Retired Professionals Photographers

Now that the pressure of doing a wedding here or event there is off, is your personal work changing or evolving?

Not retired but as always things changing especially in my personal shooting. Shooting things now I rarely did, wild life. They don't take direction like most of my portrait clients but are forcing me to develop my patience and anticipation. Both transferable skills handy with people. It forces me to accept the light given by BOB, the big orange ball, that with studio gear, I almost always tweak. It is helping me maximize what is given, eg, posted a shot yesterday in the nature forum of a bird taken during rainy, heavy overcast near high noon. The time no one wants to shoot with a high sun and in what might be considered poor conditions. I love it for portraits, I just block the light from above yielding soft directional side light then subtract from the shadow side to control the ratio. In that shot, The flatter light really made the diagonals and colors of the feathers important. Part of them shaded others below and behind those above, creating shadow to provide form that can be lost in flat light. It gave soft directional light from the top but that worked with the shape of the subject's feathers. How will I use this now with a person, lying down or leaning over and their head positioned to use that soft wrapping over head light to get it in more of traditional 45 degrees to the face. Could even shoot wide open to dissolve the background to soft wash and tip the camera to straighten the tilted subject and perfect rotating in post with no one the wiser to the tilted pose. Bingo, side light from a high noon sun. A little bird taught me that when I photoed her. I'll tuck that back in the memory bank for a future shoot. Just might save a shoot when no modifiers available. So my personal work changes but still effects my portrait work.

More like regressing for me.

I did mostly industrial/commercial & studio, but once retired reduced the equipment to very simple. Bridge camera & a 285HV!

Now I find I'm using it as an adjunct to other hobbies & am beginning to do studio-lit again.

I've retired from any commercial work so I can use better cameras, better film and invest more time and money in making better photographs than I could before. Without having to trim costs to meet client's budgets I use 8x10 cameras and any quantity of film I like. No pro can work like this and stay in business.

I shut down a photo business about twelve years ago. Still very active shooting swim meets and for pleasure and making 13x10 prints of what I like best. I never liked the time pressure of fast wedding delivery and am happy not doing that. Got into Canon M5. Ergonomics not as good as 7DII nor is the viewfinder but I take a lot of pictures with it.

I was a photographer using photography in my profession (archaeology). When I retired, I vainly tried to break out of documentary strictures and become more "arty".

So far, mixed results

It is so hard to choose just one place as the all out favorite. We made a video highlighting our experience in a quick fun video you can check out here if you want

I will never retire. EXCELSIOR!