I hope you are joking.
You do photography extremely well; don't betray your talent. Or at the very least, decide on the body and single lens you find give you most joy and keep them.
There is always tomorow. Photography has saved my sanity these past (almost) eleven years.
I have seldom been more serious than in my writing of this.
Rob
I effectively “quit music” and sold my gear over a few years (including a 1969 telecaster) when Pro Tools (the virtual studio program) became common on every aspiring musician’s Mac. It “got worse” when this evolved into the application Garage Band which actually comes with every new Mac. It has plug ins which replicate Fender twins, Gibson’s, broken amps, stage and stadium rigs, every and any old 1920’s mic and most rare and common stock guitar peddle to amp configurations. Stuff one spends decades toying with or never accessing without this new tool.
You can now sequence beats and lift and sample your own work or others and make “music” in hours or less using your voice (turning your voice into any instrument etc) and a dinky keyboard which would have been an inaccessible process for everyone and for %99 of musicians an impossible mission of gear sourcing, until about a decade ago.
You can obviously promote and make your own videos with similar online tools now.
You know what? People still use professional studios. Still need video directors and producers. I just went to a professional studio with my non virtual gear in hand.
People also still hire PR, and they still press vinyl . All of these are resurgent because easy access and the ability to tinker for curious people or dilettantes does not a serious musician make, and art is clearly the subtle membrane separating the joy of “can” with the questing for “why?”.
But as I said, my years feeling uniquely qualified and proud of my personal gear and the sound I got for live performing and for in-studio were altered in the face of ubiquitous new tool access. I got dismayed.
It has taken me 10 years to start on a new album. Studios are better than ever and all that the plug in online sound revolution did was accentuate the ability for a studio to cater to a musician’s needs, by mixing the new tools with the old.
It’s turning out through the insta / phone revolution that most people (even with an eye) put little time into deepening process and most Landscape photography observably differs (despite filters) from a snap by a tourist to a person on the hunt with a proper camera.
Old tools, like an actual amp, with a guitar which has been “broken in”, with a real spring reverb laid across the room, the right room, the time spent on song writing, the right band mates or engineer, and the awareness of sound as a flowing properly outside of the computer, moving through the electricity in the air - is an entirely undefeatable endeavour.
So it is with photography. No one can replicate the hours spent, the tactile relationship to a camera made to be brought to the eye, the meaning behind the activity which emboldens beyond quick fix satisfaction.
Don’t give up.
You’ll come back anyways. If it truly called you to begin with.
It keeps happening for me with music, photography, teaching meditation (in the face of the mindfulness trend), visual art- after seeing what is popular.
I quit every year, multiple times a year, wonder why, become exhausted, I become cynical... something calls it all back. I do it because deep down I have to
I try and remember that.
(Oh, and the impeachment seems a confused flailing plan if desirable for many)
🥂
