For a while now, I have been struggling to find where I belong in this city, where I want to go with my photography, and what I want to do with my life. It seems to be the theme of all of my 20-something friends right now. We’re all reaching that point where the honeymoon of post-college life is over and we’re finding out the real world isn’t quite as easy to navigate as we thought. Even if we knew it would be difficult, knowing and experience are two different things. While I think this can be a common experience for a lot of people, as an INFP (my Myers-Briggs personality type), I’m much more of an idealist. When it comes to my photography, I have a very pure ideal for what I want to do. And yet, very rarely does my ideal match up with the real world, day to day demands of paying rent, getting out of debt, and putting food on my (non-existant) table.

So far I’ve managed to separate my ideal and the real. Since a few months ago, I decided to start doing my own shoots entirely for myself, and they were the most fulfilling shoots I’ve ever done. But to pay the rent I’ve had to work full time at a grocery store, work that is entirely unfulfilling to me. Balance has allowed me to keep my sanity the past year, but I’ve begun to see how short term this balancing act has to be before I lose it. I can’t work at a grocery store forever, no matter how awesome of a grocery store job it is. My idealism won’t allow it. And yet my recent foray into personal portrait shoots solely as a creation of art has ruined commercial portrait shoots for money in my mind. It’s not that I don’t want to do any at all, but doing the amount I’d need to do to try and make a living off of them, I would certainly burn out quickly, compromising my ideals to the point that I wouldn’t even want to do my own shoots anymore. And that’s the last place I ever want to be. So if I know that much, where do I go from here? After a lot of thinking, I feel I’ve come to what might be the best solution.

Weddings. I’ve done a few weddings in the past, but I told myself I’d never be a wedding photographer. So much stress, pressure, and I always felt like all wedding photos pretty much looked the same. But I realize now that weddings have an aspect that I love about photography. It’s not about trying to “sell” the person you’re photographing, as it is with bands or fashion. It’s documentary, but with an artistic, classical portrait twist. Wedding photos don’t try and present people as something else other than what they are at that moment. Yet, unlike straight up documentary photo journalism, you have those shots where you get to direct the person, shape the shot into your artistic vision, and present a view and feel of the person through your own eyes. My idealist nature loves that about wedding photography. And yet, the realistic demands of life can be met too. Weddings have a bigger “bang”. A single wedding shoot pays more than a standard portrait shoot because it’s like several shoots all packed into one. Because of this, I can do fewer overall shoots spaced out and still have enough free time that I don’t get burned out on all photography, and I still have time to do my own portrait shoots without worrying about getting money involved.

Of course, this is all easier said than done. It will take a lot of work to get to the point where I’m getting enough wedding shoots to quit my normal job. But this feels right. So I have to at least try. I’ve already completed the first step of creating a standard pricing and package list for any potential clients. Marketing is something I feel like I’ve never been good at, but I’m hoping to learn. I’d like to start building a more current wedding portfolio since it’s been almost a year since my last wedding. I’ve got a wedding in July I’ll be shooting, and possibly one lined up for September. But I’m hoping to find some more ways of building my portfolio like second shooting. So if any of you photographers out there are looking for a second shooter, please contact me. For anyone else, if you or someone you know were recently engaged and might be interested in me shooting your wedding, please feel free to contact me and I can discuss with you more about what I can offer.