Charitable Togging

Every year my daughters school does a fund raising event where kids parents and teachers travel to the Edinburgh International Climbing Arena and scare themselves silly going over the aerial assualt course, 100 feet above the arena's stone floor. It's a terrifying accomplishment for many of them - every year someone decides to confront their fear of heights and give it a go.

Last year I went along to support friends, took my camera along and snapped away for fun. The pictures came out OK and I ended up sticking them on a CD and giving them to the school, license free. I figured that they could use the images to advertise for future years fund raising or, because I had been careful to get a picture of everyone who did the course, they could charge a couple of pounds per image and make a little more money. In fact the school has a projector an for a few days after the event they projected my images on a conutinual cycle for the kids to see as they moved between classes, which went down well with them.

This year however I approached the event with a little more trepedition - daughter #1 had decided to give it a go. I spent a sleepless night worrying about her and picturing her falling off. Still, she was mad keen, so off we set on Sunday to the arena. Happily there were no falls, although there were tears from some but everyone made it round. I found out that instead of charging for my images last year, the school had emailed my images out to all the participants - no charge (which was an opportunity missed for them) and no acknowledgement of the photographer (which was an opportunity missed for me). So my charitable gesture of providing a free photography service and licence free images, was neither exploited or recognised - shame.

So... having taken the images again this year, I considered adopting a different approach. Giving the school 72ppi low quality images with my PBASE web address added at the bottom and then adding the images to my website with an option to purchase the full size prints for a fee (most of the proceeds to the school, and a small amount to cover costs to me.) I considered it..., but fell at my usual hurdle. I love taking images but I can't be bothered putting in the work to turn a buck. Lazy boy.

So the question is, if you are able to turn a thing you love into a job, by turning it into a job do you lose the love?... Should I try to pursue a career that could turn me off the thing I am passionate about?

For now, I'm happy to keep enjoying the photography and I assume that once I am good enough to satisfy myself (and I'm a hard task master!), I won't have to try too hard to actually sell my images. I may be dreaming :-) but at least I'm enjoying myself!