Day 200 Crisis & Winter in Color

365 Days Project can get damn difficult, that’s for sure!

Of course it gives a lot of pleasure, improves your photo skills, gets you motivated and what is the most important kicks you out of your warm, comfy house into the cold, moisty evening to take a shot. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t complain, I love it overally, but man, everyone comes up against a brick wall. I saw myself approaching that brick wall around Day 200, of course there had been few smaller walls before that one, but this was the biggest so far. To cut long story short: I wasn’t feel like going out at all, not talking about taking shots. I had this feeling like I am taking shots all the time, 24/7 and when finally left the house I had no idea what to shoot, I was wandering the streets with no inspiration or purpose whatsoever. Of course I took some shots finally but it was a really painful shooting. If I had to draw a graph of my motivation level during those 200 days, I guess it would go up from Day 1 to 37, then it would go down, to go up again from around Day 58 (that is when I started to shoot with X100T instead of Canon 5D classic). From then it would be more of up’s than down’s until around Day 200. I wasn’t satisfied with anything that I shot, Day 200 and Urban Skywalker was in my opinion a very decent shot, but then I wasn’t feeling like taking any pictures. I also felt bad physically, as again I was sick, together with my kid who caught pneumonia. I didn’t catch that, only flu-like disease, however it decreased my overall motivation to zero.

Of course I could take a shot of my feet, or a sandwich, but I don’t do it, I just don’t because I want to practice every single day, and taking a shot of a sandwich won’t make me better in street/urban photography I guess. So what I did to come back to living ones? I reviewed my shots from 365 that I had taken so far and guess what? There were a lot of decent shots that I took when feeling not too great and I really like those shots, so I told myself one of this motivation talks like “you can do it” etc. And you know what? It didn’t help! Looking at great photographer’s portfolios at that time it is also not a good idea.

What you have to do is to answear the question: Why am I doing it? What will I get from it? I am doing it to get better, every single photo walk will make me better that is 100% sure! Ok I didn’t feel like walking on the street so I started to think how can I use my photo skills to overcome this and I enetered the church (no, not to pray for inspiration), but to take a shot – look at earlier post – > “M” Switch
What I am trying to say is: believe in your photography craft, your skills and inspiration will come. I had situations like this quite often – I was at  the right location, nothing happened, and out of the sudden – a perfect light came up or a perfect human element appeared out of nowhere. Sure, sometimes nothing will happen, you will be standing somewhere with your finger on the shutter button and nothing will happen but that’s how it is, the thing is – you really have to try to come to terms with it, don’t fight it, willing too hard may do more harm than good.

Photography reflects your life and sometimes it’s good to go with the flow.

After few lousy days I was very happy when I yesterday saw snow outside my window. Snow/Rain/Fog adds up +10 to my motivation level as I love to take shots in such conditions. My head is full of ideas in such weather and I can’t wait to go out and shoot. That day I took some “color snow” shots and I will choose the last one presented here as my Day 210.