Professionalism defined...

First of all, if you aren't already a member of the group, here is the link to my Facebook photography page. Joining that will give you notifications of blog updates without requiring me to soil my personal page (and yours) with unnecessary business speak. Done? Aah...

If I didn’t feel like a professional photographer before this last week or so, I certainly do now. Or, at least, this angle of thinking allows me to feel justified in making the ludicrously expensive purchase I indulged myself in over the weekend. I doubt it has escaped your attention that a new Apple store opened in Norwich on Saturday morning. Excited beyond any level which could possibly be deemed acceptable at such a prospect, I blazed into the bright lights and the beaming smiles (it just doesn’t happen in other shops), and… well, the atmosphere put me all in a tizzy. Charging through the hordes of ecstatic children and equally gleeful parents (that certainly doesn’t happen in other shops), I raced to the software section, hoping to find something fresh to liven up my Mac, something to put it through its gears.

Somewhere in my mind, I think I was actually hoping for some form of computer game to whisk me back to youthfulness, a Championship Manager 32, or a Red Alert 56, or whichever version we’ve got up to at the end of the new millennium’s first decade. It wasn’t to be, though. None of those games stirred the excitement I’m now used to, the excitement of football, or of cricket, darts (yes, I hear you, and I advise you to stay silent) and real ale. I wondered to myself, stroking the almost-stubbly bumfluff on my chin, have I finally begun to Grow Up?

Then it happened. The eyes spotted a familiar blue, and before you could say ‘tickle my fancy’ I’d given my bank account a bit of a stretch. Photoshop isn’t cheap, you know.

So, here I am, fiddling around with my new toy. At £615, I consider myself to have invested meaningfully in my future career, and to mark the occasion I have set up a dedicated photography desktop on my computer, devoid of iTunes, Facebook and Championship Manager. Odd how one can have every success with a series of commissions, work tirelessly to create a network of contacts and run out of midnight oil reading photography books, but it is only a childish impulse purchase at an unforgivably large price that makes one actually feel like a professional. Now, how do you work this thing…

www.ryanwatts.741.com

Well, well, well. Look who’s come crawling back. Four months after my last blog, after moving into a new house and taking on a second job (at the Fat Cat pub), I finally put aside the time to do a little bit of writing. Let’s put it into perspective. For one hundred and five consecutive days, I have deemed everything else in my life more important than maintaining this blog, including - and let’s be frank here – playing cricket and football, attending barbecues, Pro Evolution Soccer, playing board games, doing crosswords, snoozing, watching cricket and football, the pubs of Norwich and buying new socks. Whether this is unacceptably bone idle of me, or whether I have discovered a formula for contentment, is down to your own discernment, dear reader, but I can at least justify my inactions: I have also been busier than ever on the photography front.

Since the last blog, way back in May following my week in the Spiegeltent, I have commenced a stint of regular work for the Norfolk Network, photographing their organised events, worked with bands such as the tremendous, up-and-coming Brownies, produced portraits for families, photographed my first wedding, and a civil ceremony, covered an election count, taken shots from the tower of Norwich’s City Hall and travelled through Scotland with my camera. Profusely enjoying every moment of it, I am finally on the path, thanks in no small part to all those months of voluntary work, to becoming a professional photographer. Quite a learning curve it’s been, too…

In the space of four months, I have developed from a quiet rookie, meekly following the lead of more experienced, better photographers and leaving them to organise people for shots, to becoming that leader. Time will tell whether I will ever genuinely become accustomed to shouting at people, but I did at least have a successful time at the wedding of Oli and Naomi Isaac, organising some one, two, three… twenty-eight people into smiling for my camera, simultaneously. Other photographers there were following my lead, which felt rather odd, though not unpleasant… It was also a day of gentle mockery, ordering the couple to ‘at least TRY and look like they love each other’; I will forever remember poking fun at Naomi for looking everywhere except into the lens, with the resulting photograph without doubt my favourite of the day. It seems that this is becoming something of a fixture in my style of portraiture...

My ongoing work with the Norfolk Network is also a pleasure. My thanks go to Lucy Marks, the director, for affording me my first paid work, and I am informed that I am amply repaying her with some stylish images. I do hope to eventually become a permanent member of that circus, as a member as well as a photographer. It’s been a promising start – let’s see where it leads.