Creative Burnout and How Coronavirus cured that.

As in all creative pursuits, you will hit a plateau. A writer will get writers block even if they are working on something they love, a painter won’t know what they want to paint, and a photographer will hit a wall in the skills they have developed and not know where to go from there. For some, especially those of us in the landscape photography realm, it could be not liking the area they are in to the point they don’t bother to go out and shoot unless they have a specific subject they like, or feeling like a skill a certain photographer they like online has is too impossible to learn themselves so why bother going out to take photos anyway? This mindset is absolutely detrimental to positive and forward growth. Very quickly the hobby or career you love starts to feel like a 9 to 5 job that you no longer wish to do, and boom the burnout has set in.

You might be asking yourself how can a mandatory lockdown inspire you to to get out of a creative funk when you should no longer be going outside for non essential travel? For me it was easy the first few months to justify not going out because “were in a worldwide pandemic, photography isn’t that important” and to be fair that was true, but those excuses over time turned into me not even picking up my camera for months. The reality of the situation was that the more time I wasn’t allowed to go out and do something the more time my brain was like “YOU NEED TO GO OUT SOON OR YOU WILL GO OUT OF YOUR MIND” granted I still haven’t gone out for non essential travel since that fateful day in the middle of March, but what started to happen week by week was I would start by watching one or two photography tutorials, which on youtube over time leads to the infinite spiral of “HOW DID I WASTE 6 HOURS LEARNING ABOUT EXPOSURE BRACKETING”. “DID YOU KNOW THAT YOUR CAMERA CAN DO THIS?!” and I was unintentionally developing skills that I will use on the job when I do finally get to go out and adventure once again. The more I was told by the world I couldn’t do something the more my brain wanted too, and inadvertently it has made me not only a more learned photographer but a more inspired one as well.

Often times it is easy to believe that when you’re forced to stay home you become stagnant, but every single person on Earth has the same 24 hours in a day that you do, so you can choose to spend it playing video games, watching movies, and things that bring you temporary enjoyment, or you can use that time to study up on subjects you’re not sure of in your own creative pursuits. Don’t force motivation but also don’t squander it when your brain has even “5 minutes of energy”, you’ll be surprised what that turns into. Whatever gift you’ve been bestowed in life, always remember that not one other person in the world views the planet EXACTLY as you do. Your vision matters, so spend that time honing the skills of your craft so the world can see its beauty, the way you see it yourself.