Nikon D200 85mm f/9 13s ISO 100

So the past few months have seen a few major changes both personally and professionally. The biggest one being my summer holiday to Sydney becoming extended indefinitely. I’m enjoying the weather and scenery far too much and this is meant to be the worst part of the year (though anyone who has seen me in hot climates may understand my morbid fear of the coming summer months).

One big downside of my move is that at present I am not permitted to be self employed due to my visa status. As a result I have actually been working for a living, I can’t say I’m enjoying the whole turning up to the office and doing a 9-5. I am looking into ways to change my visa to allow me to shoot professionally but as I shall discuss later I’m not in a huge rush to do so at the moment.

Part of being a professional photographer especially in the field that I have been in, events and corporate, is something I find deeply satisfying. I derive great enjoyment from seeing clients happy that their memories have been preserved and being able to share in their moments. There are certain boundaries inside which most of your work has to fall. There is this constant voice in the back of my head reminding me that I have to shoot “how the client will like” rather than feeling free to shoot the pictures I want.

I felt that I had started to lose the love of photography and I began to feel that I was plateauing. I wanted time to clense the pallette if you will, before trying to explore some new avenues of the art form. As a result I am going to take some time as an ameture (admittedly being prohibited from working also plays a factor in this decision) and spend some time on some personal projects and giving something back…

So here I am free from the “professional” tag for a while. What does this mean? Firstly it means I am going to be working on some personal projects, things which I have wanted to explore photographically for a while but have not had the time or moxie to do. Secondly I am free to shoot for nothing, so I am on the look out both for interesting shoots to be involved with (any models or bands who want free promo work drop me a line) and may well try to get involved with some charitable work too (again please contact me if you are a charitable group who require photographic coverage of your event). Finally I can grow as a photographer, there are many areas of photogrpahy whch interest me, but about which, quite frankly I know nothing (“fine art” photography springs instantly to mind), I now have the time and energy to study these other areas, take what I feel will be useful to me and hopefully push my pictures to a new level…

I will try to blog more often now as I finally have internet access at my house, I would love to write more but it is late and I have to be at the office in the morning (wow I never thought I would have to say that again)…