Tomorrow I’ll Be a Photographer

Wednesday 5 March 2025, 15:15 by Michiel Heijmans | 2,301 views | 16 comments

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

Annie sang it already and she was right: The sun will come out tomorrow. On the one hand, after the grey months, the sun seems to be appearing here and there again, albeit on a cool day. Street photographers and landscape photographers are eager to get started.

But on the other hand, it also means something else to me: We want to take photographs, but why do we sometimes wait? Because there will be more opportunity tomorrow? Think along with me.

Lately, I have been hearing more and more photographers around me, perhaps I attract them, thinking about where they want to go with their photography. They are not just professional photographers, but also good amateurs who find a creative outlet in photography.

Often, this happens alongside their job. Sometimes literally on the way to their job, when the mist hangs over the fields and a church tower in that mist seems to raise its finger. The demand from our subjects for our camera is great.

I want to do more with that photography

Especially in the photography clubs, photo walks and my street photography workshops, I often hear people sighing about it. I want to do more with my photography. Later, when I retire. Later, when I have more time. Later, when it may be too late.

Later is a shutter speed that is too slow, making your photo too blurry and causing you to lose focus completely. Yes, I got into photography because of burnout, but I also had to make well-considered decisions along the way.

I hear people say they are going to photograph one day a week. One day out of 40 hours, that is 10 per cent less salary. That is a lot. Especially these days, it can make the difference between being able to buy a house or not. Just to name one thing.

Yes, but I want to do more with that photography

Sometimes I wake up at night with an idea. A new project, or a technical challenge where I have suddenly found a possible solution. There is something in that photography that acts like a magnet, drawing all my thoughts, apart from my family, thankfully, towards that one passion.

I think about cities I want to visit to take photographs, reflectors for my portrait photography, and a workshop I really must attend at some point. An idea for a column. Perhaps I am manic and obsessive. Perhaps it could all be a little less intense.

But I do know that there is no room for another job. A stable job, working for a boss, blimey, what a lot of headaches that would save me.

Sometimes I wonder whether that would make me happier. Give me more peace. And perhaps both, but it has become impossible. My manic obsession with photography means that by now I can do nothing other than be a photographer.

Fortunately, it is not as bad as it sounds, but there is a kernel of truth in my argument above. In fact, I am quite level-headed about it. I do not want anything else.

Follow your passion where you can

I also know photographers who want nothing more than to take photographs, but with the number of obstacles in their way, they could fill a zoo by now. Not Apenheul, but Berenheul. That is a difficult situation.

Of course, a possible family, other responsibilities, and perhaps the security of an income mean that you do not simply burn your bridges behind you. I understand that, naturally. A career switch is no small thing.

Besides, I do not want to push you in that direction. Everyone has their own reasons for staying in the safety of their current job. I read somewhere that in the Netherlands, after a huge increase in self-employed people during Covid, the number of sole proprietorships has been declining in recent years.

Most photographers fall into that category too.

Passion does not have to become a job

And then there is the sword of Damocles: if you turn photography, your hobby, into your profession, the passion disappears and it becomes less fun.

I hear that one often, and yet it is only an assumption. Perhaps it is an excuse, an in-built safety mechanism. "I just found a job because I lost the fun in photography." Now it is a hobby again and the fun has returned.

Perhaps this story is not about photography at all. Perhaps it is about life: we like putting off things that frighten us, don't we?

Thinking out loud

The penny has already dropped for me and I no longer need to think about it out loud: I am a photographer. But thinking out loud may be useful for you. What happens if, in x years, you do have time for photography? What would that mean?

After all those years of working, will you take pictures for your own photo album? Will you pursue a second or third career with the security of a pension? Certainly an option.

The last thing I want is to be gloomy, but what if you do not reach that pension, or that date you set yourself, in good health or with the same passion for photography? What if you regret not starting sooner?

I regret not starting sooner. I started twenty years too late and feel an urge to catch up with the people I admire. An impossible task, and completely irrational. But still.

What does photography mean to you?

The question I would like to ask you is: what does photography mean to you? What place does photography have? Do you work to be able to buy a new camera? Or is going out with the photography club on Saturday really enough of an outlet for your passion?

I notice that I think about this subject a lot. What does photography mean to me, and what would happen if, against all expectations, I were driven back into marketing?

What if my increasingly poor eyesight, varifocal glasses, and the fact that reading becomes a challenge again and again, means that this is no longer going to work? For me, it is about thinking the other way round. What if photography disappears?

No solution

Unfortunately, I do not have the solution. I cannot choose for you whether you should take the step towards becoming a professional photographer, and perhaps that step is not necessary at all. Perhaps you can give photography the role in your life that you feel it deserves with less effort and risk. Perhaps it already has it.

I would like to ask you, though, if you have ever thought, "Tomorrow I will be a photographer", what tomorrow is. What are you missing now that you only want to do tomorrow? Just go for it. Even if you simply book that photo trip to Iceland in advance. Join a photography club. Take that Photofacts course. Small dreams first. Today is your day.

"And the things in the room, I'll say goodnight to them
Tonight we'll go to sleep and see what tomorrow brings"

No, Boudewijn (de Groot, ed.). Today we'll see. Tomorrow is just a vague concept...

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