Other side.

I don't normally talk too much about my personal life. Mostly because a good number of clients (to my surprise) take the time to read my blog, (thank you!) so I try to keep things on topic. But I think every once and awhile I need to throw in a little touch of reality.

Contrary to what most people think, this is not all parties. It's fun, but the parties are honestly few and far between. It's hard work. Seventeen hour days. Poor sleep. Sometimes foul people. Often you work harder than you should, and you are always self critical in a desire to push yourself to be better at everything.

These things though, aren't the tough part. These things are the parts you expect when you do this job. You expect it to be tough. To fight, to argue. If you love the job, you expect 17 hours days. Indeed, you relish them. In this business to be successful you work so hard that you forget how to not work. When the rare free moment comes around you actually feel depressed, not released. It's not just photographers though. It's makeup artists. Models. Art directors. Everyone. We are like a patchwork of semi-lonely work-a-holics that don't mind seventeen hour days because really, we don't want to leave set and go home. At home we're LONELY.

There is a special camaraderie on projects too that becomes an addictive high. I think if anything 'hooks' people in this business, it's working through a commercial, or a particularly exacting photoshoot and feeling the release at the end. Feeling a 'result' of a something you did. Like drugs though, the feeling evaporates pretty quickly though, and soon you find yourself looking for a new fix. It's not just the money that keeps people going. It's this sense of 'belonging' and 'purpose' that keeps people going too. Before long your hooked. It's four in the morning and you are still editing photos. Still picking models. Still planning locations.

The other thing is, this life take a toll on your personal life. It's hard for people 'outside' this little world to really see in. I know very few photographers who are in happy long term relationships. Very, very, very, few. And as a photographer, I can assure you that I know a lot of photographers. But the same can be said for models. Models either have rich/famous boyfriends they never see, or a normal guy they love, but who is jealous/nervous/paranoid that they will never measure up.

It's hard too, for other people to understand fashion/models/fame/etc. It's a difficult thing. It's not hard in the normal physical or intellectual sense, it's hard in the psychological sense. It's hard for people to cope with being 'beautiful'. I know plenty of girls who vomit/don't eat or work out too often. It's hard to commodify ones personality as ones primary skill/product.

But it's not hard in the break a sweat sense.

It's hard in the Lost in Translation empty-hotel-room/difficult to maintain meaningful relationship sense. It's hard in the "is this all I am" or "is this all I do" sense.

But of course if your not in this business or if you don't already know what I mean, then that statement is probably meaningless to you. It's like when models tell people, "my job is really hard" and people just laugh at them. "How hard could being beautifull be?" people ask.

If they only knew.