Most of you who are deeper into photography have heard about the 365 challenge where you take at least one photo every day of the year. It’s a great idea which can help you improve your creativity and photographical skills.
Obviously you’re not supposed to snap a photo just for the sake of taking a photo but you’re expected to actually give it some time, be it even just 10 minutes and think of an interesting shot you can take. Well, the way I did was to take a street photo every day. I did it back in 2019 when for the first month I was still living in Lithuania. The challenge started off great, I had the motivation to go out and shoot every day and to enjoy my final days in Lithuania. I was getting a decent shot like once or twice per week and that’s keeping in mind that the weather was absolutely terrible for the last three weeks of the month.
On my way back home, I decided I’d go through Ukraine, Moldova and Romania which meant I also had some motivation to take photos. I had a bunch of trips planned out for the first few months of the year including two work trips outside of Europe so that, of course, meant that I was going to have a great opportunity to not get burnt out at the start.
Fast forward to mid-late April and it started getting difficult. I was also working on setting up my first exhibition, so it goes without saying that I was extra motivated to finish it off. It only kept on getting more difficult, though. One of the reasons was that I had to spend at least an hour to go to downtown and back and on top of that spend at least one or two hours walking around and shooting. Top that off with the fact that I was having some relationship problems and that I was back to studying what I absolutely hated and was getting me depressed and it was getting unbearable. It got to the point where I felt nothing when I was taking photos and I was starting to hate photography.
I made it to late May. I couldn’t take it anymore, it wasn’t giving me any pleasure, my photos were only getting worse and repetitive, and it was making me miserable, so I stopped. A very important lesson that I learnt from that experience was that I had to find a balance and listen to the way I feel. It definitely helped my creativity and helped me understand photography better but at what cost?
Now, nearly 2 years later, I apply what I learnt into almost everything. I make sure that I don’t go out to shoot just for the sake of it, same with everything else.
Comments