Photographers, especially aspiring ones like myself, can easily end up living inside a photographic bubble. A bubble in which so much of what we read, think, and talk about revolves around the act and mechanics of making pictures. While this may be okay at first because it allows us to learn the important aspects of photography, it is not a bubble we can live in long term because we eventually lose focus of why we started taking pictures in the first place.

I came to the realization recently that I had been living in such a bubble for the last four years. For four years, I was more concerned with things like raw vs jpeg then I was about my enjoyment of taking pictures. I was more concerned with my editing software then I was about why I took a particular picture. And most importantly, I was more concerned with capturing the perfect image then I was about preserving the perfect moment. Coming to this realisation has helped me get myself out of this photographic bubble. It has helped me to rediscover the joy of photography and to step back so I can see the bigger picture.

It’s been four years since I first saw the world through a viewfinder. In that time, I’ve spend more dollars on gear than I like to admit, gone through more iterations of my blog than I can count, and crawled out of more creative ruts than I can remember. I really have no idea if I’m a better photographer or any more creative than I was four years ago, but I do know that I’ve learned a great deal about myself. And that, for me, is one of the most important thing to come out of these past four years.

Going forward, I really have no idea what lies ahead for me creatively. I feel like I’m at a point where I’m shooting less, writing less, and sharing less (as you can probably tell). But for the first time, I don’t feel like any of this is a result of being stuck in a creative rut. It’s simply my acceptance of the need not to force things. I don’t feel as much pressure to take pictures when I don’t see anything interesting and I don’t feel the need to write when I have nothing to say. This doesn’t mean I plan to abandon the current iteration of my blog. I will continue to post pictures that I see fit to share and write when the mood strikes. What I do plan to do, however, is to give myself the leeway to do so as much or little as I like.