Diary of a Landscape Photographer | Entry 7

Perhaps I’m too young in my photography journey to put myself into a box and call myself a ‘landscape photographer’. Truth is, I love all kinds of photography but I feel a constant obsession with my task at hand and I’m not sure where this comes from. At the moment, this task is to create the best landscape photographs possible and it has taken over my life. What if this attitude is actually a hindrance?

And by that I mean, what if I am putting too much pressure on myself to create ‘better’ photographs all the time? Rather than just enjoying the ones that I am able to create at the moment because they are 10x better than those that I was creating once upon a time.

Do you see my conundrum?

I often feel unfulfilled with the photographs that I make because I know that there is going to be another one just around the corner. It’s part of who I am and who I always have been. It’s even meant that I have refused to sell a piece of work because I knew that it wasn’t the finished piece. I think I might be programmed to never be completely happy with what I have.

There are so many ideas floating around in my head about the kind of photographs that I want to create, most of which take time, patience, a better understanding of light and a whole lot more maturity than that which I currently have. Three years behind a camera is not a long time in the grand scheme of things.

I know that there are so many other things that I could be doing in the mean time, while my vision develops and matures but I’m scared that these might detach me from where I think that I need to be.

I have so many questions and nobody that I know who can answer them.