Emerging From A Slump

It was April 1st and I gazed with frustration at the clusters of grape hyacinths that persisted in growing in a small gap between my driveway and next door’s lawn, despite my best efforts at pulling them out for several years running. I was tempted to pull them up yet again but it suddenly struck me that they would be perfect to photograph so I headed in for my scissors, cut a few stems and popped them in water ready for later in the day.

‘Photography’ had appeared on my to-do list for several weeks, only to be one of those things that dropped off the end of the list unattended to. I blamed being busy but if I’m honest I was also severely lacking in both inspiration and motivation but the little flowers had ignited the spark of inspiration.

When I dug my camera I was in for a shock, I hadn’t cleared my memory card and the last time I had used my camera was in the snow on New Years Eve.

It was April 1st and it was the first time I had picked up my camera, that’s the longest I’ve been without a camera in hand since I first became interested in photography. In fact over the last twelve months I’ve done far less photography than ever before. I’ve been creative in other ways, I’ve loved the process of creating textures more than ever and I’ve played around with a few other creative outlets just for fun so I haven’t been too worried by my lack of interest in photography. Is it a co-incidence that this slump coincided with the pandemic and inspiration returned as the future is starting to look brighter? I suspect not! And I’m sure I’m not alone.

So I set up my backdrops and props and grabbed my Lensbaby Sol 45 and the Burnside and I got shooting. The first two images are with the Burnside and the next three with the Sol 45.