STRUGGLES OF BEING A PHOTOGRAPHER

The Struggle is Real

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Often times we get so comfortable with the thiñgs we know! We forget the things we think we don’t need! Like bringing that flash or extra battery on location 🙂

The things I do for one photo of flowers…

1. The perfect shot

We will do anything for the perfect shot. I mean anything. For example: I once hung off a ledge just for some shots of flowers. I nearly fell to the ground 15 feet below me just to get a shot of flowers. Was that stupid? Yes. Did I get the perfect shot? Absolutely.

2. Equipment is expensive

I spend half my day lusting after the lenses I can’t afford. Why? Because the cheapest wide-angle lens I can find is around $200 and I’m a broke 21-year-old woman. Everything is expensive and it simply sucks. 

3. Yes, we need all of our equipment.

The lights, the several different lenses for our camera, tripod, backdrops, and potential props… we need it all. Yes, it can add up to quite a lot, but if you want your child to look good in this photo, we need this stuff.

4. Photoshop can be a cruel mistress

Sometimes it crashes. Sometimes it’s so unbearably slow that you could get up, make yourself dinner, come back and the program would still be loading or stuck where it was when you left. Yet, if you want that perfect grungy effect to your photos, you learn to deal with it until get the chance to update the program.

5. Lighting

Lighting is our second cruel mistress. When the lighting isn’t right, it can ruin the entire picture. The picture can either turn out too grainy from too little lighting or overexposed, or even a mix of the two. Thus, we need to adjust the f=stop and ISO about 20,000 times so we get the lighting for our pictures just right. 

6. Deleting so many photos it makes your head spin

You’ve come back from what you thought was a successful photo shoot to upload the pictures to your computer. However, as you comb through today’s product, you find that more photos than not have turned out absolutely terrible. As you delete each awful photo you begin to wonder if you could keep some and play it of as “artistic abstract photography” or something along those lines so as to avoid facing the fact that you screwed up this time around and need to retake most of your set, with rage and exhaustion welling up inside you for every photo you get rid of. 

7. Memory Cards

You have it set up: the perfect shot. The lighting is just right, everything in frame is proportioned, and you’re ready to go. However, the minute you attempt to take the photo, a warning has popped up on the screen that reads, “memory card is full.” You spend the next five minutes or so deleting photo after photo off of your camera, some that were published and some you had saved for future projects, before you try again. 

8. Animals

There are days in which you will want to indulge in your inner national geographic photographer and take some pictures of the creatures in your backyard. Sometimes, you’re successful, and other times you get chased inside of the house by a group of irrationally angry robins out for blood. Attempt to get a picture of that rabbit at your own risk.

9. And finally, the Battery Death

You know it’s coming. Your camera’s battery is on its last legs. It could die at any time. You sit there and ponder whether it’s a good idea or not to take that series of photos you had been waiting all week to do before charging your battery. Deluding yourself into believing that your camera has the chance of surviving the trip, you decide to do so anyway; yet you’re surprised when right as you have the perfect shot, your battery dies. That’s it. Game over for you.