Newsletter - A small assignment for you...

Hello,

Sometimes photography can get a bit overwhelming. It comes with the territory of doing something you love all the time, possibly for a living. Even the sweetest treat will taste bad when you eat too much of it.

I've burned out a few times in the past two decades, maybe not burned out entirely, but come close anyway. It's hard, because so much of my identity revolves around photography and if I can't muster up the strength to pick up my camera then I just feel sad, which makes it even harder to pick up the camera, and so the spiral of gloom goes.

Once, in 2007, I felt so terrible about my work that I escaped to the Alaskan bush for a year, but more on that life-changing experience another time.

There is hope for the weary photographic mind though. It comes in the form of breaking up your norm and finding ways to think outside the box by changing things up a little. Chances are you picked up the camera because you liked collecting what you saw, and what you saw was unique to you. But over time we all learn to see a little bit like everyone else, and it's time to find back to those early roots of just shooting from the heart.

I talked about this with one of my mentoring students, so I decided I wanted to share with you the assignment I shared with her because I love how she reacted to it:

"I LOVE this assignment - it's my first day, and it was challenging.. AF... I didn't make anything amazing, but it was interesting for me to see what gets me going - to see what i'm drawn to."

So this week, I'll just leave you with the assignment below. I hope you find some joy in it.

I'd love to know how it went, please share with me!

All for now,

Kristine

ASSIGNMENT: 

Photograph your environment, wherever you are, when you have a chance. Do this once a day for a minimum of 15 minutes. What is your relationship with this environment, how does it speak to you? What interests you here? Who is in it, what are they doing, how are they interacting with the environment in a different way than you are, or the same? Try to photograph how you feel as much as how they are feeling. Make at least 5 pictures each time that are of varied visual language, so that each of the times you do this you come back with a small visual story.