Goals

When you become a photographer, you’re sort of expected to choose a genre.

Are you a wedding photographer?

Are you a landscape photographer?

Portraits? Boudoir? Street Photography? Choose wisely.

Maybe it’s childish of me, but I want to do all of that. Whenever someone starts to ask me if I do {insert type of job here}, I cut them off. “I do everything. What do you need?”

It probably isn’t the wisest business model, but I don’t see any reason why I can’t be great at several of these things. Of them all, I have the least interest in wedding photography, but I’ll take wedding jobs. The goal is to make a living doing the kind of photography that pays the bills so that I can afford to make the kind of art I want to make.

Money isn’t the goal for me, but it is a necessary evil.

I ran across this opportunity online. They’re looking for applicants to go to Hawaii for a month. They pay you some money and put you up in a house for free. Its called an Artist-in-Residency program.

A beach in Maui, 2010. Taken with a point-and shoot Nikon digital.

Let’s set the Way Back Machine* to 2010. I was in Hawaii with my family. I loved Hawaii and would seriously consider living there. My one regret is what could only laughingly be called my photography at the time.

My brother in Maui, 2010. The composition is about the only good thing here.

I flat out had no idea what I was doing at the time. I had a Nikon D40 DSLR and a lens that I had purchased for my original Nikon N65 film camera. Turns out that lens didn’t work so well with the DSLR. The only decent photos I took were with a Nikon Point-and-Shoot digital that I brought along.

I’ve wanted to go back to Hawaii for years now. So cut to today and I see this Artist-in-Residency deal and I think “is someone up there listening?”

Do I take a chance on what almost certainly seems to be a scam?

The upside would be the chance to live out my dreams for a month without worrying about money. I have no idea what the downside could be.

I have no idea what to do.

*Hey kids! Remember Mr Peabody and Sherman??