My Yearly Treat: Photography Monthly Subscription

Yes, I know, we’re meant to start the New Year by cutting back unnecessary spending in order to keep our finances frugal at least for the first few months of the year, but what is unnecessary spending? If you believe the ‘sort out your finances’ gurus, anything vaguely leisure related surely has to go!

However, I don’t smoke; I exercise without paying extortionate monthly membership fees for a gym I don’t use; my social life revolves largely around that of my kids (which everyone knows leaves little time for anything else); I don’t belong to an expensive book club – I’m happy to wait for desired titles to pop up in the library and who needs to rent DVDs when Love Film offer a range of titles and free membership offers all over the place? In short, I don’t payout unnecessarily, and items I do fork out my hard-earned cash for are those I regard as essential to a happy home or work-life.

Enter then my photography monthly magazine subscription! If the gurus had their way, this would have been waved goodbye to at the year’s end, but this is my one vice that’s more than leisure: it’s a vital learning tool for my one hobby - in fact, for freelance creative-type working; this publication often acts usefully a work-related mentor.

With every new issue that springs from my Photography Monthly subscription I am perfectly capable of reining myself in so that I don’t succumb to the mental wish list that develops each time there’s a review of the latest must-have camera, instead I’m happy considering the new ideas and techniques suggested and demonstrated within each issue and trying them out on my old faithful digi-crock of the camera species!

Doing so in the last year earned me extra income by submitting impressive snaps to image libraries and enhanced traffic to my blog which was sitting pretty with a wealth of original images courtesy of an old camera with new ideas! I was also able to gain a commission for a written article on the strength of having just the pics to go with it; saving the magazine have the additional costs of photography to illustrate the article! Lastly, one image also earned the whole family shortlisted status in a national competition, which meant spending a fantastic morning with an award winning wildlife photographer taking pictures for the final (tells you all you need to know about my family)!

Seriously, there’s economy and there’s false economy: if the ‘leisure’ item you are paying out for gives total value for money then it’s viable and cost effective, even before considering how much it brings to your work-related skills and leisure-pleasure! For me, it’s my Photography Monthly subscription – what’s yours for 2011?