How do you find the time?

[Ariana Murphy]

I love reading posts in DPS, and there are many pro photographers out there, earning their living with their cameras. My impression is that most are either doing portraits and family shoots, or weddings, with other types of photography businesses (stock, nature and landscape etc.) extremely difficult to break into.

So my question for all you non-pros out there, how do you manage to find time to do it all? If you have a regular job and a family, how many hours do you devote to photography in a week? I would be especially interested to hear from the women with families.

I know that the one thing that would advance the quality of my photography the most would be to spend more time at it, to take my time with each shot, and to stop to think before I click the shutter.

I'm looking for suggestions in how to manage this little dilemma, and some input from others who are managing their own circumstances. How about it, gang? What say you?

[Jim Bryant]

When my wife was still in the Navy and I was stuck at home watching the kids, I would make a picnic and off we'd go.........field trip!

I'm not really a 'pro' but I make a few bucks at it.

I have a full time job and a wife and a baby. Not that hard to find time.... 1-2 hours a day is really not that much.

[dvtldav]

It is like any hobby, you take the time. If you play golf you take 3-5 hrs. once or twice a week and go play golf. The same way with bowling. If you like to work in the flower garden you work there 1 or 2 hours a day.
The problem comes when you have other hobbies and decide to take up photography as a hobby now you have 2 hobbies competing for time or in my case 3 or 4 hobbies and you have to decide which hobby is more important to you and devote your time to that hobby.
The other thing is that with golf, bowling, gardening woodworking, etc. most people think of those as hobbies but for some reason a lot of people don't think photography as a hobby so a lot of photographers seem a little shy about going out and taking pictures of anything and everything.
Just my 2 cents.

Dave

[milosh]

Originally Posted by Ariana Murphy

How do you find the time?

I'm not sure myself. I don't even consider myself to be a serious amateur, but it's still very difficult to me to organize my time and do everything I would like to. I'm constantly torn between my hobby, my job and my college. To be honest, I can't wait to finish my studies to have more time for photography.
But I don't think things would be so different even if I had less things to do. I think a lot more can be achieved with better time management, and I pretty much suck at it...

[dakwegmo]

As with anything you have to figure out what's important then make the time to work on it. For me, I spend a lot of time with my camera after my kids are in bed. When my wife and I would normally sit down for some quiet time, reading or watching TV, I'll read through the manual with my camera in hand learning what everything does or practicing shots on random stuff in the house.

On weekends, I'll take my camera on family outings and take pictures of my kids, or plan to do things where I know there will be photo ops other than kid portraits. A couple of times a month I'll take an evening, or a full day on the weekend and get away from the family to just go out and shoot.

It's not nearly as much time as I'd like to devote to photography, but with everything else I've got going on, it's all I can manage right now.

[Nicole]

At the moment I'm not putting in as much time as I used to be. To me it just seems that there are times where I don't have very much free time.

That said, one of the ways I tried to make time for my photography was to do a 365 project because it made me force myself to take time every day. Now, of course, the downside to that is that after I finished it, I was pretty burnt out, and I'm still recovering from it a bit almost 6 months later. So apparently, my forcing myself to find the time every day wasn't the best idea.

So, at the moment, I'm just not making the time. Which is a shame. I'm hoping I'll feel a bit more like putting in the time when I'm not quite so busy the rest of the day. But who knows. I might be coming back to this thread myself to get some advice on how to find the time.

[SwissJon]

My job takes me from the house for at least 12 hours a day, five days a week, and often I work at home until late, maybe 11pm, on an average week, I work perhaps 60 hours, maybe more.. Most would go home, sit watching TV with a glass of wine, Personally I hate TV, and I don't drink, so I go and take photos when everyone else is otherwise occupied.

My wife has noticed I'm significantly less stressed since I took up photography, my stepson has noticed I don't moan about the volume that the tv is turned to, and the dog has noticed he gets longer walks. (My wife also noticed I don't mind walking him on my own, so she's doubly happy) and I've noticed I'm a lot fitter because I walk a lot more.

Photography does take up time, that's true, but no more than TV, or going to the gym.. I would say I spend 6 hours a week with my camera, usually at the weekends, not all of that's behind the camera though, a lot of it's just getting "there". In the end, it's a trade off. My time doing this is time not doing other things..

[Jim Bryant]

Guess I could/would get out more often if I didn't waste so much time here.

[veritasimagery]

I'm "lucky" enough to be currently unemployed. So since my wife and kids head off to school and work at 7am, I have the entire day to play with my camera.