Since I got home from Japan I have been a bit silent online, I’ve been going non-stop catching up on life and I was photographically tired. (I don’t know if that’s a phrase but if it’s not I’m coining it) What I mean is that I have hundreds of photo’s that I still need to look over again and edit, but I simply haven’t had the energy to even open Lightroom.
Last Wednesday my mom phoned me to see if I wanted to join the family in Kleinmond for the long weekend. For those that don’t know, Kleinmond is a tiny beach side town about 2 hours outside of Cape Town. We used to go there often during my childhood. In fact, many of my best memories are from holidays spent in this little town. At first I wasn’t too keen to load up my car, get Rex settled into his travel box and head up the coast (Rex is my cat. He’s a total champ and travels with me). But the more I thought about it the more I decided that it may be good for me to go.
Kleinmond is off the grid for me. It always has been. The signal is spotty at best, our house doesn’t have a TV, the town doesn’t offer much to do and it’s quiet – so very very quiet. So that basically leaves you with either reading, talking or exploring.
I arrived late on Friday after battling the traffic out of the city. I was tired and spent most of Saturday trying to relax and switch off from work and other things that have been playing on my mind. When I woke up on Sunday the mist had rolled in from the ocean, covering the town in a beautiful layer of unknown. It got a photography itch going, you know that feeling where just can’t sit still, you have to pick up your camera and go shoot? That. My mom and I drove down to the coastline near Palmiet to go explore.
The sea air smelled fresh, the mist cooled my skin and the sound of massive waves breaking just off the shoreline drowned out the thoughts in my mind. It took me about a second before I snapped my first photo. I’ve missed it. I’ve missed taking photographs of things other than street.
And that’s the importance of remembering, of remembering why you loved something to begin with. The pure excitement and joy of capturing memories, of capturing a day, a morning, a trip or holiday. The small things.
I realise now, like I have before that we so often get stuck in shooting just what out audience expects to see and forget to also photograph the other things that make us happy. We find and create our constraints and we think we can’t break out of them. But we should. Half an hour of walking along the coast and taking a couple of photo’s of something that I haven’t photographed in forever was unbelievably refreshing for me. It was grounding to completely change the pace. I drove home on Sunday afternoon, excited to get home to look through my photos and edit them for a post. I haven’t felt like that in a couple of weeks.
So this is a small reminder to everyone to not get stuck in a mold that we form around our photographic styles and subjects. Shoot where your heart takes you. Share what makes you happy, not just what people expect.
Remember why you love taking photo’s.
xo
That is a wonderful sentiment. Instagram success tends to qualify what our page should like and we run to that and everything becomes homogenized. There is an entire world to photograph.. shapes and colors..humanscape and landscape…waiting to be rediscovered through the lens.