"...Why do they shoot for short pay.."

With apologies to Michael Burton, an Arizona rancher who wrote a wonderful cowboy song called Night Rider's Lament. I've stolen one of the lines and changed it to suit my purpose. It's a beautiful song about a cowboy who left the city life and a woman for who knows what reason. But he's wrangling cows and his city friends can't for the life of them understand why he does what he does. He explains it in the most loquacious of terms which I'll get to in just a while.

I've been thinking a lot lately about why photographers do what they do. Why do we crawl out of a warm bed or sleeping bag 3 or 4 hours before sunrise and stumble through the woods or drive significant distances at a high rate of speed to photograph a sunrise where the magic light may only last 3 or 4 minutes. Why do we sit shivering near the edge of a meadow in pre-dawn darkness waiting for the bull of the woods to grace us with his presence only to be disappointed a great deal of the time. Why do we stand knee deep in glacier fed streams to get just the right angle for our composition?

Some do it for the money. There are quite a few folks out there that make a living as photographers. Some live check to check and some are very successful. I don't have statistics to back it up but I'd guess that maybe 1% of 1% of all the photographers out there have gotten wealthy because of their craft. I spent a little less than 20 years making my living from photography though it mostly came from the periphery of the business, not from shooting. I did manage to make some money shooting weddings and portraits and I've sold some stock photos over the years but mostly I was working in photo labs or some such nonsense.

Some do it for the glory. There are photographers out there who publish scores of books. Some conduct workshops all over the world. Some have huge displays of their images in airports or restaurants and some even have their own tv shows. There's a lot to be said for the ego rush that comes from seeing your work displayed. Even more to be said for knowing that people are willing to pay to learn what you know. It's a rush that's hard to beat. I had one of my images displayed at the company where I work for a year and every time someone said "Bill, is that your photo hanging across from the elevators in building 1?" it made me warm and fuzzy all over.

I can't really pretend to know why my friends do what they do. Most of the photographers I associate with these days have "day" jobs in fields other than photography. We toil by day so we can get out on the weekends and create images. Some make some pretty good sales of their photos and with any luck, I'll be able to parley some of my images into cash to supplement my upcoming retirement. But that's not one of the main reasons I do what I do.

It's the rush...the fun...the therapy..the zone. Yeah, I said zone. When I go on a photo trip most of the time my family declines every invitation. They've been around me too long and been on too many excursions with me and they realize it's not usually fun or entertaining for them. When I'm seriously shooting, concentrating on creating images, I get into a "zone." I lose all my social skills and give little or no thought to the comfort or even the presence of the people around me. I might wait hours at a location for the light to get right. I might go back somewhere again and again at different times of the day to see how the light looks at different times. I don't care if my family has been sitting in the car for a long time and are tired and hungry and bored. When I'm working at my craft I'm there for me, not for them.

Sounds stressful, doesn't it? Well, I suppose it could be but amazingly enough, even though I'm zoned in to what I'm doing, photography is very theraputic for me. I come back from photo trips feeling very calm and peaceful even though I may have had limited sleep due to rolling out of bed for sunrise several days in a row. Despite sleep deprivation I feel tanned, rested, and ready for anything when I come back from a trip.

And then there's the rush. When I see a sunrise color the surface of a mountain lake. When I hear 6X6 bull elk bugle during the rut and see his frosty breath in the morning light. When I put a blank sheet of paper into a tray of chemicals and watch an image magically appear or even when I see a print come out of the ink jet printer. When I've been sitting in a hotel room for 36 hours waiting for the blizzard to stop and when it finally breaks and the sun comes out and gives me the best hour of light conditions I've ever seen. It's all about the rush and it's something non-photographers will never quite understand. And also something I can never truly explain. So I'll let Michael Burton's lyrics say it for me. (The correct lyrics this time)

"But they've never seen the Northern Lights...they've never seen a hawk on the wing. They've never seen spring hit the Great Divide..."

Stay in your warm bed for as long as you like. If you're looking for me I'll be out chasing sunrises like the one here of the Grand Tetons. See you out there.