Annie sang it and she was right: The sun will come out tomorrow. On the one hand, after the grey months, there seems to be another (albeit cool) day of sunshine here and there. Street photographers and landscape photographers are eager.
But on the other hand, for me it also represents something else: We want to photograph, but why do we sometimes wait to do so? Because there is more opportunity tomorrow? Think with me for a moment.
Recently, I have been hearing more and more photographers around me - maybe I am attracting it - who are thinking about where they want to go with their photography. They are not just professional photographers, but rather good amateurs who are finding a creative outlet in photography.
Often this happens next to their jobs. Sometimes literally on the way to their jobs, when the fog hangs over the fields and a steeple in that fog seems to lift its finger. The demand from our subjects for our camera is high.
I want more with that photography
Certainly in photography clubs, photo walks and my street photography workshops I often hear people sigh. I want more with my photography. Later, when I am retired. Later, when I have more time. Later, when it might be too late.
Later is too slow a shutter speed, which makes your photo too blurry and makes you lose focus completely. Yes, I got into photography through burnout, but had to make considered decisions in that too.
I hear people who go into photography one day a week. One day out of 40 hours, that's 10 per cent less salary. That's a lot. That can be the difference, especially these days, between being able to buy a house or not. Just mentioning something.
Yes, but I want more with that photography
Sometimes an idea wakes me up at night. A new project, or a technical challenge where I have suddenly found a solution direction. There is something in that photography that like a magnet draws all my thoughts (besides my family, thankfully) to that one passion.
I think of cities I want to go to photograph, reflectors for my portrait photography, a workshop I finally need to attend. An idea for a column. Maybe I am manically obsessive. Maybe it could be a little less.
But I do know that there is no room for another job. A stable job, for a boss, gee, what a headaches care.
I sometimes wonder if that wouldn't make me happier. More peaceful. And maybe both, but it has become an impossibility. My manic obsession with photography means that by now I can't help but be a photographer.
Fortunately, it is not as bad as it seems, but there is a grain of truth in my argument above. Actually, I'm pretty down-to-earth about it. I don't want anything else.
Follow your passion, where you can
I also know photographers who want nothing more than to photograph, but with the number of bears on the road, they can now fill a zoo. Not Apenheul, but Berenheul. That's a tricky situation.
Of course, a possible family, other responsibilities, maybe the security of income make you not just burn your ships behind you. I get that, needless to say. A career switch isn't nothing.
Besides, I don't even want to push you in that direction. Everyone has their own reasons for staying in the safety of their current job. In recent years, after a huge growth in sole traders during Corona, the Netherlands has seen a downward trend in the number of sole traders, I read somewhere.
That includes most photographers.
Passion doesn't have to become a job
And then there is the sword of Damocles: if you make photography, your hobby, your profession, the passion disappears, the fun diminishes.
I hear that one often, and yet that too is just an assumption. Maybe it's an excuse, a built-in safety. "I got a job anyway, because I was losing the fun in photography." Now it's a hobby again and the fun is back.
Maybe this story is not about photography at all. Maybe it's life: we like to put off things that frighten us, right?
Harop thinking
My penny has already dropped and I no longer need to think out loud about it: I am a photographer. But for you, that thinking out loud might be useful. What happens if in x years you do have the time for photography? What will that mean?
Will you then, after all those years of work, start shooting pictures for your own photo album? Will you then pursue a second or third career with the security of retirement? Definitely an option.
The last thing I want is doom and gloom, but what if you don't make it to that retirement now, or that date set by yourself in good health or with the same passion for photography? What if you regret not starting earlier?
I regret not starting sooner. I started 20 years too late and feel rushed to keep up with the people I admire. Impossible work, and utterly irksome. But still.
What does photography mean to you?
The question I would like to ask you is: what does photography mean to you? Where does that photography come in? Are you working to be able to buy a new camera? Or is getting away on Saturdays with the photography club really enough fulfilment of your passion for you?
Personally, I find myself thinking about this subject a lot. What does photography mean to me, and what would happen if, unexpectedly, I were driven back into marketing?
What if my ever-worsening eyes (varifocal glasses, and reading keeps proving a challenge) cause this to no longer be him? For me, it's thinking the other way round. What if photography falls away?
No solution
Unfortunately, I don't have the solution. I can't choose for you whether you should make the step to professional photographer and maybe that step is not necessary at all. Maybe with less effort and risk, you can still give photography that role in your life that you feel it deserves. Maybe it already has it.
I do want to ask you, if you have ever thought "Tomorrow I will be a photographer", what is tomorrow? What are you missing now that you only want to do tomorrow? Just go for it. Even if you already book that photo trip to Iceland. Join a photography club. Take that course from Photofacts. Small dreams first. Today is your day.
"And the things in the room I say goodnight to them
Tonight we will sleep and tomorrow we will see"
No, Boudewijn (de Groot, ed.). Today we'll see. Tomorrow is just a vague concept....
This article previously appeared on Photofacts.co.uk (the largest photography platform in the Netherlands), for which I have written a column every month since 2025.