Done and Dusted!

Tonight I officially became a professional photographer!

Having my first ever photo showing at a very cool local coffeehouse. Very excited to have finally accomplished this goal which I orginally set back about 4 years ago but which has been a dream for about 20 years.

I'm really happy with how the images looked in their matching black metal frames mostly white mats. Had a pretty good variety of images of what my friend Bob called my "coffeetable book travel of stuff and my 'I'm baring my soul' stuff" Think I had too many images but I really didn't know how much space I was going to have nor how many images would fit in that space. I'll know more tomorrow about which images they chose to hang first. Really, the important thing was taking the risk of putting myself out there for others to see and judge my work. That's what payments are after all, judging your work to see if it's worth exchanging their hard won income on. Because taking the risk and following through on the dream was the goal, it doesn't matter to me where they hang them, just that they hang them.

My next goal is to sell just 1 image to someone that doesn't know me. ;-) Although...if you know me and you still want to buy something, please feel free!

This was a much more time and money consuming project than I had anticipated at the outset. Definately need to buy my own mat cutting equipment for the next go round! Spent about 3x as much as I would have if I didn't dislike cutting my own mats so much that I'd rather pay through the nose than do it myself. Need to get over that or be skint (broke).

The number and intensity of emotions I experienced during this time has been quite surprising. All the books about "living the dream" make it sound like following your passion leads only to sheer bliss. Well...that's not exactly true. On the way to bliss, some times it leads to sheer terror. Will people laugh at me for thinking I'm any good at this? Will they just think "oh man, those suck"? Will they think I charged too much and I think too highly of myself? Is it merchandise or is it art? What if NONE of them sell? What if I'm really not that good at this after all? What if, what if, what if....

Well...what if? What if all that happens? Then what? The worse thing would be that I've spent an inordinate amount of time and money to create something that made me very happy. That's a good thing in and of itself so who cares? It's the process of creativity and the process of risk taking that matters here. Not the outcome of making money. I can make money at my "regular" occupation, this is about something else all together.

The thing I'm most proud of, the fact that I actually had everything completed and turned in to meet the deadline I'd arranged with the owners. Any of you that know me in "real life" know what a MAJOR accomplishment that was! ;-)

This has pretty much taken up all my time, energy and concentration for weeks and weeks and I'm happy with the effot, the process and the outcome and I am proud of myself for taking the risk and "baring my soul"

Now....on to the next thing.

If only I knew what that was....