Your “call it quits” moment is coming – here’s what to do about it

**John Jarosz** · 13-Mar-2011, 17:10

I used to scuba dive. Lots. As I got older I did it less and less. I never planned to stop, but I did. Why? I don't know. Will I start again? I don't think so. Other things became more important. But I know one thing: I never had to worry about when my last dive would be. I never had to go thru that "I retire from XXXX". And I won't with anything else either. I'll let it happen naturally and I won't feel gypped or cheated or morose. I'll stop because something else became more important. But I sure as heck ain't gonna worry about it. Same with breathing...........

**matthew blais** · 13-Mar-2011, 17:34

Well hells bells...I haven't even got started yet

**Bill Burk** · 13-Mar-2011, 22:05

Rick,
I made many similar statements, and similarly took unexpected turns.

One end-game I planned is to put me in a room with all my pictures, and I will just look at them the rest of my life.

**Vaughn** · 13-Mar-2011, 22:58

Originally Posted by matthew blais

Well hells bells...I haven't even got started yet

LOL -- I know what you mean! But I do figure I have gotten started since I took the first step on the journey many years ago. I'm not too worried about the destination though.

Vaughn

**Bill Burk** · 13-Mar-2011, 23:44

To quote Weird Al Yankovic (when he saw this picture): That tree is JAMMIN

(Forgive 35mm, I wasn't shooting 4x5 back in those days)

Beef

**Curt** · 13-Mar-2011, 23:56

I couldn't do it, I tried to write but on chapter 16 I decided it was to much. I'm with Vaughn and John, similar experiences, still married though but stopped Scuba diving in mid college.

For me life is a photograph.

Curt heading for 60 but moving ahead anyway.

**jwaddison** · 14-Mar-2011, 00:02

Que sera, sera.

**Frank Petronio** · 14-Mar-2011, 04:55

We're well into middle age with a kid in elementary school and four aged parents still kicking locally, and given the odds that means another freaking 15 years in the neighborhood before we're comfortable moving away. And you tell me what the odds are of getting my then nearly 70-year old Betsy to up and move to a nicer climate and leaving the home and landscape she busted her ass to build? So I have settled into the realization that I'm here for the duration, short of some calamity.

That's why they make Lattes. And while I am not a pot-smoker currently, when I am "old" I am going to get a fancy vaporizer and burn some sticky buds everyday, Man!!!

I mean really, if you're sick and pooping in a bag and everything hurts, recreational medicine had better be accessible and plentiful. Netflix, Kindle, canned organic low-sodum soup, and a great high.... imagine how I'll rip up this forum then?

Also, I know my wife will out-live me, at least based on statistics, and I've been training her to smother me with a pillow before I am a vegetable. She certainly has plenty of reasons to ;-)

When I've been sick and laid up I have a four-foot row of binders full of previously edited negatives and slides to go through and mine. Most of what I shot 28 years ago is long forgotten and some of it deserves a second look with my now different eye. So as long as I can function on the computer and load a scanner, I have years of work to attend to.

I also toss stuff relentlessly, my goal is consolidate my "finished" output to just a handful of various sized boxes, plus a few more for mementos and family history. I just threw out a commercial-sized trash bag of old tearsheets and obscure multiple shrink-wrapped books....

Having settled a few estates, I'm wondering what is best to do with my junk? If I have time will I chuck most of the stuff out to spare my heirs the anguish? Will it just end up in someone's basement mildewing or will they just toss it during that gruesome post-funeral clean-up week? I'm thinking that consolidating it down to a shelf-sized amount is about right, one or two binders of the best negatives, a few boxes of fine prints, some background material, a few books and portfolios. But then again, a photographer also shoots a ton of family snaps, that's another shelf in itself!

Six years ago I was quite ill and decided to change my work, which led to the current direction I've been on. At the time, I wanted to do something bolder and riskier, that would garner some attention and give me some traction as an artist, while still working within what I consider "straight" photography. At the time I was thinking that risk meant going to Iraq and photographing war. What I found is that you can find plenty of risk in very close proximity to home.

As for the "gaining traction as an artist" part, I don't know. It doesn't happen overnight but you can spend a lot of time with the mechanics of it that have nothing to do with making images. Part of me suspects that if I didn't make another picture, I have plenty of material and the rest is marketing and "showing up". Looking at some people who have "made it" and you see they are out promoting ten- and twenty-year old pictures.... gack!

Anyway, if you can't tell this hits home and I think about these morbid things all the time and I think it's part of my work....

**eddie** · 14-Mar-2011, 05:13

Originally Posted by John Jarosz

I used to scuba dive. Lots. As I got older I did it less and less. I never planned to stop, but I did. Why? I don't know. Will I start again? I don't think so. Other things became more important. But I know one thing: I never had to worry about when my last dive would be. I never had to go thru that "I retire from XXXX". And I won't with anything else either. I'll let it happen naturally and I won't feel gypped or cheated or morose. I'll stop because something else became more important. But I sure as heck ain't gonna worry about it. Same with breathing...........

well said. this has happened to me as a rock climber, fly fisherman, and competition pistol shooter. all hobbies.

what will be next and when who knows. i will let you know when it happens.

photograph is a hobby for me. it was a hobby as a kid, then i stopped became a world traveler didi the above mentioned activities along the way and one day after 10+ years of not shooting a single image i picked a camera back up. i wonder when i will be rockclimbing again? i just started "chucking lead" again....too bad ammo prices went so high!

**rdenney** · 14-Mar-2011, 05:27

Originally Posted by Heroique

It occurred to me that Bruce Barlow’s recent quote about spiritual death is indirectly relevant...

(On the notion of bodily constraints, there is the Filmamerica biopic video of Adams pulling his 8x10 out of the case and propping it on his Ries at age 80 or so. One of my hobbies is renovating--slowly--a 1973 GMC motorhome. The several dozen clubs devoted to the same hobby comprise members whose average age is well into the 70's, with many much older than that. I have become used to seeing them lose their ability to keep up with the hobby, and eventually get sick and pass away. It's part of life. But those who remain active stay in touch with those who are sick and none of that group pass away unnoticed. It's a good lesson for we children of that group who, now in our 50's, are noticing for the first time that people in their 20's and 30's can be--just as we were--remarkably callous and impatient towards people who are older.)

I'm not sure spiritual death is necessarily age-related. Life forces me to compromise, and I end up using small format, digital, and other more convenient photographic modes just to be able to do it at all. But then I'll come face to face with the limitations of those compromises and go for a spell of trying to explore the limits of quality. That has moved me back into large-format work a couple of times since college. The last time, I stopped doing large-format work because I moved to uninspiring Dallas, started traveling for work all the time, and faced a range of other distractions, pleasurable and satisfying in their own ways. It wasn't a spiritual death, it was a practical change of course, because I don't define spiritual life in terms of photography.

But then I came face to face with those limitations again, and digital tools have made it possible to do medium and large format without owning and spending half my life a darkroom. It became much easier to fit it into a diverse life.

Now, though, the spiritual impasse has appeared, though instead of spiritual I see as a lack of vision. It's not my own work I don't want to repeat, it's the work of everyone else. Finally, I find myself trying to identify my own vision and my own way of seeing, and frankly I'm not doing very well. My visualization skills have improved to the point where I can see the outcome when I look at any given scene, and most of the time that outcome is just...trite. I can't seem to stop thinking about it, though, so I hope I'm on the verge of a breakthrough.

It has been interesting comparing photography to music in my life. Both are avocations. I have always thought my photographic technique, rooted as it is in professional work and training, far greater than my musical technique, and I still think that is true. But in music I have more sublime moments where my involvement provides deep satisfaction. I just don't seem to see images that move me, even though I see photographs in everything I look at. I can't seem to put my finger on the emotional story with photography, while with music I often have to rein in those emotions to keep them from overflowing.

Rick "whose large-format work has never produced real and deep emotional satisfaction" Denney