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Alain Briot Subscribe to Reflections:<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nMarch 2011<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/beautiful-landscape.com\/Reflections\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/Starliner-3.jpg\" "\\"Starliner-3\\"")
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Car Photography as Hobby<\/p>\n
When your hobby becomes your profession you need a new hobby. \u00a0For me, photography was a hobby. \u00a0Until I started my business that is. Then, it became a profession. \u00a0Don’t get me wrong, I love photography. \u00a0If I didn’t I wouldn’t have made it my profession. \u00a0But regardless of how much you love doing something, you can’t do that one thing 100% of the time. If you do, you’ll go nuts to put it simply. \u00a0You need to change your mind and do other things.<\/p>\n
I did not become aware of this until I had built a successful photography business. \u00a0Businesses go through phases, successful ones that is. \u00a0Those that are unsuccessful get started then tank. \u00a0But that’s another subject altogether. \u00a0Successful businesses demand all your time when you get started. As things move along, successful businesses mature and become less and less dependent on you, the business owner. That’s when I realized that I needed a new hobby. \u00a0I was just at that stage where my business was successful and I had time for other things. \u00a0Of course these other things could have been more photography products. \u00a0But then that would mean doing more work, exactly the opposite of what I wanted.<\/p>\n
I have always been interested in cars. \u00a0I suppose that’s a guy thing. \u00a0Guys like cars. \u00a0Maybe. \u00a0But then we also live in Arizona, a state that’s ‘car friendly” I like to say, or rather a state in which you can drive a sports car year round without having to take particular precautions. \u00a0It rains rarely here, it doesn’t snow (at least not in Central Arizona), and wherever it snows DOT doesn’t use salt on the roads. They use cinders instead. Salt isn’t friendly to cars (it causes them to rust) so living in a ‘no-DOT-salt’ state is a bonus when you’re a car enthusiast.<\/p>\n
All of this to say that I naturally drifted towards cars as a hobby. \u00a0Not to say I don’t have other hobbies. \u00a0I do. \u00a0I love home decorating also. \u00a0Maybe not as much as a ‘guy thing’ as cars, but something I love regardless. \u00a0I love gardening too, although I’m not the ‘vegetable gardening’ type. \u00a0More the ‘cactus and decorative plants’ type. I do gardening as an art form. \u00a0I should call it ‘botanical gardening’.<\/p>\n
At any rate I started looking at cars more carefully. \u00a0I also started attending car auctions. \u00a0There’s lots of them in Phoenix. Barrett Jackson and Russo and Steele are the most affordable and well known ones. \u00a0But there’s also R&M and Gooding and Co. among the more upscale ones. \u00a0There’s also countless car dealers and used-luxury car (also known as ’boutiques’) dealers. There are also many informal gatherings of car enthusiasts in parking lots around the city. \u00a0Finally, there’s several racing events in the Spring and Fall (too hot in the summer to be out racing), from NHRA to Nascar and other series. Basically, there’s no shortage of ways to cater to the car enthusiast, if such is your passion.<\/p>\n
I started by going to auctions, then started buying cars. \u00a0At first I wasn’t photographing, but I soon saw the possibilitiesof creating images that conveyed not only the beauty of the lines but also the excitement and the speed that are associated with powerful and exotic machinery. \u00a0At first I carried a small Canon G9 camera in my car. \u00a0It was convenient because it fit in the glove compartment and because it was discreet. \u00a0It did not draw any attention to me when I used it, and it was light enough that I hardly noticed I had it with me.<\/p>\n
Soon the G9 started to be too limiting, and I started using a larger camera to create images that required more control than the G9 afforded me. In time, I learned to do all the different ‘shots’ that are peculiar to car photography. \u00a0But one thing remained the same throughout: I wasn’t doing this to generate income. \u00a0To this day I have not sold, or tried to sell, a single one of my car photographs. \u00a0It’s a hobby, not a profession, and even though the word ‘photography’ is in the name of that hobby, I do not do it for a living.<\/p>\n
You can follow my car photography efforts on my Facebook page at this link: Alain Briot Subscribe to Reflections:<\/strong><\/p>\n
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\nMarch 2011<\/p>\n<\/a>