This brings us to a con­clu­sion of this run of pho­tos here on the JeremiahTolbert.com blog. After a lot of con­sid­er­a­tion, I’ve decided to give up pur­su­ing pho­tog­ra­phy pro­fes­sion­ally for the time being.

As you may know, I’m unem­ployed and look­ing for work. When I was first laid off, I enter­tained the idea of try­ing to find a way to become a pro­fes­sional pho­tog­ra­pher instead of going back to web design. Surprisingly, there aren’t many “jobs” to be had as a pho­tog­ra­pher unless you like shoot­ing wed­dings (I don’t).

And the truth is, I’m nowhere near good enough, and the time it will take for me to become good enough is far longer than the time I have. So I’m giv­ing it up. I need to focus all of my efforts on things that might actu­ally make me money, and pho­tog­ra­phy has been noth­ing but a dis­ap­point­ment mon­e­tar­ily. My work just isn’t at the level it needs to be to sell any­thing but crappy stock.

I’m am so tired of spend­ing energy on things I am “sort of” good at. Not great, not really good, just kinda good. That’s me and every­thing I do. I’m not great at any­thing. To become great at some­thing, I need to give up some of the inter­est I have. So pho­tog­ra­phy is going back to being a per­sonal hobby and noth­ing more. I’ll be spend­ing all my time from now on writ­ing and design­ing and build­ing web­sites. Mostly design­ing and build­ing websites.

I might share a photo from time to time if I can be both­ered to take any, but don’t expect them reg­u­larly any­more. I can’t waste any more time on this with our sav­ings dwin­dling and my unem­ploy­ment clock slowly run­ning out. I have to be a respon­si­ble adult. Hard damned times we live in.

Once again, I am left wish­ing I was born 20 years earlier.

Tagged as: Arizona, HDR, Lower Antelope Canyon, Photography, sandstone, the great desert adventure of 2009