How My Sugar Baby Helped Me Master Professional Photography

When I retired from a career in investment banking, all of my buddies told me that I was entering my golden golf days. It was either that, apparently, or sailing.

The problem is, though, that I find golf incredibly boring, and I have a debilitating fear of the ocean. So, if I wanted to fill my days with something, I was going to have to find a hobby out of the norm for older guys like myself.

I tried a lot of things: hiking (too much silence), horseback riding (too uncomfortable), old cars (too complicated), and even choir singing (just not my thing, in the end)

Finally, I landed on more creative projects. I took up pottery for a while and highly enjoyed it before losing interest. I tried my hand at woodworking. I took an oil painting class.

After trying hobby after hobby and worrying that maybe I was going to have to fill my days with consulting or apply for a teaching position at my alma mater, I found photography, mostly by accident.

I was browsing my local vintage store and found an old Canon AE-1. I didn’t know anything about photography, but I thought the old camera would look good on my shelf. And when I brought it to the counter, the shopkeeper whistled approvingly. He told me that it was still in good working condition, a rare find for photographers who liked shooting on old school cameras.

I was intrigued and decided to try it out for myself, falling down a rabbit hole of YouTube videos on Canon and film development. It was pretty overwhelming at first, and I wasted a whole lot of film on terrible photos. I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to do this on my own, so I started taking classes at my local community college.

Around this time, I still found that I was just kind of floating through my days without much rhyme or rhythm, and I needed something to get me out of bed in the morning. I tried dating; after all, for many years, I blamed my bachelorhood on being too busy at the firm to have a wife. But that was a flop. So, I tried sugar dating, and that changed everything.

Coincidentally, my first sugar baby, Indie, was a professional photographer. Or maybe it’s not a coincidence. She advertised the fact in her online profile and, since I was taking classes myself, it caught my eye. If anything, I figured it would give us something to talk about on our first date.

Cut to three hours into our first date, after a quick coffee meet-up had turned into a walk through the neighborhood, which had turned into dinner. We just couldn’t stop talking. Indie wasn’t only knowledgeable about photography, but she was also funny, empathic, and very pretty in her own unique way. I found her completely fascinating and decided that I wasn’t about to end this date before she was ready to end it herself.

She was particularly interested in the Canon AE-1 and what I had managed to shoot on it. I had to tell her that I wasn’t just being humble. Every three out of four pictures that I took were absolute garbage, and I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong.

And then she said those magic words, “Maybe I can teach you sometime.”

So, we started talking about what kind of sugar relationship we might be interested in creating together. And we decided that her teaching me some photography skills would definitely be part of the relationship.

I won’t get into the specific details of what it’s been like to date Indie. She’s a lovely, artsy girl who deserves to be talked about respectfully. But I can share some of the tips that she helped me develop during our time together. Tips that led me to getting my photos in an art gallery within months, all thanks to her:

Finding the right exposure

One thing that Indie made sure to drill into me early was to learn the basics of exposure. It was clear from my photos, she told me bluntly, that I was struggling with the lighting. Some of my photos were coming out completely washed out, while others were full of shadows.

Learning about the elements of exposure, namely the shutter speed and aperture, was my first homework assignment. She wanted me to practice taking photos on very sunny days and overcast days with different shutter speeds so that I could find the right setting through trial and error.

Framing issues

I think it’s common for beginners like myself to go out with our cameras and take pictures of everything that we think is pretty or interesting. But Indie explained that it’s not really about trying to capture what we see but rather to imagine how what we see will translate to a photograph. And that means learning about composition.

One exercise that we would do would be to look at a photograph that I had taken, and I would have to justify every element in the photo. In other words, if I included a tree here, it was because I felt like it balanced this boulder, over here. If I allowed a person to walk through the frame, that person would have to add value to my composition in some way. It got really technical, and sometimes even frustrating, but I think it made me more selective about what made it into the shot.

Being too precious with my film

As I got to be pickier about things like lighting and composition, Indie warned me about another common mistake that beginners make: being too precious with film. After all, film is expensive, and every bad shot felt like wasted money. I don’t like wasting money. So I would find myself hesitating about taking a picture because I was convinced that it wouldn’t be a good one.

But Indie put it into perspective for me, “Let’s say that you hire a personal trainer because you want a six-pack. So, you work out with the trainer every week, and you pay the trainer every session. But for weeks and months, you don’t have a six-pack yet. The thing is, you don’t start paying the trainer only after you see the results. And, you don’t start paying for film when you’re already a professional photographer. You have to be willing to pay for the journey. And the more you work out, and the more you practice taking photos, the closer you’ll be to your goal. But you have to start investing before you see results.”

Editing the scans

I had this idea in my head that once I pressed the shutter on a film camera, that was it. That was the photo I was stuck with. But Indie let me know that I was, once again, wrong.

She introduced me to the world (and honestly, a completely separate skillset) of film scan editing. This was a chance to fix minor problems, like adjusting the white balance and exposure, that I hadn’t noticed in my viewfinder.

I’m not someone who really enjoys technology, so I’ll admit that this part of the learning process was like pulling teeth. But I did see the difference that it could make in transforming my shots from amateur pictures to professional art pieces.

A year after Indie taught me her photography secrets

Indie was there for my first art exhibit at a tiny little gallery that happens to be owned by a friend of mine. And she was so supportive and excited about seeing my photos up on the wall. To be honest, I still felt like my photos were amateurish, but I appreciated her enthusiasm. It made me realize that I really had come a long way since she started teaching me about photography.

As for Indie, she’s had even more success, selling various pieces to big-name magazines and being featured as an up-and-coming artist in the area. I’ve been pushing her, as well, to consider creating tutorials online for an extra income stream, something she’s been wanting to do for a while. I told her that if she could teach a stubborn, old investment banker to see the world through her lens, everyone would be better off for it.

And I really do mean that.