It's been awhile since I picked up the real camera. And any of you other photographers / bloggers might relate - pulling out your beast of a camera for every day life, when compared to the convenience of pulling a phone out of your pocket, you wonder - is it really worth lugging it around?
Long story short, over the past couple of years I went through a big time creative burnout. I wonder if every creative goes through this. I don't know how it happened, either, or how to prevent it from happening in the future. But I really just got so burned out (and on top of it, last fall our garage / car were broken into and a lot of my gear was stolen) that I decided to quit it all, forever. I planned on selling my camera. I never touched it, ever. The love was gone.
So it has probably been about 5 months since I used my camera personally - or I should say, since I've wanted to. I started using it out of necessity because my phone storage was ALWAYS FULL (even after deleting hundreds of photos!! Anyone else!?!) and I would begrudgingly pull out the real camera because I knew I would always have enough storage on there. And then in the past week, suddenly.... I want to take photos again. It feels wonderful. And I'm still taking it in small doses but it feels in some way like healing after a really hard injury. I'm not up for taking clients just yet but I will, soon. For now I just need to get back into stretching my creative legs and learning to love taking photos once more. :)
If you are experiencing burnout, I get it. I don't know if anyone knows how to advise the burned-out creative, either. My only solution was just to give it time. I needed a very real break. And I needed to remember when I loved photography - I reminded myself of the times I loved it the most, the shoots I was happiest with. Give yourself an opportunity to start over and cut things out of your life that you know will bring you back into a place of burnout (for example, as special as weddings are, and as much as I love wedding cake, I cannot shoot them any more). I really believe God gives us passions and it's up to us to nurture and cultivate them, because just running out there and using them to make money off of them without balancing your creative side might not be the best self-care! I have no problem using your skill set to make money off of them, please don't misunderstand - you just might have to take extra care to keep your creativity fulfilled at the same time. :)
Last night we went to Scottsdale for a shoot and afterwards, we just had a little family time in that courtyard area behind the Saguaro, if you know where that is. It was perfect. I love this little family of ours, and I'm thankful to Josh for being my best friend in life to support me through this creative drought I've been in, and to encourage me as I'm coming out of it.
And I didn't take ONE iPhone photo the whole time.
