Demotivating Effect of Winter
Winter is my least favourite time of the year. Yes we have the likes of Christmas and New Year to lift our spirits but from a photography point of view I find it depressing. The rain, cold, grey skies and short hours of sunlight make for a depressing time for me. I know a lot of photographers absolutely love winter, mainly the landscape photography types, and they revel in the frosty landscapes, snow and foggy mornings. They get up at un-Godly hours and lie in fields waiting to grab their shot. Not for me. As a predominantly street photographer I like towns and cities where people roam and present themselves to be photographed. Many say coming up with reasons not to take photos is just an excuse for laziness and the lack of self application and they are probably right. My motivation tends to dip at this time of year though and I haven’t taken many photos at all. I am not lazy as I have been very busy doing other things so it seems the lack of self application, due to my dislike for the winter season, is the root cause.
The fact that I am not out there pounding the streets taking photos is something I am comfortable with because as I mentioned I have lots to occupy me outside of photography at the moment.. I know some photographers who would be totally stressed out because they haven’t been producing new work on a daily basis to post to Facebook, Instagram or whatever, and fear that they will lose followers or likes because of that. The concept of slipping from the daily photo feed and becoming irrelevant really worries them. Thankfully I don’t let this sort of thing creep into my workflow and I am completely content with what I do. I do it for me, nobody else, so if I don’t pick up the camera for weeks then there is no stress as I know that when the clocks change I will be back in the game.
On a similar theme, I saw discussion on-line recently regarding taking photos on a family holiday. In years gone by we would have packed the family Kodak Instamatic, a couple of rolls of film and a pack of flash cubes (remember them?) and head off on our travels. Our aim was to record the holiday and end up with a couple of envelopes of prints (and negatives), that we could show off to friends on our return. The question was, “does anyone take a camera on holiday with them any more?”
As expected, many people responded by saying that they just used their phone camera to take photos of the family and scenic shots etc. I responded likewise but also mentioned that I also took my camera bag with my Fuji X-T5 body and a couple of lenses. What I did not admit to was that having taken my kit to Tenerife last year …TWICE, I never took one shot with it. It stayed in the bag the whole holiday each time and was never used. This made me think. I have said I don’t like taking photos in winter due to it being cold and miserable. Why then when I go to a warm climate with long sunny days does the camera stay in the bag?
In a way the magic has gone from sharing our holiday snaps. On the other hand, it may be a relief. There was nothing worse than the phrase “Do you want to see my holiday photos?” and 6 envelopes of prints get lifted out of a drawer each containing 36 shots. It used to really annoy me when people left the out of focus, poorly exposed and blank shots in the pile. Nowadays either a laptop comes out or a post is put on Facebook with the dreaded “+76” over the photos in the post. I have boxes in my loft full of envelopes containing prints from holidays and events from years gone past. They will exist until someone decides they need to be binned. I wonder what will happen to all the SIM cards and Cloud repositories holding our family history and memories?
I’m hoping that over the coming months that I will get back on track and head out and about with the camera. I will be trying to keep the fortnightly blog posts going and start reviewing my archives again for anything I have missed that could be of interest. The website needs a bit of work done on it too. One thing I haven’t touched yet is my archive of aviation photography. I spent a lot of time in the 70s and 80s taking shots of civil and military aircraft at airports and air show events. Most of these aircraft are now either retired or existing in heritage museums. Some have gone forever. I am looking forward to reminding myself what aircraft I had been photographing around 45 years ago!