 photography had broken me. In pursuing my passion for photography, it had led me into a pit of despair. How's it? How's it? So to most people, I was living the dream. I was a professional photographer and had been for most of my adult life. I studied photography. Instead of going into an office every day, I went to my own studio doing something creative, something I felt meaningful. I loved the fact that I could use my camera to earn me a living. I enjoyed photography and everything about it. It was pretty much my life. As far as I was concerned, this was going to be my career until I retired. On Sunday the 4th of February 2018, at 11 o'clock in the morning, my wife gave birth to our little son. And with that moment, something fundamental changed within my photography. For a few years, I had been struggling with the idea that what I was doing in the studio, taking photographs of families day in, day out, the same old thing wasn't really what I actually wanted to do as a photographer. Increasingly over the time, I had felt that I wasn't really fulfilling my potential to be the best photographer that I could be. Because I had gone and done something, opened the studio, that I felt was the right thing to do because I thought first and foremost about the money rather than the expressiveness of the creative person inside of me. Like a lot of creative people, I suffer terribly from imposter syndrome. And rather than give voice to my real photography, the photography that came from inside me at the studio, I was creating average work at the risk of being found out, of being told that actually maybe you're not really good enough at this. And couple this with the fact that at the studio, I worked on a kind of a free shoot and then upsell afterwards model, which also troubled me greatly because when somebody sat there and decided they didn't want to purchase anything, I felt like that was a personal stab at me. So when my son was born, it brought into focus that actually I wasn't really happy. By this point, I was so out of love with photography that I just wanted to have nothing to do with it. Every time I thought about photography in and certainly regards to the studio, I got angry and I didn't look at anything. I stopped looking at my monographs, all the books that I used to love looking at. Anything to do with photography, I actively avoided because it just made me sad. It made me angry. It made me bitter. I hated being at this point because photography is everything that I had known. As I said, make a living somehow from taking photographs that I wanted to take to make a living with photography on my own terms. The sound of my footsteps was echoing around the empty studio because of the nature of the way that I ran my business, that getting leads in, then booking them in, then having to shoot, then having to sell after on. It was a never-ending treadmill. It was a beast that needed to be fed constantly because the second that one of those steps stopped, the whole thing came to a grinding halt because it was just me, me alone running the whole business. I'd been feeling that increasing pressure and I had been doubting myself. I'd let those little voices of destructiveness take hold in my mind. I wanted to get out of this, to escape somehow, but what was I supposed to do because photography was all that I have known. It is all that I've studied. I don't have another skill that I could go back on because the studio needed to be fed constantly. I didn't have the time to try something else out. And because I didn't have the time to try something else, I was stuck at the studio. It was a catch 22. On the 23rd of March 2020, Boris Johnson, then Prime Minister, appeared on television sets across the UK and told us all pretty much what had been telegraphed for a few days prior, that all businesses were going to close not just in the UK but around the world in many ways. This was an extremely scary and worrying time. But in retrospect, it was a blessing in disguise because it forced me to stop running on that treadmill. So the agonising choice that had been running around in my head for years to this point had been taken out of my hands. I was desperate to find some way out of this quite frankly horrible place that I found myself in with photography. Despite the fact that I was so anti photography, I wanted to give it another chance to find my passion for it again because I knew that it was actually something deep down I really enjoyed. This was not a flash in the pan thing and the only way that I could see now out of the the the the misery that I was in was to revisit an idea I'd had years and years before about starting well a YouTube channel about photography to create content that I wanted to watch. The first video I put together was a talk about Richard Averton and his autobiography book and it took me two weeks, yes two weeks to film that I'd learned everything step by step how to do the most basic things. It felt like I was going back to photo school and and relearning photography all over. It was really tricky and I looked at this the finished article and I uploaded it. I pressed publish. Today I'm going to be sharing with you an introduction into the life and work of Richard Averton who is one of the world's most famous fashion and portrait photographers. Hi there I'm Alex and this is the photographic eye and if you love the art and history of photography then this is an ideal channel for you. I don't know quite what I expected when I pressed upload I had thought that you know maybe I would get a thousand subscribers in a year become monetized and to be monetized on YouTube you need to have a thousand subscribers and four thousand watch hours. At the end of that first day of that video I think it had like 20 views or something you know five subscribers five whole subscribers um well one of which was me one of which was my wife uh one of which was my father-in-law and uh two other people from Facebook so I was like okay um well at the moment you know a thousand subscribers seems like an awfully long way away and certainly four thousand watch hours was just like unbelievable but at least I was starting to reconnect with the things in photography that I enjoyed and putting it all together being free of the pressures of the studio was was great I actually was I was more relaxed than I'd ever been well certainly as long as I could remember and creating videos and putting them online you know felt nice it felt chill this was fab I was you know talking about photography in a way that I enjoy I was getting starting to get some really great feedback from people you know the 10 views a day that I was getting I you know it to get a comment was like wow this is amazing some random stranger has left me a comment saying I love your video by March in 2021 I'd uploaded I think like 10 15 videos something like that still taking around about two weeks to create a content I thought at this stage it's going to be not happening me getting monetized and then something happened one of my videos about William Eggleston started to get traction instead of being like 10 views 20 views a day it was now 100 200 at the end of March the channel exploded views went through the roof subscribers went through the roof I was monetized I got my first paid from AdSense it was like wow this is this is amazing I can do this this people want to watch what I produce I am going to be a you know free of the of the burden of the studio it'll be fantastic I will never have to worry about imposter syndrome or you know getting feet through the door ever again just at that moment where I thought that everything was coming great everything was ready to to be resolved I discovered that photography on YouTube is all about gear it's all about lenses people don't really know about Avidon and Pen and all the other greats of photography they didn't really go looking for them so you have to work really hard to get views through the door those two weeks that I'd spent previously you know just happy making videos not really worrying about whatever people were going to say because very few people actually saw them had turned into almost like a training camp for for my imposter syndrome that all of a sudden I felt that people were actually looking at me and and starting to maybe talk about me behind my back saying this Alex he doesn't know what he's talking about he's just ruffling on it's all nonsense and rubbish and at the same time thinking oh if I don't get any views through the door then you know views views views then I don't get paid and I found myself back in almost the same place as the studio I wasn't falling out of love with photography but I was struggling to find things to talk about that I thought other people wanted to hear that would get me views rather than being like I wanted back in the studio to photograph things for myself it had become just like like that convey about at the studio rather than surprisingly I fell off that treadmill of creating content day in day out trying to feed not the studio beast now but the youtube beast that summer of 21 I just I couldn't do anymore I collapsed I was doing what I told people in all the workshops I used to do with photography is to not create things just for sake of creating them I felt bad because by this point you know I was starting to rediscover my love for photography by sharing it with other people people like yourself and I felt that I was letting them down that that I was just creating well junkie content after that summer I went okay do you know I'm going to I'm going to do this properly I'm going to commit myself to creating content on a schedule and doing content that is worthy of being watched I know that people seem to love what it is that I do that there is definitely an appetite for it I was close to getting 50,000 subscribers I mean 50,000 the year before at this point I'd had well didn't even have a channel 50,000 was unheard of certainly I thought you know to get monetized puts you in the apparently the first the top 10% of all youtube channels so quite clearly there was people they wanted yearn for this kind of content that I was doing so it was time to to commit myself properly to this business because I was finding within it that I was enjoying the process I was enjoying connecting with people I was enjoying hearing back the you know the the wonderful feedback that I was getting I was discovering more about photography every single day because trying to make videos to encourage other people about photography means that hey you need to kind of go and discover more things yourself about photography as I committed to that schedule the views kept on going up they went up and they went up and they went up and I thought this is this is great once again I was being shown that this could be an actual career that you know that my dream of not having to think about that studio or going back to that studio because at this point the studio was still somewhat open albeit hit and miss given all the other lockdowns and things that we've been having that I was like that albatross that was around my neck was starting to disappear it was starting to fall off that albatross that was around my neck the studio was starting to be released and then of course my old friend imposter syndrome turned up again I had a couple of videos that were a bit of duds some people started making nasty comments on my videos and I thought rather typically like so many creative people do well this is if one person is saying this then then loads of people must think this that they are you know they're just talking about me and I started to doubt myself I started to second guess everything I did about the channel about the videos that I was making I was scrabbling around trying to find an identity trying to find something that worked and it was just the same as being at the studio I thought that I had found the way to release myself and once again I had run into a place where I felt completely out of control with my own well destiny once again I have found myself running into the places that I can see coming from a mile off and yet like a deer in the headlamps I just stand still as that train smacks me in the face in December 2020 I was getting like 500 views a day across the channel and in December 2021 I was getting like 15-20,000 views a radical difference but because I had crashed and given in to those thoughts in my head about the imposter syndrome about maybe people don't actually want to watch videos about the sort of thing that I want to produce talk about in photography then I just kind of gone uh I don't know and I sunk into once again this place of static inability to act by now I knew that I did not want to go back to the studio in fact I had actually closed the studio completely my my lease was up middle of the year previously and I'd sort of I'm denied about it and decided you know what actually I can't go back to the studio I have to commit myself to the channel to the photographic eye and the people who were supporting me I wasn't that far off 100,000 subscribers and I thought this will be my goal I need to get to 100,000 subscribers because that will be somehow validation that what I'm doing is actually meaningful that people are enjoying the photography because I am starting to enjoy the photography as well I found a new passion for it you know I've re-found my love for the for the whole process of of image making not just talking about it but also taking photographs so I went back to the to that treadmill and I stood at it and went look you know much like a new year's resolution I said I am going to get back on you but this time I am not going to let you run away with me and I made some videos and I got back on the horse and the views went up and they went up and and it was it was amazing I was like God this this is great and over that three months period I got so close so close to the 100,000 and then one day it's like it ticked over and it was 100,000 subscribers surely now everything would be happy much like when I uploaded that very first video I don't know what I expected to see or happen when I got to 100,000 subs maybe trumpets from heaven or I don't know something but what happened was I felt just completely deflated and I worried once again that the photography and talking about the kind of photography that I enjoyed that I had refound the passion for was not enough views started dribbling away again as soon as I started doing videos about you know individual photographers all the things that I'd started off with all the things that I loved at the beginning of my journey with photography when I did those that YouTube just kind of went no once again I had to turn to videos to feed the beast that same sometimes occasionally bordered on sensationalist because we are living through the age of the sensationalist YouTube title just to get videos out to get bums on seats views on the screen to keep that counter ticking over it started with a comment on one of the videos that they said Alex you look tired you look mentally broken and they hit the nail on the head my wife had said similar she said you are burning yourself out you are constantly making videos just to keep it going it is no better than when you were at the studio I realized that yes I was actually getting into a worse place and that what I needed to find was some balance and I got tasters of how to create that balance to make videos about the content that I wanted to talk about the photographers the the way that photography has meaning and a depth beyond your lenses and senses right kind of stuff and but also at the same time creating videos that had a wider appeal so we could bring this message to people who don't know who Penn is or Avidon is and say to him look you know you've enjoyed photography now look at how deeper it goes come with us on this rabbit hole of enjoyment into the the pictures because this is this is what photography is all about this is where the love of photography that balance comes in that the the self-imposter self-imposter the imposter syndrome is starting to go away because I am now more at peace with the idea from teaching and talking to people like yourself that you know it doesn't really matter what other people think that making videos to inspire people's passion is where my real where my real passion in photography lies is is passing on the the expertise the knowledge the experiences that I have accumulated through photo school through being a professional photographer through the yes the depth the the the despair that photography had put me into but now it's great to be able to sit here talking to you through this this camera in my lounge you and the other five and a half and eighty six million people who've watched the videos it's it blows my mind I find it crazy that photography broke me it broke me so much that I wanted nothing to do with it and now it has given me a opportunity to talk and connect with people about something that I really love in a way that I could not have imagined all those years ago pacing up and down in that tiny studio feeling like photography was a cage that would keep me trapped there to fulfill your ability totally as a creative person you need to be brave you need to learn those lessons that I had forgotten and to do so click on the video over here thank you all ever so much for watching and I'll see you again soon