The path of a wedding photographer is not exactly charted in colleges or universities. Its never in a parent’s list of top career choices. Many people I know in this industry have high qualifications in other fields and held high corporate positions in multinational companies. Yet they left it all and decided to explore their passion in photography. Depending on how you look at it, it can be a very rewarding journey- to make changes.
In every job/ career, there must be some factors that drives you to persevere and enjoy what you’re doing. So, in appreciation of my job as a wedding photographer, I’ve come out with a list on why I Love and appreciate my current job- as compared to my previous one (which was to speak to computers all day long) . The experiences and examples are of mine alone and does not necessarily apply to you 🙂
| Scenario | Current job | IT Job |
| At the end of the working day | My employers will thank me for my hard work | My employer will assign additional work for the next day. The only words of gratitude would be “You should be feeling lucky I let you off at 11pm.” |
| Attending a wedding dinner | I receive angpau for attending a wedding dinner | I give big angpau of approx 5-10x that value |
| Waking up for work | I wake up excited and look forward to start shooting. Sometimes I could hardly sleep | I can never wake up on time, no amount of sleep will ever be enough |
| Getting stuck in traffic jams |
*this column was intentionally left blank |
Spend at least 2 hours per day at on the road swearing at queue-cutters to die a painful death- and then only to find myself committing the same crime |
| Unrestricted access | Can walk though gates and doors | Have to go through a series of tortures: eg- soak leg in pail of ice, listen to groom sing an 80s love hit, dance to that wondergirls tune, lose leg hair. The easy way out is to pay cash upfront |
| New Years Eve | Pack gears n sleep early for job next day | Party like there is no tomorrow! Then go back to work the next day to work on spreadsheets. |
| How to value add | Take better pictures, produce timeless images. Make friends, respect everyone. | Write a series of (impossible) objectives & KPIs of how well I can add value to the organisation and clients, then after a year, goreng the English language in a utterly sophisticated (eg. confusing) way on how I managed to achieve ALL of them. |
| Lunchtime | Can have lunch at 4pm | Only allowed to have lunch during ‘lunch hours’. Then if you’re working late, tend to skip dinner because there is no such thing as ‘dinner hours’ |
| During desk work | Can surf net, read hilarious #tanyanajib questions on twitter, read blogs, do online banking, browse a strangers’ facebook album, announce to your 4599 friends that “Friend #699 is a backstabber or “I have just checked in to a cow farm in Sekinchan” |
— Same as beside– |
| I come home after work | All exhausted and satisfied | Looking forward to the weekend. If it’s a long weekend, then more syok. |
| The people I meet | Friendly, beautiful, with genuine characters | Meet lots of people who say till they can do everything. Then end up doing nothing. |
That’s just me. What about you- Why do you love your job?
