Pixel Withdrawl

I knew this week wasn't going to be fun when it began. Sadly enough its that time of year when we all have to take action on the worst five letter word ever created, TAXES, and to make matters worse its that time of the month when I have to deal with submitting invoices, burning DVD's to archive the images made in the past few weeks, dealing with copyright infringement issues, and filling orders for reprints. I haven't even touched my camera in six days now, and I'm going through withdrawal. I feel that I have become more of a business person than a photographer, but if I want to continue to do what I love, I have to make sacrifices for the greater good. If I get more clients which pay better, I'll have to shoot the stuff for money with less frequency and get to spend more time working on things that matter to me, and hopefully one day can only shoot the things I want and still make a living.

With all of that out of the way now, as I look back on the past few days the one word that has become the theme for this week is litigious. But I'll save that for the next post. I have come to the realization that the idealistic view I had of being a freelance photojournalist is quickly vanishing. Instead I find myself more closely looking at the reality of the situation, and the fact that I have become part photographer and part businessman, and its not a fun thing to realize.

While sitting in the waiting room at Wal-Mart while getting my oil changed the other day I came up with the breakdown of how I actually spend my time.

25% Taking Photos
10% Researching story ideas
10% Traveling from point A to point B to make said photos
35% Dealing with business issues, such as filing invoices, keeping up with taxes, keeping up to speed on legal issues such as copyright and contracts which can directly affect me, making sure all of my equipment (car, cameras, computers) are in proper working order, etc...
10% Working on self promotion, to increase the amount of assignments I get
05% Archiving (Burning DVDs), cataloguing, and keeping up with all of the images I shoot, so hopefully if I get something of importance, that can be sold later I'll be able to find it.
05% Saying to hell with being a freelancer and applying for staff positions

So now that I see freelance photojournalism isn't all I thought it was cracked up to be, why the hell am I still doing it? I don't even know the answer to that. Maybe one day I'll learn, but until then, time for me to go make some calls, about a story idea I've been kicking around in my head for the past six days.

Here goes nothing...

Its 3:22am, here in Columbia, S.C. and hopefully my first "blog" will actually work when I click the post button. It has taken me a while to become sold on the idea of "blogging" actually. I'll admit that I am a pretty private person, so the thought of journaling out my life for everyone to see didn't strike me as something I wanted to do, and it took me even longer to be sold on the idea that a blog can be journalistic in any way. After doing some thinking recently I came up with an answer though. The only thing that seperates individuals from publications is accountability. So with this forum I am going to hold myself accountable to standards of ethics, impartiality and accuracy that would be expected from a journalist at any major publication. I hope, that through this medium I can share my images, and stories to enlighten other phtographers on what I went through to make the photos, an inform everyone about the issues, causes, and most importantly the people that I photograph. This should be an interesting journey, that I'm looking forward to. So if at any point I begin to ramble incessently, or go off on a tangent please forgive me, I'll try to catch myself before I go too far. I really don't know how to end this, but I will just say thanks for reading, and hopefully I'll have more to say soon.

Cheers


"Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn't mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar." Edward R. Murrow