BOTH!

A topic prompted by chatting with @apsu. We were talking about him rather having a conversation about nipples than working, and I said I have emerged the two together, best of both worlds!

I model half naked, mostly to my own camera, but sometimes for others too, and then spend hours and hours of working on the pictures. I love it and it's fun, but it's also work.

People like to throw around the quote "Love what you do and never work a day in your life", and I always thought that is complete bullshit. A few days ago I finally saw an alternative ending to the quote "...and all you ever do is work!" I think that makes a lot more sense to me! When you are passionate about something, and it is also your job, you end up doing it a lot more than you would a regular nine to five job. And no matter how much you love what you do, it's still hard work, especially if you always want to learn more and be better, like most creative types do.

I'm sure @kommienezuspadt gets perfectly what I am talking about, doing dark pin up photography, looking at the titties all the time. I bet people say to him that he is living the dream because he gets to hang out and take pictures of beautiful women all day long. While that is true, it's also hard work from setting up the shoot, doing the actual photography, and then post process.

Me being both the model and photographer, I get to experience both sides of the making of the final image. Even when the style of the photography is sexy, you have to be quite analytic and platonic about it all. You have to think of angles, light, framing, styling and all sorts of things and you don't have time to get excited about seeing nipples and ass. I'm sure there are a lot of photographers who get a hard on when they photograph hot girls, and are far too excited to concentrate on the actual photography part. Those are the creepy photographers and I can spot them just by looking at the images they make, because they are not as good as the ones where a person is concentrated in making art, not pornographic images.

I get most pleasure about my own work when I'm finished with the image. I do enjoy photography, modelling, and even doing the self portraits, but it's all work. I do it to tell a story, to create, to pass time, and for the money, it's both business and pleasure for me.