Where have i been?

Hello again. I have been pretty quiet recently, but hopefully i will be more active again soon.

I did sort of lose my way a little when it comes to photography. When i came back to this after a break of a few years, my goal was to explore the “beauty in the mundane” philosophy, i found that to be really interesting and a whole new creative freedom to just do what felt right to me.

Unfortunately, my old negative influences reared their heads again. I started to feel that i needed more “hero” shots, my work wasn’t good enough, i had to stop wasting time on nonsense and go back to the big landscapes, the model photos, the type of picture that made people go “wow” (or at least that’s what i thought in my head). As a result of that, i stopped taking so many pictures. What’s the point unless it’s something breathtaking? I slowed down, to the point i didn’t even take my camera out with me for weeks.

I think the cause of this was social media. I had been feeling a bit flat, and so posted a few of my older pictures (the big landscape ones) and suddenly noticed that my views and likes and comments increased massively. That buzz was nice, so i posted some more, then i went out to take pictures that i thought “people will like”, and they did, my feedback went through the roof, for a time, it was exciting.

The downside of this was that i stopped posting anything i thought would be less than spectacular, I could only post shots that i knew would get loads of likes (those dreamy sunsets and dramatic street pictures), my other pictures, the ones that actually got me back into enjoying photography again, were suddenly no good.

Of course, that dopamine hit didn’t last long. For one thing, there are only so many “amazing” pictures you can have. I don’t have the luxury of being able to travel to stunning landscape areas every weekend, i don’t have the time to be waiting around for sunrises and sunsets, I also don’t have the time to walk around streets on my own for hours at a time waiting for the perfect shot. Soon my output slowed down and i didn’t have anything i thought good enough to post anymore.

The result of this was i ended up back where i started, “i’m just not good enough”, a familiar feeling, that every photographer goes through. The answer was staring me in the face, go back to the thing that sparked my love of photography again, go back to the one thing that actually made me feel liberated and happy to pick up a camera, and not weighed down with the expectation of “it has to be amazing”.

Hopefully i have now got that feeling back. It is a weird struggle. The thing i enjoy is taking quiet, small, maybe intimate or curious little pictures of daily life and things that you would otherwise ignore. Those are the things that make me stop and think, and that will be nostalgic to look back on years from now. Pictures of dramatic sunsets are great, but they probably don’t take you back to a certain time and place and feeling of an otherwise insignificant moment that brings back memories and feelings. That “pointless” picture of a door with a small vase of flowers at the bottom and the rusted sign above, will transport you back to that precise moment you took it twenty years from now, and other people looking at it might feel that same familiarity, that sense of belonging or simply a reminder that the world is full of special moments that are otherwise ignored.