I moved from Chattanooga in 2018 to South Carolina. I’m super close to the mountains, I can see them in the distance when driving to Target, but I’m not living on one like I was in Chattanooga. I now travel to Chattanooga frequently for work, and I found myself photographing it every time I visit. It suddenly feels more special now.
We get caught up in life. In the familiar. And if we don’t keep an active appreciation of a place, we’ll grow tired of it pretty fast. Photographers have a tool with which they can more easily maintain appreciation of a place, because we are equipped with ability to see what others can’t.
But you have to be always looking.
The whole reason my Small Town Photo Project exists is because small towns are the very definition of familiar. Many people work very hard to leave a small town, which is probably why someone like me, who grew up traveling all over the place can appreciate a small town.
But I’ve lived in one now for a few years, and I get it. I take road trips all the time to try and manage that feeling. But I also know that if I moved to Hawaii or Colorado or California or wherever, I’d end up feeling the exact same way there.
The theme of this podcast is quickly becoming “It takes work to do X”, and I will be the first one to tell you that I have a very “un-sexy” view of the world. But the truth is, it takes work to appreciate your home. Even if it’s Hawaii.
And sometimes, you need to leave in order to reinvigorate the way you see a place.
I think that’s why I love personal projects like 365 projects so much. When you have to take a photo every single day, you’re spending a lot of your time “looking”. When you are looking that much, you’re bound to find things about the world around you that you’ve never seen before or noticed.
Photography is only good when the photographer is interested in what they are shooting. I believe people can feel when we are going through the motions and not really enjoying it. I talk about “imbuing value” into your work- the easiest way to do that is to photograph what you love and be unabashed about loving that thing.
My friend, Chelsea, who I’ve talked about before on this podcast sat me down once and told me that my work was feeling forced (everyone needs a friend like that). Because my work was feeling forced she could tell I was going through something, and she was totally spot on.
Burn out is real. Being burned out on taking photos of the same thing over and over is very real. The first step of climbing out of a burn out hole is by recognizing that we are burned out. When we know that, we can figure out how to scratch and claw our way out of it.
I have been burned out for most of 2022, and what did I do? I took an unplanned roadtrip with my friend Woody where our goal was to go to New Mexico and back in 3 days. It was brutal and a total failure of a trip.
But that’s a story for a different day.