For years I was a part-time artist. During my working years in pharmaceutical research (the legal kind), I had many employees who were constantly stressed about work-life balance because of all the travel involved in our jobs. The pay was really good though, and with a plan, it was possible to retire early and live comfortably. My advice to those who were stressed out was to keep in mind that often in life one has to do things they don't like to do so that some day they can do the things they really want to do. Really, it was the light at the end of the tunnel that got me through my formal work years.
Sellout? Maybe. But I'm doing art full-time now without the stress of making a living from it, and that was always my goal. Even though art was a spare time thing for me for many years, I feel that I produced some solid work during my non-art years, and now I am making up for it and can spend as much time creating visual pieces as I want. With the advent of digital cameras, I was able to always have access to the means to create things while traveling in my day job. That also helped to get me through some very intense work years.
It wasn't until retirement that I realized how rich the world is with opportunities. Honestly, I don't have any sympathy for anyone who complains of nothing to do in retirement. I do not know how people manage to fit work into their lives. Work is just a brutal, dehumanizing concept. Making art does not seem like work to me at all with the exception of the business side of it. I detest book-keeping and tax deadlines.
A few years ago, I attended a local camera club meeting where the speaker was talking about Intentional Camera Movement photography. His work was more a consequence of random camera movement than intentional camera manipulation, but it did give me an idea of the possibilities with backlighting of semi-transparent and opaque materials like plastic bags and colored tissue paper photographed with a bit more control over the camera movement.
So, I built a black box and began experimenting. Like many of my endeavors, I thought I'd be making studio ICMs for a couple of weeks before moving on to something else. But each scene I photograph is so different and really minor changes in the process can have such a dramatic impact on the final image that I have yet to see a logical ending to the experiments.
During this time, I started showing my work locally and entered/won a few international contests. This was done out of curiosity just to see how others would respond to my current work. Although it is a lot of work, I like the street fairs for the feedback I get from those viewing my art. It has been totally gratifying to receieve so many nice compliments from the people in my home community, and the internet groups to which I belong have been an ongoing source of daily inspiration.
For now, the experiments in ICM will continue, and with a little luck, I'll develop a few more ways to make interesting ICM images. I hope to get to meet everyone who reads this some day.