Days that make you go, blah...
I had one of those days yesterday that makes a photographer want to craw under the covers and hide.
It started off well enough with a graduating student at SFSU, whose campus is just across the road from our house, asking if his small class could use one of my pictures for the cover of their graduation program. There would be no payment of course and could I reply ASAP as they needed to get on with publication urgently. I was flattered so I replied in the affirmative within a very short time of receiving this request. 48 hours later I have yet to hear a peep of thanks. Come on guys; if you're not going to pay for my work at least you could say 'thanks'.
This was followed around lunch time by a San Francisco magazine asking for permission to use one of my pictures to illustrate a piece they were writing. Again, there would be no payment despite them being a for profit publication, but I would get a photo credit. Again, they wanted to put the issue to bed in a few days so could I respond ASAP. Again, I was flattered and replied 'yes' and was already looking forward to seeing my name misspelled, in tiny print bellow a shot of a local landmark. But after a few hours I got a reply - thanks; the picture editor had contacted a few people on Flickr with images of the same landmark but, if they used mine, they would let me know. Hmm, I had thought the picture editor had stumbled across my picture on Flickr and had thought it so perfect for the article that she had had to contact me. It turns out that I'm just one of several images they found that would do and they might use if their first choice fell through. I was feeling less special by the minute.
By the time I got home in the evening I had received my monthly rejection letter from JPG magazine. I'm currently batting 0 for 10. I really didn't care that they had rejected my 3 pictures (one for each theme) but I had spent some time writing an essay that I submitted to them and they didn't even mention that as being received, never mind rejected. I guess that might mean it could still be in the running for some future issue but by this time I was feeling more half-empty than half-full.
These dashed hopes are not conducive to the creative process and my mood was not helped by having to leave work early to get our house ready for two different sets of guests that evening. A little before midnight I was pooped and I hadn't taken a single photo all day. Ordinarily this wouldn't be an issue but I'm taking Project 365 pretty seriously so I had to come up with something so, after clearing up snacks and dead glasses I roamed the house with a macro lens and a high ISO looking for something to inspire me to shoot. I had to settle for a cliched shot of a detail of my Stratocaster. With that obligation done I was finally free to crawl under the duvet and dream of picture editors with huge budgets who love my work, become my patrons, enabling me to give up coding for good and spend my days inspired and creating pictures.
Comments