I'm hoping I can find some other photographers that can relate. For the past several years, I've been slowly (slowly, slowly) working on building up a portraiture business over the last couple of years and have had friends supporting me, having me do their pictures. All my clients have been happy with my work, but lately I've been realizing how much I don't like most portraiture and that it stresses me out to no end. Everybody else thinks I do a great job with posing and so on, but I don't feel like I do. There are other reasons I don't think the broad range of portraiture us not for me, but that's beside the point. I've also recently begun my journey towards certification as a birth doula and THAT'S where my passion lies: birth. I can't get enough of it. So I recently decided (but hadn't really told anyone or advertised the fact yet) that I want to move in the direction of becoming more exclusive as a maternity/birth/newborn photographer. It will mean fewer sessions (and I don't have that many right now, the mommytog craze is coming to our sparsely populated corner of North Dakota), but that's ok because I have a hard time finding childcare and even more difficult time being able spend time at the computer to get my editing done with my two little people running around (and my workflow is not very efficient, I know this, but again, I haven't had time to sit and learn a better way). So, add that to the stress and anxiety of doing shoots I don't feel as natural with, well, I just want to get out of the families/seniors/etc. scene altogether. I'll still do it if people ask, but I'm not advertising for that anymore. Oh yeah, and I'm having a third kid, so the childcare thing isn't going to get any better.
But, after this whole novel, the other day one of my best friends told me that they were doing maternity/family photos with another new startup photog because she's a friend of their and they want to support her too. And I told that it didn't bother me and it really didn't because I told myself that I don't care if someone else takes over the main portraiture market in the area. This photographer does decent work, better than any of the other "photographers" I've seen around here (poor quality, heavy '90s effects). But this morning I saw some of the pictures on Facebook and I cried- it really does bother me. I'm so jealous and insecure about an area of work I don't even want to be doing, it's ridiculous. I'm afraid my friends will like her better and I'll just be forgotten. And I'm jealous of the photographer herself. She's from a well-known family with lots of land (I'm a nobody transplant). She most likely has great equipment and props because she can afford to buy it straight up front instead of scrimping and saving and scheming to buy her full frame. And she probably has no problem finding someone to watch her kids (if she has any) because, like I said, she's from the area, she has family here. Meanwhile, I've worked really, really hard for the modest success I've had all alone, completely by myself, with no help whatsoever, very little even from Farmer Man because he works for another farmer and doesn't make his own hours, unlike everybody else's husbands. So now I just want to cry and give up and fight back or SOMETHING and I don't even know why. General portraiture is not my passion, but it is my only link to not sinking into oblivion as an area photographer, or so it feels.