I want to understand the fascination some people have with this theme. How did you started with it? Is it a Hobby or your Job? I am not a native speaker, still learning english, so sorry for mistakes.
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It’s an accessible way to make beautiful art. I can express myself creatively with it.
It’s just the right level of challenge to hold my interest. There’s always something new to learn and skills I can improve without it ever feeling overwhelming.
It’s a way to preserve memories of people and places.
It’s a motivating factor to get me to go out and do stuff and see things that I might not otherwise experience. Getting out of bed before dawn to shoot a sunrise. Traveling to some of the most beautiful places on the planet. Exploring the nooks and crannies of my own neighborhood in search of visually interesting things. Learning about history and the natural world.
And in the end I always have some cool pictures to look at.
My wife’s father is retired & loves his golf game to an extreme. I recently showed him some night sky photos I took when visiting his home. A little puzzled, he asked “what do you do with them?”…in a nice friendly manor I asked “what do you do with your golf game after it’s done?”
No criticism was intended. My question back was only to try and explain that just doing the activity was fun. Like reading, playing a game, watching a show it doesn’t have to be anything more then a pleasure doing it. If I record a great moment it’s even more satisfying to know (along with luck) I helped create the appeal of it with my skill set.
Great anecdote! Someone occasionally asks me what I plan on doing with my photography, meaning how do I plan on making money off of it. No one asked me that question about hiking when I was an avid backpacker. But I see hiking and photography as the same thing: they’re just activities that I enjoy and that enrich my life.
It’s super exciting for me when I am shooting bangers. Adrenaline rush when it all comes together.
I just like pretty pictures
For me it is a hobby I picked up 15+ years ago. I grew up with national geographic magazines in the house. I may not have read every issue I always loved how stunning their images were. The amazing people and places they showed. It was much different fairly boring small town and the mid sized city that we lived closed to.
Part of it was I wanted a hobby that I could explore more of the artistic side and photography felt very accessible to me. It’s also has a lot of different genres to explore is a great reason to travel more and it’s a hobby where I can always keep growing and learning.
The kinda of photos I want to take requires me to talk to ppl and I like that
I like the idea of being able to look at something that has already happened but still exists in some way. It becomes a reference for memory and how you look at a picture can change or evolve over time, too. Pictures taken ten years ago can take on a different meaning today. They can also be a bit mysterious and pose more questions than answers becoming a good thought exercise. Pictures can form their own version of reality depending on who is looking at them.
Money 😅
It’s a semi-professional hobby, I’d say. I don’t get paid, but I do concert photography and artists interviews for a music blog I created. I like to document events, and collect visual memories.
I started photography for “fun” at first without any intention to pursue a career or even developing a skill. I had got a film camera for my tenth birthday. I didn’t do much with it. Then I started taking more pictures when my mum bought a video digicam that could also take pictures. With my brother and I filmed and took pictures of about everything for fun on holidays mostly. Later, my stepdad gave me his old Olympus digicam when he upgraded to the DSLR tech. I kept on taking pictures to collect memories of my life (parties, holidays…). I decided to get a “better bridge camera” which had more megapixels but it was not really that better (some Fujifilm fine pix s2950 or whatever model it was).
I got more serious about it after I got my first DSLR in 2014 kind of out of luck… When I had just started working, I showed some pictures that I took for fun to a colleague… then he told another colleague I could take pictures. So, I was asked to take pictures at a colleague’s wedding after her photographer bailed on her a few days before the wedding. She ended up paying the camera I had bought for the occasion.
I love the beauty. I get to see both thru my own eyes and those of others.
I was working in a very tough industry working with some pretty traumatizing stuff. I use photography to inject joy and color directly into my brain to give me dopamine and chase away the demons lol
I stick with it because it genuinely gives me joy to show people how gorgeous they are and accentuate their natural features with just a little bit of lighting and knowledge on how to pose. People leave my sessions feeling good about themselves and keep getting compliments once they use my images.
I’ve enjoyed so many artistic and technical pursuits, from performance to coding, photography was a natural fit.
The memories and the beauty captured in a photo.
i was studying fine art and wanted to learn something that i could be employed at. although i love it for its artistic merits i chose to focus on it because it could pay the bills. this was in the 80’s. my first job was at the one hour photo in the mall and i have been working in photography for the past 40 years.
I like how it shows me perspective and helps me appreciate the moment.