It’s time for a change.

(apologies if this is another potentially self-centered rant).

For a while now I have felt like change is coming.  I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what this ‘change’ was but it has felt like it had to happen.  I have reached a plateau with my photography (and this blog) and that I need to do something different.

I am two years into this blog now and so perhaps now is a good time anyway to review and think about what I want this to be in the future.  I’ve not become the internet sensation that I wasn’t expecting to be, so what do I want?  How much effort do I want to devote to this site?

I am reading more and more about photography; as it is now and in the past, also art in general and I can feel something brewing inside me.  It’s okay I don’t think any alien species is about to erupt from my (slightly large) belly or anything noxious is going to be expelled from my digestive system.  I am thinking about all sorts of things right now and it’s all bunched up in front of me, blocking me until I’ve got through it all.  I need some sort of Zen moment to get past it or an epiphany or something.  Right now though I can barely pick up a camera, let alone shoot a roll of film creatively.

To be honest I have been struggling to publish recently, my  posts lately are not of a high standard (and I apologies for that) I am just picking images so that I post something rather than having an image or words that I really want to share.

I am looking at the sort of photography I do and thinking “does that matter?”, “does anyone care about that image” , “why do you do this blog”.  I enjoy photography, it is the one constant thing I have had since I was in school.  But I feel like I have lost my way or gone down a path that doesn’t get me to where I want to be (wherever that is) or I have taken the right path but I underestimated the challenge and where that is leading.  I think I stepped over a line that took me from ‘someone who takes photos and shares some of them’ to ‘someone who publishes photos that they have taken’.  It might be a subtle change but that line is difficult to step back over.  So now I need to make photos that I think are good enough to publish and that means I have to take it more seriously if I am to maintain the same level of publishing.

Or it could be that I am just taking things too seriously.

As I said my mind is filled right now with so much stuff I’m struggling to see the wood for the trees.

I thought about taking a break but I know that breaks often turn into sabbaticals and then momentum is lost.  What I think at least for my blog is to find a more specific theme, I need a project that defines my blog (and perhaps me as a photographer).  To-date, my blog has been rambling (as the title implies) without any specific concept and consequently every post is potentially different.  I know that this can work but I believe for it to work well, a strong narrative is needed and I don’t think I have that.  Other blogs I follow have some subject or theme that they follow and maybe that is the change I need; again I think a project is one way to tackle that.  I am not going to do a photo-a-day or other similar photo challenge I want something more specific that will take me forward personally and in my photography. Also, I think I want to talk more about how why and where without getting too techy but we’ll have to see.

You may see a slowdown in posts over the holiday period as I work this out (and just because I generally rubbish at posting when I am on vacation) so please bear with me and hopefully in the New Year I will have new purpose and bring this blog into the next phase.

The photo above is another shot of the Chicago & Northwestern Railway Bridge this time taken with my Voigtlander Vitomatic II on expired Fujifilm