30 Days with the Leica M10 Monochrom: Day 6
Maintaining momentum in the photography space has proven a lot more difficult than I expected after moving back to Colorado. I’ve always found the mountains the most inspirational place for making images, so it seemed like a no-brainer that moving close to them would get my creative juices flowing. But I severely underestimated the disruption that not shooting every single day can cause to creative flow. When living in cities, I had plenty of new subjects on my daily walks to keep me interested. But in Fort Collins, I have to work a lot harder to find everyday subjects.
Plus there was that whole wildfire season and that global pandemic.
I’ve gone through a lot of fluctuations in creative inspiration over the years, and as a result I’ve developed some tools for handling the dips. Obviously, the most sustainable way to handle these in the long term is to fall back on why you create in the first place…that’s all well and good, but it’s more of a big picture thing that doesn’t always help in the moment so it’s helpful to have some tricks to get you moving in the right direction again.
One of these tricks is to shoot with gear that is really freaking cool.
Ok, that sounds a little silly and I fully admit that it’s a shallow reason to create. But I’m human, and there are times when I look at my Leicas or my Fujis or my Hasselblad and think “man…I really want to pick that up and go play.” Needless to say, the Leica M10 Monochrom falls squarely into this category. Even a year and a half later, every time I look at that camera I feel like making some images. That’s pretty remarkable.
kyle wurtz 