The Guilt of Coming Back

I had been doing so much in 2019, my viewership here was bigger than ever, my skills were improving, I had all the equipment I wanted; photography was everything to me at the end of 2019. Then the pandemic hit, and as I considered myself primarily and landscape and wildlife photographer, I put my gear away and waited.

I started to post a few articles about my journey with my new allotment, and to be honest they seemed a lot more popular than my photography ever had, and that, combined with that existential reality of a global lockdown, made me feel that I had no chance of any photography. In time I took one image, which I think is the first time I took a photo with the intention of expressing how I was feeling, and I think it tells it’s own story

As we started to come out of it all, I had really lost the fire for photography; I felt embarrassed almost that people cared more about my vegetables than my “art”, and a little ashamed that I hadn’t tried harder to keep shooting through the lockdown.

All of which brings me to now. Years later, and I have a daughter, got promoted, did the garden and moved on in so many ways, that I feel guilty about my photography; guilty that I let it wane, that I didn’t fight harder for it. I am trying to fight that guilt by recognising it, and recognising that I still want, and I still need photography to be a part of me. Gone are the naïve visions I had of selling prints through Etsy, or selling services, that’s not what photography has ever really meant to me. Now, it’s just me, some cameras, and a real need to be creative after years of creative nothingness.

So, I am back, or at least trying to be back. I read through some of my old posts and cringe a little at their lack of self-awareness and immaturity, but that’s who I was and the journey I have had so I will leave them live despite a desire to hide them all.

Lets see what happens now