To Fall Out of Love With Something

As humans, we fall out of love with things all the time - people, our favourite button-up shirts and most unfortunately our passions. It happens and it hurts, but it happens none-the-less.

Since I was a kid, I've basically tried every hobby that someone like me can do. I’ve fished, I’ve skateboarded, I’ve stared blankly at a wall. Nothing I had ever done before had felt anything like photography. Obviously I was very much into every hobby I’ve had, spending the time and money to try and work out if it gave me the identity I thought it would. A few things I’ve done did happen give me some sort of identity even if I was terrible at it.

I guess the people closest to me would say I definitely have an identity and that my current interests are shaping who I am today but I’m not ‘Joe the …”, I’m just ‘Joe”. I’m sure that from the outside looking in on my life I’m more than just ‘Joe’, even if I can’t see it or believe it. The issue is, I used to be ‘Joe the Photographer’. and the part that hurts is that for once I thought of myself as that too.

I had only been making photographs for a year or so consistently before I decided I wanted to study it at Uni. It was either Photography and I start a new life in Sheffield or I stay in my small town and wish I’d gone. I turned up to my interview with some 6x4s from Boots stuck to a piece of card. I had no idea what I was doing. They took a chance on me though, which I think I’ll forever be in debt to them for. Even though I only got half a first year, I’d go back tomorrow. I loved writing essays and questioning things I had no idea I’d understand before I left for Sheffield.I did projects I hated to ‘experiment’ but by the end of the 3 years I’d gone back to the exact same style I had the first day I used a film camera. I was good at something. I was good at something I could think about and do 24/7. I was good at something that gave me an identity. I finished ‘45 Minutes North’ as my final degree piece. It was all I did, thought and spoke about for near enough 6 months and it was everything to me. Imposter syndrome cropped up every now and again but there’s no way I could’ve lied to myself for that long about how much I loved it. All of it.

Then Uni finished. All I could think about was how I was going to make money from Photography as that’s surely the next step. I didn’t want my minimum wage retail job anymore, I wanted to be a Photographer. But what actually is the kind of Photography that makes you enough money to live? I quickly found out it wasn't the kind of Photography I wanted to do. I have so much respect for the likes of Wedding Photography and Studio Photography (I probably shouldn’t have gone to the pub instead of learning studio work but oh well) but it wasn’t me.

Photography stopped being fun and it started feeling like chore. Every image I made HAD to do good numbers on Instagram and that was a thought I’d have before I’d even pressed the shutter. The longer this went on the more I didn’t even want to pick my cameras up.I’d always said I wanted to be an Art Photographer and make books, so why was I trawling LinkedIn for any job that even remotely mentioned photography? Why did I let myself ruin my own biggest love?

That was 3 years ago. Granted then retail thing worked out and I now have a career in it but I’m not making Photographs anymore. I’m trying but it’s hard. My camera was glued to my hand 3 years ago and now it feels like a foreign object. Friends and family continuously ask if I’ve been practicing it lately because I know how much the loved to see me as ‘Joe the Photographer’ and how happy I was. When they ask now I rarely say yes. Sometimes I will because I’d taken maybe 4 or 5 shots that month but it still hurts to say no.

I’m not entirely sure what the point of this first post is. I sort of of hope that someone reading this gets what I’m on about, even if it’s not about Photography. I think I’m just trying to explain what it feels like to still be trying to cling on to a time of my life where I had something as special as Photography. This doesn’t mean I’m not trying every day to pick my cameras up but it’s difficult. Life’s hard at the moment and thinking about it all is almost helping. I’ve even used my camera to help deal with what’s going on. Maybe next month I’ll be writing about my rekindle love for it, just not this month.

I saw one of my old lecturers on an empty train a few years ago and I told him how out of love with it I was. He just simply asked me ‘How long do you have to have not made photographs for before you can’t call yourself a photographer?’ - The only right answer is ‘I’ll always be a photographer’