I read that there are 12 states of Happiness.
What they are or how “Happiness” is determined and is then defined is beyond me.
But I did find a short article that said to be happy people need to “anticipate with pleasure, savour the moment, express happiness, and reflect on happy memories”.
That’s as good as definition as I could find. However, I doubt one can find any studies on the states of happiness for photographers.
So while readers think about what makes them happy I’m going to delve into that mysterious state with regards to photography.
Is happiness about how things like camera equipment might make a photographer feel?
Or how about creating a good photograph?
I am pretty sure most photographers are devastated when they receive a poor review on a picture, so there is lots of ego involved in their happiness. I know that sitting around with other photographers talking about anything photographic is just plain blissful for me. I don’t know any social scientists that I can call and I haven’t discussed happiness with any philosophers.
I do know that we photographers have a culture of our own. I constantly interact with other photographers in online forums, blogs, or talk to them personally, and those photographers are always ready and willing to tell me when they are happy or not about something photography related.
Some might be more interested in the technology of photography then the actual process of making pictures. I recall a guy that was happiest when he found a problem with a piece of photography equipment. He delighted in making test after test to find if a particular camera matched what the manufacturer or other photographers claimed. I’m disappointed when something doesn’t work as described, but this fellow would actually be down right cheery.
I had a friend that spent all his spare time wandering back roads. He’d show up at my shop with a grin as wide as all outdoors and stick his iPad or iPhone on the counter for me to scroll through and happily describe how he photographed that hawk on the wire, the owl on a fence post or that eagle fishing on the river bank. What made him happy wasn’t so much the pictures as much as his process of making pictures.
I know photographers that are continually changing equipment. Not because they find problems with what they own, but because they read something, or talked to someone, about a new addition from their manufacturer of choice, and can’t live with out it.
They excitedly talk about how wonderful that new piece of equipment is. Their choices don’t so much meet a practical need as an emotional one. And they make it fun for anyone they talk to to observe how darned happy they are with their new camera, or lens, and with, for that matter, everything they own.
This exciting medium has many levels and outlets to make one happy.
There are portrait photographers, wildlife photographers, scenic and landscape photographers, sports photographers, baby photographers, those that specialize in plant photography and, of course, many more, each with differing sets of skills and, to my mind, their own individual states of happiness.
I don’t know if photographers actually have twelve states of Happiness, or only the four I found in that short article, but I will say that I meet lots of people (like me) that are just darned happy to be doing photography, and being involved with it in their own, very personal, way.
Stay safe and be creative. These are my thoughts for this week. Contact me at www.enmanscamera.com or emcam@telus.net.
