The value of personal work for a pro

I cannot overstate the importance of continuing to pursue personal work for a working professional photographer. Here are a few simple reasons-

1. Keeps you fresh, engaged in areas that can be new, or some of the original reasons that you got interested in making images to begin with.
2. Shows to clients and people following what you do that you have some range beyond what you are known for.
3. It can open new doors of opportunity that were not there before.

In this economy, it is prudent to keep expenses low. This does not mean that you should stop doing personal work though. Often times it can be very low budget and fit in with other things going on in your life, like travel.

Recently, we decided to spend the stimulus tax package that we got from the last president and use it to go toward a New York trip. I had never been, so this was a great opportunity for me. I took my Nikon DSLR, I think it was the D300 from memory. Simple lenses (50 and 85mm). When sightseeing on top of the Empire State Building with the throngs of other tourists, I stopped and admired the Chrysler building and noticed a blimp in the distance. When it got closer, I lined the two up and made an exposure.

The resulting shot made for a great enlargement I printed for the wall of our apartment- and submitted for the Alt Pic Awards Photo Competition based in New York. I was pleased to find out that the shot won first place in the “Single Image” category.  This also results in the image being part of the Awards exhibition and booklet published alongside. It also included a Nikon performance series camera, Wacom Intuos4 Medium Pen Tablet, Moo Package 50 Business Cards, 20 Postcards and 100 Mini Cards, 1 year SmugMug Pro Premier Storage Package and a 1 year membership to Altpick.com.

I think the moral here is to continue to photograph for the love of it- sure it is a career and a great one at that. However the root word of Amateur is for love- let that be the major component of personal work. With time, care and attention- hopefully others will love it too!

Here is the shot – I had a great time exploring New York for the first time, I hope that you to enjoy exploring things that interest and engage you- with no other agenda other than self discovery…

This entry was posted on Friday, November 27th, 2009 at 6:49 am and is filed under Personal work and tagged with Alt Pic, New York. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.