Giving Up

17 Jul Giving Up

I haven’t created much this year. In fact, I’ve created 11 images total this year. Well, I’ve released 11 finished images so I guess I’ve completed more than that. I started to get really discouraged. I thought that I have lost my creativity and that it was just time to be done with photography all together. If you’ve been following me then you know I always preach about how people should keep their head high and push through the tough times. It’s easy to say and hard to practice.

There have only been a few times where I said I was going to give up photography. The first time was probably within the first few months of me doing photography “professionally”. I got super upset that I wasn’t progressing like I wanted to and that no one was hiring me. Thing is, I never got into photography to be a general photographer. I never started this going into it thinking “I want to be a wedding photographer.” The second time was because of bullying. I moved to a new town and was trying to enter competitions when someone started to bully me and spread around that my work was plagiarized, etc. She even went as far as trying to contact super popular photographers and telling them I stole their images. When, I didn’t. It even got to a point that she tried to sue me. For absolute no reason. I’ve never met someone who would go so far out of their way to destroy me than this person. I was for sure going to quit photography then. The e-mails I was sent from her made me seriously doubt myself and if I had the guts to be in this industry.

The third time, which is the most recent. I’ve been wanting to do my own workshop for quite some time now. While I’m being sponsored by a few places to do workshops under their company and everything, I want to host my own. I was getting pretty discouraged because I always get messages, frequently, asking me to do workshops. When I finally do so, no one signs up. What is the point in asking me to do something and then you not go through with it when I finally say yes? I started to doubt myself again. Was my work even good enough? There are plenty of other people out there who can teach better than me, I’m sure of it. I also wasn’t doing much with my work like I mentioned at the beginning. My creativity was shut down.

Recently I started to get that small flame back. That fire never died, it just dimmed for a while. My heart and soul is bursting with ideas and creativity. I will again preach; Never give up! Some times the light does go down but you have to give yourself some time to recycle that energy. Who was I kidding? I’ve been a creative person since I was born, there is NO WAY I’d ever be able to give up something I’m so passionate about.

I always remind myself that I got into photography for other reasons than money and when I’m not making money I remind myself. While making money doing what you love is good, you really have to go back to your roots and ask yourself why you did what you did. For me, it was because I love to create. So, never give up – not matter what!