Shooting vacations are tricky. You have a good time while you are vacationing. You come home, sit in front of your computer hoping to find small photographic treasures. After a week at home, and the same week spent playing around with the files you've shot, there is a let down. Almost a frustration. The dissonance of not being out there photographing now. And you find yourself planning the next adventure. Maybe building on the new directions you took on the last one. Shifting your vision around based on the feedback last week's images impart.
The interesting thing to me in being of a certain age and having enough of everything is that as your sense of security and your bucket of free time grows you find that the passion you had for making your art takes a hit. Is it because planning well for life's inevitable bumps robs the process of its necessary friction? Or does one hit a place at which you think you discover that it's all meaningless anyway? All the photographing and all of the looking and walking.
I like to think it's temporary. The sense of disillusion. That it's just post-vacation disquiet. That the next trip will revitalize my interests.
I wonder if other photographers go through this. I presume they do. The loss of motivation scares me more than most challenges. Because, I think, after 45 years of doing photography I've built a whole life around the various imperatives of being a photographer. It's an identity. A constant.
Interested to hear if you've experienced this kind of slump. And how you fixed it. If you did.
I sure hope you did....
8 comments:
I let the time pass. Something else comes along.
A vacation is a break in time. Normal to feel out of time and place afterwards. Travelling to a different place in a different time zone in a blink of an eye is not a normal thing for a human. We just think it's normal because we do it so often.
Thanks Robert!
The bucket of free time has, indeed grown, as I have moved into the initial phase of leaving my longtime (non-photographic) work/career situation. Meanwhile, vacation, while enjoyable, for a time seemed to be followed by an unfamiliar, slightly unmoored feeling–tomorrow was no longer a “school day.” Going out, taking photographs and trying to come home with images with content or context that I had never considered before, has been helpful. So, too, the advice of a retired (old) friend: “You’ll grow into it.”
Sometimes I scoff at the lengths some landscape photographers go to get the photograph they envision. Driving hundreds of miles and sleeping on the ground in hopes of a cloud inversion when the light is perfect on a scene they have visited many times before. Only to return home with an image different from the one in their mind's eye and still revel in the process. I envy them. My mind's eye seems blind to photography. Snapiness rules.
Yes, I often go through a photographic slump. I fix it by going to my second expensive hobby, music. You can spend as much or more on a nice guitar as on a good camera, and you have to keep playing it or you lose your ability to do so, especially as you get older. So that's your solution, Kirk. I don't think swimming counts, though; not expensive enough, and you can't really fondle a wet towel. But maybe you can buy a pool table; then you and MJ can compare tips about the best cues or something. LOL!
I just returned from two weeks in Paris with an X100. I found that the longer I was there the more I ended up using my iPhone camera, enjoying the immediacy of being able to rapidly post on social media. I’ve barely looked at my x100 files since I’ve returned
D. Wayne, funny how different photographers are. I used my iPhone sparingly and never posted anything on social media while traveling. Nothing. I've barely looked at the files from my phone since I've returned.
nice pix. In reply, I don't know Kirk - but come on out to California for a trip. Do the N Ca coast any time (&Napa). Do the mountains in the summer months!
Blessings
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