January, 2018

I mentioned in my Photo of the Week post this morning that I’ve been struggling with motivation with my photography lately. A key reason for this is that I simply haven’t been shooting much this winter. I have a mistaken tendency to think that the cycle of inspiration is one-directional: I feel inspired, so I create. Even though I intellectually know that the cycle can go both ways – i.e., that creating something, even if it’s terrible, can jumpstart inspiration – I still don’t take advantage of this trick nearly enough. I lazily resort to easy excuses about why I’m not at least doing something to re-motivate myself.

This winter, the lazy excuse has been the weather. It’s been frigidly cold in Milwaukee, so it’s been easy to stay inside and watch TV with some hot tea instead of bundling up and making photographs. In the last few weeks I’ve been forcing myself to get out there more often, though. And, unsurprisingly, I’ve come across some beautiful scenes, made a lot of photographs, and even started to feel the early twinges of motivation stirring within me…

I’m going to try to keep this little bit of momentum going in February. In the meantime, enjoy some of my favorite shots from January.