Most people know now gingerly I teeter on the knife-edge of bankruptcy with my camera addiction. It’s the running joke at the office that I can’t go a month without buying some other camera. Seriously, I have 5 Holgas. I collected them just so I could have 5 different colors! I’ve sold and repurchased both a Leica M3 and a Canon 7. In fact, the latter I even re-skinned in read leather just like the previous one, and bought a Jupiter 8 for it… just like the one I sold. It’s insane.
I bought bookshelves to hold my collection, and I still have cameras in boxes in my spare room. Every day before I walk out the door, part of my routine is to decide which camera I’m going to stuff into my bag to take to work. It’s dumb that I actually stress out about it most mornings, since I don’t even actually take the camera out anywhere! I mean, I can only photograph Downtown Memphis so many times before it’s really, really boring.
I have enough cameras to do a camera review each week and never touch two cameras for a year, yet I currently don’t even keep up with my website enough to do the reviews. In fact, I login to my VPS more than anything to do OS updates and watch the Chinese hackers scan the crap out of it.
I have an idea, though, on how to get out of this funk. It’s really a 3-pronged approach to getting my photography into a phase where I can get out of my current career and start doing Wedding photography full-time. First, I’m buying gear to set up a small portrait studio. I’ve already started collecting speed flashes, and building a good remote setup. Second, I’m selling nearly all my expensive cameras – the Leica M, Bronica, and Canons (saving the Nikons since they were gifts) and all the digitals except the new X-T20.
Lastly, I’m leaving the website and social media for the rest of the year. I’m going dark. I want to really focus on photography as a business venture and not just a hobby. Don’t worry, Jan 1, 2020 you’ll see a brand new Aragon’s Eye – hopefully on a sign outside of a studio in a stripmall here in town, and maybe if I have any film cameras left, I’ll sell them there — or use them as displays to liven the studio up.
But the film photography journey and collecting is done. Time to focus my time and capital on getting a real photography business off the ground! It’s been a fun ride! So long, and thanks for all the fish!
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