The Fun Years

Most sports go through it. Maybe every sport does. The fun years when there’s not so much money involved, not many participants are professionals, it’s a ‘minority sport’, not taken seriously. And that seems to me to be the most fun time to be involved. There’s a relatively small but supportive community, people know each other at least on a local basis. There’s more encouragement and exploration than competition. I remember it well in mountain biking and maybe it still persists to an extent in some less-mainstream sports like skateboarding and climbing.

In most ways it’s long gone in photography, although maybe existing at different times in different genres, like the NY street photography scene in the 70’s. Maybe it’s revived a little in film photography, although the costs are getting high.

What about videography? Full cinematography has obviously been fully professional with Hollywood and private finance for a long time. But YouTube has generated it’s own genre, the Vlog, and enough revenue to support many vloggers. And it looks like it’s been fun, that there’s community and support. Is there much of that left now that the more successful channels have invested in dedicated studios and high quality recording gear? I hope so. I hope it can maintains some of that ‘kids having fun’ feel that skateboarding seems to keep, regardless of age and skill level.