:: visual connections ::

If you’re like me, there are plenty of times during which you go without picking up your camera, and no, I don’t mean the times when you close your eyes to sleep.  This kind of thing happens to me a LOT.   Lack of motivation?  Lack of opportunity?  Doesn’t matter.  The only thing that matters is that you’re not shooting.

Don’t get me wrong.  Not shooting isn’t necessarily a bad thing, unless shooting is what you do for a living and you’re on the verge of getting tossed out of your well-appointed home because of the aforementioned lack of production.  For the average hobbyist, the photographic equivalent of writer’s block is merely irritating, and not in any way life-changing.  But there are ways around almost any roadblock, if you care to find the one that works best for you.

How do you get out of your slump?  Shoot.  That’s easy.  How do you make yourself shoot?  Not always so easy.  If it were that easy, we’d all be shooting the lights out every single day.  There are plenty of things that you can try — most of which luckily turn out to be lots of fun.

• You can carry your equipment with you everywhere.  It actually surprises me that there are large numbers of hobbyists that carry their stuff everywhere with them.  Me, I have two bagsful of equipment.  If I ever actually mean to carry everything I really want to carry everywhere I go, I’ll have to hire a pack mule.  What might be better if you’re an SLR shooter could just be to open up your creative options by shooting one camera with one prime lens.  It’s hard to explain just what doing that teaches you about how to see differently.  But if you ever choose to do it, you’ll know exactly what I mean.  You could also switch from carrying a digital body to carrying a film body (or vice versa).  You don’t necessarily have to buy a new camera to do this type of thing — you can doubtless borrow one from a crony who’s in a slump, just like you are.  What I will tell you is this … the price of film SLRs has dropped considerably since the explosion of popularity on the digital side of things, and film bodies can be had for a song (and perhaps a dance or two).  My 35mm film SLR, an old Pentax Spotmatic SP500, cost me the princely sum of five dollars, complete with a very nice 55mm f/2 Takumar multi-coated prime lens.  If you want to spend a bit more, and if you care to experiment in other ways, Diana and Holga cameras are fairly cheap and will definitely provide you with a novel shooting experience.  Coolest thing about shooting film?  Telling people “no” when they ask to see the photo you just shot.
• You could do a project of some kind.  There are definitely plenty of ways to keep yourself engaged and interested behind the lens.  The photo-a-day hobby horse is always capable of bearing one more rider.  Some do daily self-portraits, while others choose not to restrict their subject matter at all.  The main thing?  Pick up the camera and take a photo every day without fail.  It’s helpful to remember that you’re not going to make a piece of art every single day you shoot.  If  you want to limit your scope, shoot a photo every hour that you’re awake for a single day.  Other options include shooting the alphabet, which is something I’ve never done.  If you really want to grit your teeth about doing an alphabet project, give yourself a deadline to have every letter covered, or try to shoot the alphabet in order.  Bring your dictionary with you when “Q” day rolls around, though.  Scavenger hunts can be fun, although you’re typically going to involve someone other than yourself to either create the list of objects to be photographed or to help you find them, or even to compete against you to see who can complete their list first.  In a variation of the scavenger hunt concept, you can take a paper bag and fill it with slips of paper upon which are written various abstract ideas, or the names of random objects.  The game then would be to draw a slip of paper from the bag, then to spend the day taking photographs that show or express the object or concept that’s written on the slip of paper.
• Find a group of like-minded souls and get together for a photo walk.  Make sure that the walk ends at a pub or restaurant, though!  Although the act of taking photos is by its nature a solitary sort of undertaking, it seems that having agreeable company nearby makes the process more enjoyable at least, if not easier.
• I also tend to draw inspiration from other forms of art, and (if the truth be told) from other photographers.  I shoot photos that remind me of song lyrics or of snippets of poetry.  I shoot homages to other photographers’ work.  These things tend to get me absorbed and engaged enough to be excited about picture-making again.

And the end, I think that the common thread at the root of all my suggestions is that you should try to enjoy your photography again — to find new ways to recapture the sense of enchantment and entrancement that you felt when you first picked up a camera and discovered what happens when you press the shutter release.  The final result isn’t always going to be art, nor should you expect it to be.  What it should be is fun, and your focus should be to reclaim that aspect of your hobby!