I noticed some time ago that photography, which started for me as a hobby, rapidly lost it’s appeal when I began treating it as a business. This phenomenon is not unique to me, of course. Many photographers say that becoming a pro is a sure way to kill a perfectly fine hobby. It is not surprising either, since any job, no matter how fun it is, has some dreadful elements, buy definition of a job. These are things like deadlines and, more generally, the obligation to meet external expectations.
Lately, I’ve been listening to an audiobook called “Flow: living at the peak of your abilities” by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, which is a collection of audio recordings of his lectures or seminars. It is not to be confused with the earlier-released book called “Flow: the psychology of optimal performance“. This earlier book, by the way, is one of my all-time favourites in the non-fiction genre. In the book am listening to now, I’ve come across another plausible explanation of why photography loses its appeal when it becomes a business. According to the “flow” theory, from an amateur’s standpoint, photography is an autotelic pursuit. That is, the activity itself constitutes its own reward and meaning. An amateur photographer takes pictures simply because it’s fun to do. It is exciting to learn new techniques and play with new gear. Even the process of transitioning to becoming a pro is initially fun, because it presents new challenges to overcome and things to learn. However, professional photography immediately introduces an additional set of goals , namely, making money and increasing the efficiency of the workflow. These business-related goals conflict with the original, creative goals of the photographer. The conflict can be subtle. For example, as I post-process a particular image and decide to learn some technique that I haven’t tried before, I might have a thought on the back on my mind: “Is this the best use of my time at this time? My processing workflow is good enough. Maybe, it would be better to plow though the rest of the images in this photoshoot., rather than fiddling with this one picture.” This is precisely the flow-breaking point. Instead of being fully concentrating on the creative task, which is learning new technique and increasing the complexity of my activity, my attention becomes split between what I am doing right now and what I could have been doing instead. I also become self-conscious, in the sense of starting to consider how what I do affects my image as a photographer.
The good news is that, according to Csikszentmihalyi, it is totally in my power to maintain flow, or at least maximize the amount of time spent in the flow state. After all, the attention split between the conflicting objectives happens entirely in my head. The trick, for the lack of a better word, is to convince myself to take interest in what needs to be done and to apply mental energy in order to increase the complexity of the activity at hand. For example, if a business-related task requires attention, it would be wise to make that the focus of the activity and strive to become really good at it. Conversely, it helps to recognize that the necessary attribute of an autotelic activity is that it needs to be done without any expectation of an external reward or future utility. It is certainly easier said than done, at least for me personally, but it does help to be reminded that “wasting time” on fun things is, upon consideration, not wasteful at all. In fact, it is often the best possible thing I can do.
Related
