps his focus point on the horizon.
If you are always on, you had better drift off now and then.
This article first appeared in Focus Magazine (the best photography magazine in the Netherlands), for which I wrote a column in every issue in 2023 and 2024.