Pursuing Photography Passion

Work Life and Passion

It is always challenging to balance between work life and the passion. In most cases, the commitment one has towards work may surpass the urge of pursuing one’s passion. However, when the passion becomes big enough, one has to fix it within the busy schedule. Most of artists such as Alberto Sanchez and Alison Rossiter must have faced almost similar challenges while working on their passion as far as photography is concerned. While some of the artists would work on galleries for fun, most of them made it their career as they worked on exceptional collections. I equally admire a similar course of life where one develops a career out of passion, instead of growing it while being employed. Perhaps, it is always a challenge to have ones passion manifest while working. Based on this, I will be reflecting on my work as a photographer, the progress I made while growing my passion, challenges I have gone through while trying to balance between work life and my passion, and how the challenge eventually became the source of my ideas.

My passion has always been photography and I would like to become one of the best photographers in the world. This has made me to consider myself a documentary photographer and I keep trying to make my gallery look better. Some of the works I have developed include the typology photography and expired photography. I also work in retail for my upkeep because photography does not really make one to have a better income. However, I still find it a big challenge on my side to balance the two sides of life. At some point, I feel overburdened by the experience of a night worker and night shifts, which equally ruin the thinking ability of a person. The key concern of night workers and night shifts is drawn in this subject based on the fundamental analytical reason that looks beyond the strict schedule and how one can manage to build the passion amid the challenge.

Concerning typology photography, I am still convinced that Hilla and Bernd Becher must have been creative in steering industrial architecture (Nicholson 2018). From the efforts of Bernd and Hilla Becher, I came to realize that the modern era demands that photography should be classified due to the emergence of sequences and images, which are said to shape people’s visual consciousness. Perhaps, I can describe my toddler strides to documentary photography as being inspired by Hilla and Bernd Becher (Schroeder 2017). While leading the couple life, they still managed to work on an idea that has attracted the interest of many people around the world. Most of their photos could not really be analysed to find meaning. However, I got inspired by Alberto Sanchez, one of the most renowned photographers, who focused more on exploring the landscapes that unlocked an unorthodox use of the traditional techniques as well as materials (Sanchez 2018). His pursuit of photography aimed at developing a symbiosis between an imagined scenario and a photographic document. He therefore drew his inspiration from symbolism and abstract landscape, which became also a challenge to the viewers. Perhaps, he must have been doing other things that earned him a living before delving into photographer.

I found Sanchez’s work almost similar to mine. While he focused more on the landscapes especially from the urban life before painting in the pictures, I simply made use of the photos from my workplace to paint pictures from the products that people use on daily life. I found the process to be quite interesting as I gradually pursued documentary photography. I equally thought that the Walid Raad project would even make my work more interesting. What interested me most in the Walid Raad Project is the fact it was an archive photography taken in Lebanon and it largely reflected the socioeconomic as well as military policies believed to have shaped the Middle East. The Atlas Group further took part in the International Exhibitions such as Whitney Biennial 2002 and Documenta 11 (Nakas 2006). I have to include this in my gallery because it serves as a reminder to my course of work, which is relying on other galleries for ideas. I feel like I am depending on other people’s work than working on mine. This is the time I started thinking of using the products around me to develop a gallery. Through the inspiration by the Walid Raad project, I learned that pictures can as well be printed in the Hhenemuhle German Etching. The printing entails a mixed make up of different products that would easily be obtained from the shops (Nakas 2006). Some of the products include men care, skincare, makeup and even shampoo. The art would come out perfectly when a retractable knife is used in cutting the pictures. Perhaps, the design challenged me further to put more efforts in my photos for the purpose of making them look better. This last mile of the Raad project prompted me to work on my final exhibition.

I began creating a documentary for my workplace. This could only be made possible through taking photos and trying to join them with the central purpose of constructing an idea from them. In the course of my struggles, the first attempt never came out successful. This must have been due to the blurred images that came out of the small point as well as shoot film camera. I never wanted to pursue similar procedures after knowing the tormenting outcome. In addition, I must have captured most of the photos hurriedly, which made it hard for me to get the right quality of the pictures. These are some of the challenges that I faced while trying to become a documentary photographer. I further realized that lack of time must have contributed to the first failed attempt. This comes along my full time night work, which made me feel like my job was gradually consuming my passion without notice. In any of my off days, I failed to even build something constructive as I spent time sleeping. While looking at the history, I noticed that night shift workers could not do anything constructive in their lives apart from their own jobs.

Most of the sailors, the innkeepers, soldiers, and even bakers would stay awake the entire night as the entire world went asleep. I learned that industrial revolution came with its own repercussions as some of the workers are being engaged over the night shift. Such changes came along with rick factors that can be linked to health complications (Peplonska et al. 2015). Based on the study of the occupational as well as environmental medicine, it would be noticed that fatigue, obesity, anxiety, insomnia, cardiovascular disease, and depression could directly be associated to the shift workers. Notably, the mental effects are rampant due to exhaustion and lack of enough time for resting. I understood that I might encounter one of the complications and therefore, I designed means of realising anger through my pictures. Same way to Sanchez and Rossiter, I preferred using what is around me rather than soliciting materials from different areas (Ware 2018). I took advantage of my workplace and I would always tale a few photos, which I would introduce in my documentary. I found the new means and effective way of getting relief from a busy day that would come with insignificant outcomes. Additionally, I got this idea from Lizzie Sadin who explored trafficking. She could document the photos reflecting the situation and stories attached to women. The photos are put in frames making them to look neat and attractive.

Apart from all the learning points, I realized working at night would not be that good and not that bad. Perhaps, the attitude that one carries along matters most in some cases. It is hard to ignore that working at night makes one to be weak and inactive during the day. Perhaps, I came to learn that people working at night are more withdrawn and have less time to freshen up and relax at the same time. Sometimes, I would think that I could easily compensate the sleep with having a nap during the day. . I personally experienced episodes of stress and would hardly manage most of my activities. More neurological problems are likely to emanate from long working hours as well as disruption of the biological processes attached to circadian rhythms. Sometimes, I feared such repercussions could befall my health status. However, I opted to work more on my passion and observe my progress as well. As I collected ideas from the retail, I desired to work on a better camera by using the delivery boxes, lipsticks and a shampoo bottle as I tried to put them in different shelves. I must have been driven with working on my own projects that would steer my photographing career. I wanted to print bigger images and paint them on a live show. This was a possible dream and an idea that originated from the retail shop I worked overnight.

To sum up, the rift between passion and work life is always wide and it is quite difficult to bridge it. In the discussion, I managed to touch on key areas of my work whose progress was largely impeded by my commitment to the job I was doing in a retail outlet. Despite the challenges, I managed to go through what other artists did in history and tried to work from their ideas. The first area of my work included typology photography while the second area included the expired photographic papers. All the two areas have given me room to work on simple ideas extracted from the immediate environment. I later pursued my passion my collecting ideas from the retail as I tried to develop a pinhole camera that could take larger objects. My future research would not focus more photography but pay more attention to night workers and nights with regards to challenges and how one can run a parallel schedule without encountering challenges.

References

Nicholson, P.J., 2018. Bernd and Hilla Becher, Winding Towers, Germany, France, Britain, 1988. Occupational Medicine, 68(7), pp.428-430.

Duttlinger, C. and Horstkotte, S., 2017. Weimar Photography in Context Typology, Sequentiality, Narrativity. Monatshefte, 109(2), pp.181-186.

Kędra, J., 2016. Enhancing visual literacy through interpretation of photo-genres: toward a genre typology of journalistic photographs. Journal of Media Practice, 17(1), pp.28-47.

Schroeder, J.E., 2017. Corporate branding in perspective: a typology. European Journal of Marketing, 51(9/10), pp.1522-1529.

Heckert, V., 2015. Light, paper, process: reinventing photography. Getty Publications.

Ware, K., 2018. Camera-Less: Photographic Fidelity (and Infidelity). In The Focal Press Companion to the Constructed Image in Contemporary Photography (pp. 230-269). Routledge.

Peplonska, B., Bukowska, A. and Sobala, W., 2015. Association of rotating night shift work with BMI and abdominal obesity among nurses and midwives. PloS one, 10(7), p.e0133761.