It hasn't been a long time since I started clicking photos at a considerably rapid rate. Sometimes I think, my dear Cannon Powershot must be complaining for making him work so much even on weekends, evenings and even nights. Well, it started off unknowingly and I developed this weirdly enjoyable hobby or rather I would say 'habit' of clicking snaps, pics whatever you call. I am not amongst the greatest of the photographers, will have to work hard to climb up the huge mountain of experience and technical study to achieve that excellence. This article is not supposed to be read as a doctrine or an expert's view, rather it is a true and in-depth study of my liking for photography, its roots and its future (ohh!! future .. not really .. no one can ever predict that ) and the never-ending war between the hobbies and the profession.
As I said, I am not an expert or a professional photographer. In fact, I don't really consider myself a 'photographer'. The word 'photographer' sounds too occupational to me like an 'Engineer' or a 'Doctor'. Of course, another important reason why I don't like myself to be called a photographer is, so far I have not undergone any professional training in photography as such and hence someone embracing me with the title 'photographer' is the insult of millions of professionally trained, technically sound photographer experts all over the world who spent their time, money and valuable efforts to learn and master the art (or/and science) of photography.
However, I can say for sure that I really belong to the category of the people who are obsessed to click photos and doing so gives them an unexplainable joy, satisfaction. Say, it makes my day when I click a good snap in morning and upload it on Orkut. And, if I click a nice one at night (as I am quite of a nocturnal type, especially after coming to US) then I am bound to have some nice sleep enriched with sweet dreams. Well, thats how my photos and my so called photography is important to me.
You must be wondering, I am talking so much about the photography, why the hell I missed out on considering it as my career/profession? Well, I was often asked this question on occasions of few job interviews and that helped me to figure out that there are two prime reasons for this. (Sometimes the job interviews do make us self-interrogate and answer some of the most vital unanswered questions in our life that we have never really thought about.)
The inevitable reason is that, I had already traveled half way down the path of my Computer Science career when I realized about this wonderful hobby of mine. And secondly, frankly speaking, given a choice I might not have chosen photography as a career, because I personally believe that, what makes a good hobby may not necessarily make a good career. Also, as a career, in some cases one may start hating his old loving hobby, just because of the professional pressure, financial expectations and several other factors. Eventually, thats what distinguishes a 'hobby' from an 'occupation'. There is a thin but significant line composed of work pressure, deadlines, money matters and expectations that separates these two domains quite elegantly. These deadlines sometimes make you hate even what you like, unless you start enjoying all this deadline oriented, scheduled, planned style of living life really well. (You better start with Google calender to master this.)
From my point of view, irrespective of whatever deliberate efforts one makes, deadlines, professionalism naturally take away the innocence in a piece of art and make it look like an object for money making or a selling item. Well, there are people who still manage to love their hobby while working in the same as a profession. But this needs a lot of control on mind, a lot of patience or at least a readiness for sacrifice and compromise. One must manage to keep the business thoughts, commercial ideas out of the mind, and do the work with passion, love and pure joy purely as a hobby.
I have experienced this back in my schooldays, when I used to appear for several painting competitions. I never enjoyed painting in a painting competition and winning a medal, compared to the moments when I just ended up with my first painting every monsoon sitting in my balcony with the soothing sprinkles of first monsoon showers in Mumbai every year. Probably this experience could have unknowingly encouraged my decision of keeping profession and hobbies distinct and non-overlapping.
According to me, a pure lovable hobby is the one that always soothes you, makes you forget the real world pressures for a moment. Yes, it has this hallucination effect, that makes it one's most favorite activity. It liberates the joy of creation, satisfaction and pure imagination. It charges me up, makes me fresh to face another busy day ahead. As I said, a truly lovable hobby eventually turned out to be a habit for me. Well, its not true in all cases, I spent most of my schooldays and early college years with Painting as my prime hobby which never got transformed into a 'habit' as such. Its mainly because, painting consumes good amount of time, and also I am a bit more moody and inherently lazy when it comes to painting. I am always eager to empty the cup of my imagination on the canvass as fast as possible. A kind of 'greedy' or 'hungry' or may even be called as 'thirsty' way of painting, which a few times has paid me the other way round. But thats how I enjoy doing it.
I know, so far this article is going more hobbyish (pro-hobby and anti-profession) and profession is being treated as a sad part of life by me. But wait, thats not true. I just want to say that hobbies may not fit into the role of a good, happy profession. However, to survive and become successful, one has to have a good and rich professional life. When I think about my 'profession', as a Master of Science student in Computer Science, I realize an interesting fact. As opposed to hobbies, that I enjoy in leisure time, I enjoy my profession when I am given a stack of work assignments with some challenging deadlines by some grueling professor. Oopps!! This gives me a completely new outlook about the profession. For me it is the counterpart of my hobbies. The three most highlighting characteristics that separate my profession from my hobbies go as follows. One thing is that, I work really well under pressure, when it comes to my profession 'Computer Science'. Secondly, deadlines and schedules extract the best out of me when it comes to my profession. On the other hand if I have a lot of time for a computer science assignment, I am really lazy to start with and find it boring. And last but not the least, a good profession always ensures some form of financial stability in life.
At the end of the day, when I look back, 'profession' and 'hobby' both are enjoyable, lovable if they make us satisfied in their own way. Profession gives me job satisfaction, the feeling of intelligence while hobby makes me satisfied with the joy of creation, expression and the joy of turning the imagination into a piece of art. In fact, profession gives 'paid satisfaction', provided everything is going good. Yes, now 'profession' and 'hobby' they really appear to me like counterparts which when fitted together, form a balanced and complete sphere of life. They contrast each other totally, but are probably the best combination to keep the life balanced, exciting and spicy. If you are successful on both these fronts, one can guarantee you a happy, satisfied and exciting life at least at the individual level. Of course only hobbies and profession do not decide whether one's life is going to be satisfied and happy even on family, emotional level. However, Hobbies and Profession are like Sachin and Ganguly, who can provide you rocking results provided they bat together in tandem.
