Unsupported

I just came across an email conversation I had with a family member about doing a free portrait session for their newborn a few months ago.  Since I'm related to the father (a paternal cousin), I kept the dialogue going with him as I didn't know his wife very well.

Basically, I made my pitch, gave him everything for free and I explained to him that in order to capture the best possible images, this session would need to happen in the first two to three weeks after the baby was born.  In  response, I received the "Let me think about it" email.  All I could do was respect his wishes and wait.

Three weeks ago, I received an email forwarded from my father via my cousin's mother.  It was a grainy, poorly exposed picture of my cousin's newborn baby which was probably taken with a cell phone camera while at the hospital.  Taken two weeks prior to that email.  I wasn't even on the list of people to be informed of my cousin's new child.  I was hurt, incredibly hurt, by this omission.  And, of course, nothing has been decided about the portrait session whose window of opportunity has since expired.

Re-reading the email just reopened the wound again and it forced me to realize that my family members are not proponents of my chosen career as a photographer.  Sure, it's a risky and difficult career path.  Yet, when I pick up a camera, I can't put into words how happy it makes me.  My clients often note how I'm always smiling as I take their portraits.

Before anyone can observe that I try finding work in the field I was educated in, I can tell you that I have been employed as an engineer.  It was the most unsatisfying and lonely experience in my life.  I worked on projects with military applications and for as long as I live, I'll never be able to talk about what I did.  How do you describe the feel of a work environment where each engineer worked alone for long hours and could never discuss what they did, even to other coworkers?

While I am a private person, I still require some human interaction.  I still want to have reasons to smile and laugh at silly things.  And I want to be able to speak proudly about the work that I do.  Not to mention the occasional gushing comments of how great my work is, as I do have some small vestige of vanity.

To discover through a back channel this news of a new addition to my family sphere is disheartening.  To see the crappy image that accompanied that announcement is like a back handed slap to the face.  To receive a response that they need time to think about it when it becomes clear that they really wanted to say "No" is a declaration of how little enthusiasm and support I get from my own family.

I have to admit that episodes like this make me wonder why I chose to put family as a priority in the first place.  Other than saying it here in anonymous fashion, they shall never learn of what I truly feel about their actions as I debate with myself on the benefit of having family at all.  If I can take classified secrets to the grave, than this should be no hardship at all.

As an addendum to this, I can and do see the other side of the story.  Perhaps he forgot about it or his wife didn't want to have her first baby subject to pictures so soon.  Maybe he still wants to have these pictures taken, but had to get something out to satisfy their parents desire to see their grandchild.  It could be that my level of expectation that family members will put family first is too high.  It doesn't change my feelings over this right now and the opportunity to do this portrait session is past recovering.