This may be a long read. And without photos. But here goes;<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was close to quitting this blog, and photography altogether. After about three years of creative stagnation, mostly due to life simply happening, the itch slowly seems to be coming back. I still took photos here and there over the last three years, but nowhere near how I used to. So what’s been going on?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
First of all, good things happened. Things that take up a decent portion of my time, but I\u2019m genuinely happy about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I met a lovely, beautiful woman, Juul. We bought a house together, and we got married. I now live with her and her kids, and it\u2019s more lovely than I would have expected. I never planned on having kids myself, but life has a way of surprising you. And this turned out to be a good one. Outside of the whole family life, Juul and I also want to spend quality time together. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So overall, a lot of time went into building this new life. Which naturally meant less time for photography. What I did notice, though, is that I started filling\u00a0all\u00a0of my time with home life. Not because I had to. Nor was I ever expected to. But it felt like a safe harbour from what was actually becoming an issue: my work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Around the start of 2024, I decided to work closer to home. That turned out to be a big mistake. Despite good and nice people around me, the organisation simply wasn\u2019t a fit and within two months I wanted to leave as fast as possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It took about six months of conversations and searching before I found something new. And then the worst-case scenario happened: the new job turned out even worse than the previous one. What followed was a long stretch of frustration, conversations at every level, and very little change. Somewhere between stress and boredom, it drained the life out of me! There was no space left for creativity at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I leaned fully into home life instead. My safe place. And even there, I wasn\u2019t always showing up the way I should have. But that period didn\u2019t last forever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After ten exhausting months, I got a call. A company I had spoken to before, one that always felt right, had an opening. That turned out to be the shift I needed. I\u2019ve been there for four months now, and I couldn\u2019t be happier. And slowly, something started to return: that itch. The urge to go out again, to shoot again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For the first time in a long while, I feel space again. And that feels like a relief I didn\u2019t expect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To really be able to enjoy my passion again, I also had to change how I work creatively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Back when I still shot regularly, I had started to lose direction. I became so focused on project ideas and series thinking, that I lost sight of the most important part: just going out, observing, and letting things happen. And especially, having fun!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Even my tools started to feel heavy. Too much gear, too much software, too much friction. The camera bag stayed home more and more. My library got more and more cluttered. I hated my workflow with Adobe. And paid a fair amount to Adobe for nothing. No structure, no ideas, it all went down the drain. So the changes may seem drastic, but when it works, it works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So now I\u2019m cleaning up my entire archive again. Culling, re-editing, using new tools. A lot of images will disappear. Many that would have never been published and probably should have been deleted years ago, even some that were published. I\u2019m looking at my work with different eyes now. That\u2019s what a couple of years away does.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I also discarded all my camera gear and bought two new, easy-to-carry point-and-shoot cameras. This may feel like a downgrade for many. But these babies, I carry around with me everywhere! And the fixed focal lengths? I’m used to that. My old go-to camera was also a fixed-lens, fixed-focal-length camera. I’m always up for limiting possibilities to get a decent outcome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I also moved this blog away from my portfolio. Keeping everything in one place felt limiting. Now there\u2019s room for other things too; art, music, literature, everyday observations. Not just photography. I will write more about these things in the future. We will see where this goes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But most importantly, I started shooting again. Slowly. Alone. With low expectations. Just learning to see again without getting stuck in my usual pitfalls. Not forgetting the motifs I love either. And the passion, the eagerness to go out, it’s growing again. And that is a great relief.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This may be a long read. And without photos. But here goes; I was close to quitting this blog, and photography altogether. After about three years of creative stagnation, mostly due to life simply happening, the itch slowly seems to be coming back. I still took photos here and there over the last three years, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1452,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"slim_seo":{"title":"Coming back slowly - PULSE&VOID","description":"This may be a long read. And without photos. But here goes; I was close to quitting this blog, and photography altogether. After about three years of creative s"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-contemplations"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pulseandvoid.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pulseandvoid.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pulseandvoid.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pulseandvoid.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pulseandvoid.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1428"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.pulseandvoid.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1428\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1455,"href":"https:\/\/www.pulseandvoid.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1428\/revisions\/1455"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pulseandvoid.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pulseandvoid.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pulseandvoid.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pulseandvoid.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}