I recently read an article that highlights three different types of hobbies you need to live an enriching life. Photography is surely one of the most popular hobbies today, practiced as it is by a huge number of people around the world. So how does photography enrich your life?
The Three Types of Hobbies
Hobbies bring us more than simple enjoyment. They help us maintain balance, providing structure, purpose, and personal growth. While people may gravitate toward different types of activities, a truly enriching life includes hobbies in three categories: physical exercise, creative expression, and intellectual pursuits. Each of these plays a role in maintaining mental and physical well-being.
Exercise
Physical activity is essential for a healthy mind and body. It boosts our mood, sharpens our focus, and strengthens our mental health. Engaging in exercise helps regulate emotions, relieves stress, and improves cognitive function. However, exercise does not have to equate to grueling workouts at the gym or high-intensity training. Moderate activities like walking or swimming provide many of the health benefits without risking the injuries associated with high-impact sports and the like.
Creativity
Beyond physical well-being, people thrive when they have a creative outlet. Expressing oneself through visual art, music, writing, or other mediums helps process emotions, reduces anxiety, and cultivates happiness. Creative hobbies offer a sense that life is worthwhile by allowing individuals to explore new ideas or bring their vision to life. By fostering this sense of purpose, individuals can find meaning in small moments or grand experiences, in joyful times or deep sadness. Engaging in artistic pursuits has even been linked to improved immune system function!
Intellectual Pursuits
Keeping the mind engaged is just as important as maintaining physical and emotional well-being. Intellectual hobbies keep our minds sharp, curious, and engaged with the world around us. These encompass a broad range of activities, including reading, learning new skills, and engaging in puzzles or similar challenges. Pursuing intellectual hobbies helps develop problem-solving skills, enhances memory, and keeps the mind sharp and engaged.
Photography as the Ultimate Hobby
Photography is distinctive in that it interweaves all three of these hobby types. It is an art form, physical exercise, and an intellectual pursuit all at once, making it an exceptional choice for those seeking a fulfilling and multi-faceted activity.
Photography as Exercise
Many styles of photography naturally encourage physical movement. Street and urban photography often involve hours of walking in search of compelling compositions. It is equally common for landscape and wildlife photography to require trekking through forests, climbing hills, or hiking to more remote locations. Any outdoor photography genre is likely to include scouting trips, which turn out to be more about exercise than creating any photos! Even a more casual approach to outdoor photography leads to more time spent in nature, increasing exposure to fresh air and sunlight while providing many of the benefits of gentle exercise.
Photography as a Creative Outlet
At its core, photography is an art form. It allows individuals to express their unique perspectives, translating emotions and observations into compelling images. While technical skills matter, it regularly involves letting go of judgments and simply enjoying the process of creating photos. This judgment-free zone is where photography shines as a creative hobby, enabling us to enjoy the mental health benefits this type of activity offers.
Photography as a Mental Exercise
Photography engages the brain in deep and constant ways. It involves continuous learning—whether studying new techniques, understanding equipment, or exploring the work of other photographers. Additionally, photography often leads to a deeper appreciation of related subjects. A nature photographer might develop knowledge of local plant life, while a travel photographer may learn about different cultures, history, or architecture. Beyond learning, the act of composing an image itself can be an intellectual puzzle—considering light, composition, and timing to create a visually compelling photograph.
Final Thoughts
Few hobbies are as holistic as photography. It combines physical activity, creativity, and intellectual stimulation into one deeply rewarding pursuit. Photography even encourages the development of complementary hobbies—some photographers train their bodies for long hikes to reach remote landscapes, while others may immerse themselves in the study of natural sciences or history to enhance their work.
Whether photography is your only hobby or part of a broader set of interests, its ability to enrich and expand your life is undeniable. It keeps you moving, thinking, and creating, all while deepening your connection to the world around you. In that way, photography might just be the only hobby you’ll ever need.
If photography is your only hobby, you don't have much to be creative or intellectual about.
Interesting perspective Mark Sawyer, although I'm not sure I agree. If photography is your hobby, it means that presumably you have another way of earning an income, which will give you different points of view and content to draw from. We're also all people with thoughts, feelings, emotions, histories, hopes, and dreams that we can funnel into our artwork. If someone chooses to have photography as their only hobby, I believe they can still create rich and rewarding work, even if it's only for themselves!
Perhaps we're just arguing semantics, but I think the more interests you have, the more interesting you will be as a person and (in photography's case), the more interesting your work will be. All you have to bring to it is what you are.
I combine Watercolour painting with photography. I took up painting about 10 years ago - having had photography as a hobby for over 30 years. I personally find that painting has helped me to improve my photography and helps me focus on certain aspects that perhaps I was overlooking before. Then I also find that bird-spotting has helped to improve my wildlife photography. So you for sure can have just photography as a hobby, but it can be improved by taking on other hobbies in addition (in my opinion).
Thanks for sharing your perspective Julian Phillips! Being exceptionally mediocre at other visual arts, I haven't tried to turn any into hobbies. I can definitely appreciate how picking up something like watercolour painting would enhance your photography, though. And I agree that by extending into other hobbies, we can learn skills or ways of seeing that will improve and enrich our photography!
It's the only hobby you need, because you'll be too poor for other hobbies 😂
Uneternal Van de Dood you might be right about that 😂
I agree about the too poor for anything else side of it. But there is also the time element. My wife and I have done a couple of weddings for family and friends and vowed to never do another after we experienced how much time it took to process the pictures. Even nature photography takes large amounts of time going through all the images, never mind the time trying to find good subjects in the right lighting. I spent 30 minutes in my back yard taking pictures of a dew covered plumeria at sunrise, and another couple of hours processing to end up with a handful of pretty darn good photographs, of which I think only 2 were worthy of being printed and hung.
The nice part is, one can choose how much money to spend and time to take. I was driving into town today after a thunderstorm and got a beautiful picture of a farm in front of the receiving storm. Really wished I had my real camera. Only took a few snaps before the scene was gone. Probably spend 10 minutes processing. If it's decent I'll hang it, if not it becomes a screensaver.
Is it a hobby for me? I don't know. But I enjoy the beauty of a great photograph and the pride I experience when it's mine
Thanks for sharing John Fox! It sure sounds like photography is a hobby for you, and that you've found where its value lies in your life. It sounds like it's very rewarding for you, which I think is the whole point!
And you are very right about the amount of time it takes after shooting. The more images you come back with, the harder it can be to figure out which ones to edit. Plus then the actual editing time!
Did you print the two photographs from the plumeria in your back yard?
Well yes a "HOBBY" for me for I started back in the 70's while deployed on a aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean when a retiring Frist Class took me under his wing to show the ropes of navy ops as well as Liberty calls. First a tour of Shore Patrol where I got to see the good, bad and ugly of how others spent their dollars. Second a low cost (MWR paid by funds of the Bad) to Rome over night and he had a camera and knew his way around Rome. Third in Naples there is a NATO store, no taxes, and a informed selection of a camera - A Canon Ftb it had a built in light meter and a nettle to put the aperture arm over and couple of lenses first cost one whole paycheck, can not remember the cost, and some rolls of day and night type film. I was a fast study with a manual and some books in the ships library. My job was working the flight deck during ops on night shift as a Aviation Electronics Tech. I was promoted to second class before others because I took the test when in "B" school so ahead of others and a leader of workers so not many friends so liberty calls were alone for I did not drink and pee my money down a drain. That is how I got started, yes with a job and photography for relaxing-I was told by my F First Class that Photography would later help to remember ALL the place.
OK, all that but more. i do not know how to say this without being laughed at, But over the many years it was like Mother Nature kind of put me in place where there was a good show and even today.
Yes a "HOBBYIST" is just that a free sprite just do what you want not stuck with just one genre it is more interesting if you spread your wings. I went on to retire and a second job so my hobby was set so i could get more cameras and gear limited to income. A little thing happened when Sony came to be and that was I had a black credit card that had been unknowingly getting points, so a A7SM1 and my old Film lenses worked with a $20 adapter and it came with an editing program Capture One. Luck or blessed I first captured a liner eclipse with it and a film lens next 6 months later with a 16-35mm I captured the unseen by eyes the Milky Way. I capture where I am at a time not traveling to and fro mother nature gives many shows everyday.
Photography is all things said here and that is a joy and I see say wedding photographers doing the same thing month after month year in and out not mention others kinda stuck in a loop, but envy them for the ability to make a living doing what they like, I was a machinist in a factory that would kept me in one place doing the same thing year after year. I am so blessed and with Photography following Mother Nature's shows over some 60 years with images of my life in many boxes with the most important thing , info of each on the back of every print for one day I will be in a home with my boxes of stories of a great life 70+ going on 80 and beyond with a camera somewhere near always. Sad thing is digital has nowhere to put the info for later in life without electricity and something to plug in and see.
1. Frist toys
2. Memories
3. New toys
4. Fun times in a dark sky place
Thanks for sharing how photography has been a companion on your life's journey EDWIN GENAUX! It sounds wonderful. And I think you'll find that here, and in many photographic communities, there are many people who share your feelings that Mother Nature just keeps on putting on a show for us!
I really appreciate how you've taken advantage of opportunities to buy or upgrade your gear. Buying your initial camera and lenses with the money you saved from not buying drinks, to using your credit card points to buy newer gear, really makes sense and in my opinion helps photography fit into our lives better as a hobby. I used credit card points for a trip last year, and I have another one coming up in May that is largely thanks to rewards as well!
Your comment about digital photography being a bit harder to view than prints also resonates with me. Do you print any of your digital photos, or have you mostly been keeping them on hard drives?
Tbh I don't think I'd survive with photography being the ONLY hobby I'd have simply because I get tired of things and need to switch to something else, then go back to the previous thing. However, I agree that photography is an amazing thing to do, both hobbywise and as a way to preserve memories. I enjoy the fact that I can both work on my editing and composition skills while making enough content for smartshow 3d slideshows me and my family would be rewatching 10+ years from now
I definitely understand the need to switch things up Catherine Bowlene! I find that I'll focus on different aspects of photography at different times. Or different subjects, styles, etc. That's one reason that photography is such a great hobby -- even if it isn't your only one!