Sense of satisfaction.

You know, as the Christmas season approaches, I realize how much I would really appreciate being able to make a living off of something that i make with my own hands. You know what I mean? It might sound silly but I really admire the people who started LUSH for example, (they make all sorts of unique soaps and bath products) because I can really see them as a couple or something that started the whole idea in their living room. Making soap. Wrapping it. Looking at it at the end of the day thinking, "wow! look at all this soap" and then actually selling it. What an incredible personal sense of satisfaction that must offer.

I know photography is something similar. I make it myself. I edit/retouch it myself. I sell it myself. But it doesn't offer the same feeling. First of all the ingredients are super expensive (which for me detracts a bit from the sense of creating value in a thing where none was before) and second, at the end of the day all you can do is sit back and hold up a burned DVD and think, "yeah". Hardly cuts it. Not even printing in magazines really does it for me. Your stuff comes out and inevitably the DTP people or the layout people mess the whole thing up. Out here the photographer isn't involved in the layout decisions. Magazines just want the pictures on a DVD and then want you to stay out of it. The result? Pretty awful. Too bad I don't make soap.