The longest I’ve ever gone without taking a photo. Or, Update on the Update on The Update.

I feel like this blog has turned into a long series of me apologising for not updating the blog. In some sense it’s almost become comedic, and if it wasn’t such a pain from my point of view I’d be laughing more (although I’m doing my best to try and see the funny side). I’ve had a crazy couple of months. So much so that even though it’s nearly March as I write this, it still feels like early January. I keep thinking Christmas was last week, not two months ago. So what’s been happening? Well, a bit of a rollercoaster to be honest.

First, I’ve been incredibly busy with design work. In fact I haven’t really stopped since before Christmas. While I did get to take a little break over the holidays, I had other commitments, so I didn’t really get a proper time to relax, hence the feeling that it’s still January. In the current climate however, it’s great to be busy, but I miss taking photos and being outdoors.

Earlier this month, I was looking through my Lightroom library and I realised that I hadn’t taken a single photo in January. Not one. I don’t think that’s ever happened before. It’s certainly the longest I’ve gone in a long time without being out shooting. I have managed a handful since then, including the cover photo here, but nothing exciting. The realisation had a bit of a profound effect on me, as photography is part of my DNA and I’ve missed the experience.

I miss street photography in particular. I was looking at my much neglected website and the portfolio section the other day, and I realised that I had some pretty descent Street Photos. I’ve been fairly hard on myself recently. Well, not recently, I’ve always been hard on myself. I’ve always suffered from imposter syndrome to some extent, but I’ve had difficulty finding my street photography groove, with a lot of self doubt. But looking back over my portfolio I realise that some of my work is objectively pretty good (as objective as one can be about ones own work). I want to get back to it again, and conquer my demons.

Unfortunately the mobility issues I talked about before are still plaguing me. I’m not going to go into it too much, as this will begin to sound like a whine session, but I still can’t walk very far, and I’m still in a good bit of pain when I try to do so. I thought I was on the road to recovery with some new treatment I was receiving, but that hasn’t really worked out so far. Still, I’m trying to stay optimistic, and I hope I will get to the bottom of the problem and on the road to recovery soon, because I want to get back taking photos again. And writing about it. And making videos. I actually want to try and focus more on making videos this year, and I’m kind of thinking of rebooting my YouTube channel a bit.

I haven’t given up, although I suspect much of my readership is probably gone. I actually stopped looking at my web stats as it was too depressing. In a way it’s been liberating, as I’ve stoped worrying about what will grab clicks, and now I can focus on writing what I want to write.

And I do have some interesting articles in the planning stages, including some really interesting stuff that I can’t really talk about yet. I’ll also be updating my long running Capture One vs Lightroom series, as things have changed quite a bit since the last time I updated it. I also have an amusing travel tale to tell over on my Photo Stories blog, that I hope to post soon. My design workload is finally lightening a bit, so hopefully I can get back to blogging a bit more often. I still haven’t moved to Wordpress yet, but that’s a whole other story. I’ll have more to say about that soon. In the mean time I’m reasonably active on Twitter and on my Facebook Group to a lesser extent, if you want to follow me there.