If you’re doing what you love, it isn’t work at all. I know this has been said a million times, but let me give you yet another example. I am an artist, a member of the International Travel Writers & Photographers Alliance. Being the official photographer for the Haunted Graham Mansion’s spooky tours (THE HAUNTED MANSION, THE TRAIL OF TERROR, THE APOCALYPTIC NUCLEAR WARHEAD, THE PSYCHO WARD, THE BLOODY BARN and CLOWN HOUSE) is an entertaining “job”.
It’s every photographer’s dream to have these interesting subjects to capture just that perfect action shot. Visit the Facebook page to see more of my work. Photographing in the dark when you can’t see the subject is challenge enough, let alone those subjects running from their captors. I’ve actually had to reach out and touch the subjects’ hands or faces to be sure I’m pointing the camera at the correct spot when I’m taking cast members’ photographs.
I’m dog-tired at the end of each Friday and Saturday from the last weekend in September to the first weekend in November. Running all over the property, catching characters in their stations or manic beings and demented clowns spooking customers waiting in line for the tour is the best exercise I get. Then there’s the energy-draining time in the General Store photographing people in the coffin or family group shots on the Red Throne when customers get to act out their fantasies with daggers and chains or giant spiders and rubber rats. Occasionally, a demonic clown with a chain saw will help create the fantasies that I get to photograph with the merrymakers. It is usually midnight before I leave.
Energy draining. Yes. Pure enjoyment. For sure!