It's the 23rd of December and I'm looking back at 2025. An interesting year of big changes for me.

 

Partner and spouse for lo these past 40 years...

Here's to 40 more...

It's interesting to have spent the last nearly 40 years self-employed. And self-employed in a business as fraught with peril and incredibly unpredictable ups and downs as this one. This Summer I made the decision to stop working as a commercial photographer. I started telling long term clients how appreciative I have been for their support but letting them know that I would no longer be providing business photographs and video for them. Most took it in stride while a few tried to talk me out of it. I had mixed feelings about leaving a gig I'd done for so long; mostly because I was just starting to figure it all out.

Since the pandemic and then with the introduction of A.I. I'd seen a falling off of assignments and engagement. Part of it I can justifiably blame on external causes but for the most part I just lost the feeling of being engaged in the process. Not the process of actually making photographs but the process of making it into a profitably business. It's hard to explain to most people but working as an "artist" is different than working at a job only because one needs the money and one has found something to do at which they are both competent to do well in and, at the same time, they are well paid. There is such an emotional attachment to the work for photographers, illustrators and writers. And painters, muralists and poets. While everyone needs income to survive in the world it's rarely, if ever, the top consideration for people entering these kinds of occupations. 

In some ways my career is a good example of the curve experienced by the photo world over the last 40 years. When I entered the industry as an advertising photographer it was generally clear who owned the rights to photos (me) and a certain amount of our renumeration was from fees for clients re-using photos we'd created for new periods of time or in new media. There were ample barriers to entry in the late 1970s and up until the advent of widely adopted digital cameras. There was no "instant" review in the image making process. We made due with expensive Polaroid tests. Not always infallible... Film had to be processed and in some cases also printed. If the exposures or colors weren't right we had to reshoot entire projects. Film was expensive and demanded a certain level of technical skill to work effectively. And one depended on labs to get the film processed correctly. Sometimes they glitched...

Most professionals in my niches of the industry worked with large format and medium format cameras interchangeably. For most studio product work and for architectural photography we had to know how to use the tilts and swings on 4x5 inch view cameras. We mostly worked with those under dark clothes so we could see the upside down and backwards images on the dim ground glasses of the cameras we used. We had to load our individual sheet film holders in completely dark environments. We had to figure out exposure compensation for bellows extensions and we mostly kept a light meter on our belt or hanging off our tripods. Tripods which we used a lot of the time. Reciprocity failure was always on our minds as exposures went long...

For the first ten years I plied my trade in the commercial world our films of choice had ISOs like 64 and 100. Going with faster films meant more noise and less dynamic range. But when using ISO 64 film in a view camera with the lens set to f32 we were constantly trying  to get more and more light onto our subjects. That generally meant huge strobe (electronic flash) systems which were heavy and expensive. And if we worked on location with these tools we also required lots and lots of heavy duty extension cords to deliver power to our flash boxes. 

Color control and color precision always meant using hard filters or gel filters in the light path. There was no magic knob on the camera that we twisted to make the color exactly 3200K or 4800K or anything else. In fact, careful workers had a real investment in a wide array of filters that would allow a small change to color. Even as small as 2.5 CC. And one had to know when and how to get the most out of the filtering.

When I started there was no such thing as the World Wide Web. No social media. No online portfolios. We had several promotion options. First, we'd print up a physical portfolio of our work and call on the telephone to make appointments with art buyers, art directors, designers and corporation marketing communications teams. If we were lucky enough to get appointment in town we'd agree on a date and time and the photographer would drive to the potential client's office to actually show them the work. If the client we wanted to work for was located in another city we got them to agree to see our portfolios and then arranged to send them, via Federal Express, to the potential client's office. And we'd arrange (via our own Fedex accounts) to eat the charges to send the portfolio back to us. 

Since returns could be delayed or sometimes not happen at all we had duplicate printed portfolios we could send. Sometimes we had three portfolios out with delivery services. Biting our nails that we'd get one back before another big, potential client called to request a portfolio show. If a client called and requested a portfolio and they were located out of town they'd pay to have it shipped there and back... The best case scenario for a cash strapped photographer just starting out. 

Once we had good local jobs under our belts and a few "bites" from bigger clients from out of town we'd reach out to editorial clients and try to get our work in good magazines, like Texas Monthly or Inc. Magazine so we could get credit lines and by extension get more people interested in the kinds of work we offered. 

The two marketing venues besides portfolio showings were the sending out of big, oversized postcards that showcased our best work, and then, secondly, paid inclusion into promotional books of photography that were sent to thousands of art directors and art buyers around the country. When I could afford to do so I scraped together the $3,000 it cost to buy a double truck ad in one of the big source books. That investment paid off with clients from as far away as California and New York and also brought me to the attention of the person from Dallas who ended up repping my business for several years. 

Post cards. Paid ad placement in annual promotional books. Sending out portfolios. Splitting fees with reps. It was all expensive. Right down to paying for the use of mailing and contact lists from companies whose sole product was researching and producing lists of people working in the industries we needed to reach --- in order to find clients. Marketing budgets for our single person businesses often exceeded $50K per year. Right up until the time one could put up decent looking portfolios on bespoke websites. And one could not forget to follow up with each connection we made. 

We had to understand how to print. How to develop black and white film. How to light ---- well. We needed to understand the color separation process so we could provide film deliverables that had the right contrast ranges to look good in printed materials. Most print materials were limited to a four, or five stop dynamic range. Paper only goes so far...

Suffice it to say that a photographer who wanted to create a solid and enviable income stream over time had to be a technician, an artist, a marketer, financially competent, a good people person and someone who could blend all of these skills without dropping the balls. In some ways it was easier because the cost of investing into a business like that created a lot of barriers to entry that reduced the number of competitors we had back then. Train clients to love 4x5 color transparencies and then the guy who shows up with a 35mm camera has a hard time getting a foot in the door. 

I adapted the business to digital with the purchase of big, heavy, pricey Kodak cameras back at the turn of the century. While many people criticized me for an ever-changing buying pattern of ever new cameras during my time with digitals the reality is that I was on a constant and consistent search for a camera which might match or exceed the quality that film-based Hasselblad, Bronica and Mamiya cameras could all deliver as far back as the late 1980s. Try to convince yourself otherwise but early digital cameras were uniformly a step behind their large format film ancestors in image performance at least until the second generation of 24 megapixel full frame digital cameras arrived, post 2013. 

My other reservation, which kept me from just zeroing in on a system and marrying it forever, was my desire that a professionally preferred, commercially relevant top line camera should be able to deliver the operating performance of a 1990s Nikon F5. And it took an awfully long time to get there. And by "operating performance" I don't mean "picture quality", no, I'm talking about the in hand feel, the responsiveness of the AF, the speed of handling, the quality of the finders and more. The ability to have near flawless on camera flash performance. Physical reality. Not spec sheet glory.  My decisions to be promiscuous about buying new camera gear generally always paid off. It also helped to keep me interested that side of photography. It made our work more competitive. I don't agree with people who have the idea that finding one camera, one system and embracing it and its results for all time is a great or even good strategy. I think it's mostly a misguided coping strategy for the perceived chaos of modern times. 

Stuff changes. Tastes change. Keeping up is a good thing, not a chink in the armor. And there were ample tax advantages to purchasing gear as a small business...

Elitist amateurs constantly decry the recent emphasis by working photographers on "GEAR" and wish that the conversation around successful photography only rotated around the "ART" itself. What they don't understand is that with the embrace of digital many of the things we routinely handed over to ultra-qualified professional sub-contractors are now handled by overburdened working stiff photographers. Us. We depended on labs to soup our Kodachrome and E6. We rewarded the good labs with our loyalty and significant, repeating revenue. We learned to be collaborative with color separation houses. We counted on prop makers and retouchers. We shared the physical burdens with trained assistants. Better and better gear helped alleviate some of the burdens of commerce.

But as digital progressed and actual (after inflation adjusting) fees kept shrinking it fell to photographers to do more and more of the digital analogies to those film routines. We didn't need assistants to time Polaroids and re-load film backs. We couldn't justify having a lab do the kinds of bulk post processing our clients required. The burden of retouching fell to the original photo creators, etc. And in the middle of the whole shifting of the market the need for prints collapsed to near nothingness while the quality required for more and more screen based marketing images fell off a cliff. Smart phones, honestly, are good enough for a huge percentage of current photo uses. Really. 

Outside the studio the real world took its toll on every business since the roaring, late 1990s. The events of 9-11 paralyzed the creative economy for the better part of a full year. The economic collapse of 2008-2010 chewed through phalanx after phalanx of freelancers, agency employees and, of course all kinds of photographers. It was pretty much a blood bath which makes me wonder why so many people in 2012 and 2013 were excited about the prospect of becoming professional creative content workers....

The negative capper in my career arc, when it comes to business destruction, had to be the Covid Epidemic which destroyed, at least temporarily, a huge portion of the markets not only for creative pros but the food service industry, the hospitality industry and so much more. Right now one continuing result of the epidemic is the collapse of CRE (commercial real estate) caused by the rise of remote working and the lower and lower demand for consolidated and expensive office space. For us in the photo business the long term result is a reset of our industry at lower fee levels, with less engagement and higher and higher overall costs. Things like business insurance and equipment replacement costs have continued in a brisk, upward spiral. 

The industry now offers lower rewards for higher investment risks. Even though professional photography has always been a relatively risky adventure; as far as business goes. 

From the beginning of our careers we've personally had good advice about investing for retirement and rainy days. My business weathered all of the downturns I mentioned above. We continued to thrive. One piece of advice I always heard was that once your investment returns (dividends, gains, reinvested profits) outpace your earned income you can be pretty comfortable with the idea of retiring. Of exiting the marketplace once and for all.  It seems like pretty sound advice. I decided to take it.

I had two medical issues (skin cancers) that sidelined me, cumulatively, for a month this year. No swimming for those two week post surgical recovery periods!!! No real desire to show up for a work project with a big, white bandage on one side of my face. And no real desire to trade continuing work against more valuable swim, walk, family time. I've watched friends much younger than myself get sick and die this year. And it's always reminded me of just how much we put off by continuing to work when we don't have to. At 70 I think I hit my limit for how much routine office work and marketing I had the inspiration for. And how little I needed the $ rewards.

This year I made up my mind and marked a day on my calendar. I'm a binary thinker so the idea of continuing to take random jobs after that date is/was very much a non-starter. I'm either all in or all out. And now? I'm all out. That doesn't mean I tossed a dozen Leica cameras in the trash, washed my hands of photography and moved to playing pickle ball or shuffle board.

Nothing has changed other than the deletion of interfacing and working directly with clients. The money coming in is about the same but now I have more time to do things my way. To walk around with a camera and not take pictures if nothing captures my interest. To hop in the car and head out of town for days at a time when I get the urge to do so. The sense of temporal freedom is ... giddy. But I'm sure the feeling resolves and one gets used to having full agency over their time and attention without it feeling too novel. 

My partner/spouse is spending three days a week in another city helping to take care of her 95 year old mother who still lives in her own home, is still ambulatory and mostly mentally sound. That leaves me with additional space to work on personal projects, lunch with friends, coffee with people who are continual mentors for me in the basic process of life. And swimming. And writing.

At 70 years old I am still healthy, completely mobile and have no medical issues other than a scare of more skin issues (my cross to bear for spending a 70 year life swimming in the Texas sun) to hold me back. I know that, statistically, I'll start to run down. Perhaps joints will begin to complain. Energy levels will drop. Maladies that seem to accompany aging will make themselves right at home. But for now my idea is to enjoy being a photographer with my own agenda for as long and as happily as I can. 

The blog has been an important part of my past 16 years in the business. I started writing this blog to help my publisher sell more of the five books I wrote for them. In that regard it seems to have done well. After I got tired of helping to sell books on the web I re-imagined the blog as being a diary of daily commercial photography work and for a decade most of the writing was about projects I was in the middle of, projects I had just completed and projects I was planning for. Interwoven in there were thoughts about the art of photography, some writing about swimming and health, some reviews of various cameras that I liked, and occasional pokes at people who I thought were horribly misguided, mostly lazy, and sharing bad ideas about our chosen hobby --- photography. 

I had the idea last week that the blog is going to be re-imagined again as a repository of what I learn going forward; from 70 to 105, about being a photographer, permanently smitten by the thrill of finding and taking images which move me to hit that shutter button. My goal is to not ossify, not to become trapped into the gear, methods, styles etc. of the present. Not to be unwilling to continue to explore and change as I go forward. And to share these experiences with anyone who might want to read about them. 

I refuse to be trapped in endless servitude to the past.

The value to me is the continued value of having a diary of sorts to reference. A place to air ideas and get push back from other (respectful) points of view. And to be a contrarian for fun and my own personal satisfaction. But to move with intention into the future.

That's all I can think of right now. I'm currently sad about the holidays for only one reason: the pool is closed on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and on the 26th. There goes my favorite routine. Replaced by social duty and the continued belief in good cheer. 

A side goal during the holidays is to not gain  weight and not to too readily accept too much "holiday cheer." 

I hope you've enjoyed the first 6300+ blog posts. Buckle up for the next 6300.