Is Passion Important For Photography?

What makes you get up and out with your camera?

Do you have a passion for photography? Think about what you do now, as a hobby or for a living...are you passionate about it? Is it a passion? Do you wake up in the morning feeling ready to get stuck into your work? Do you go to bed thinking about it?

This is how I feel about photography

A couple of months ago I got up at 5.30am. Drove up a very bad road in the freezing cold. Stood next to my camera on a tripod in the freezing cold waiting for the sun to rise. Did I say in the freezing cold? We actually get snow in Southern Spain you know!

I didn’t have a clue as to whether it would cloud over or even if it would be a nice day! I simply stood there with the camera set up and gradually watched it get lighter and lighter. In fact, if I am honest, I didn’t even care if it was a good sunrise. Just the fact that it might be was good enough.

Fortunately, as the sun rose, it was one of the most beautiful skies I has seen since I moved to Spain in 1998. Not just because of the sun, but because of the silence, the chill and the stillness of everything. The usually busy streets near Marbella were dead quiet. No traffic and no noise.

I shot so many photos as the sun rose that you could have spliced them together and made a movie! In fact I think I just might. Time lapse of a Spanish sunrise! One of my favourites was this one…

If anyone is listening, I will tell you a bit about my history with photography and where my passion comes from.

Apart from having a camera in my "Spy Kit" at about 10 years old, I think my earliest memories of having a passion for photography was when my Dad came home with a new Olympus OM-1. I was just 12 or 13 and my brother and I fell in love with it.

Not too long later, I enrolled in photography as a 3rd year topic at school. In all honesty, it was that or Religious Education. BAM! That was it, I was hooked after the first lesson. The teacher handed around his Praktica SLR and I (kind of) showed off a little as I probably knew SLRs better than my teacher.

I remember going on a light railway trip to the South of England where most of the other kids were just messing about. However, there was me clicking away while they were having a ball. I think they mostly took the photography class as an "easy" option.

I left school 4 years later and went to business college. Working as an apprentice with a local photographer for a year, I went to college just one day a week. At weekends I would alternate between helping at weddings and working in a local camera shop. I was in geeky heaven and the passion just grew and grew!

Then what?

After another 3 years at business college, I moved to London so the photography kind of took a back seat. However, the passion never died (4 single guys living in London?). Inevitably, I got the bug again and bought the Canon EOS 5 with eye-controlled focus (great!) and an array of lenses.

With my brother, we started photographing small villages for postcards. One bride-to-be saw one with our name on and called us. From that wedding we booked a few more. Then a few more and…you get the picture. We also got something a bit special from that wedding. A few years later my brother moved to Africa to work for the WWF (world wildlife fund). I took up skydiving!!! A passion for skydiving?