Before the pandemic I was definitely at the height of my photography where I was enjoying it the most and when the pandemic hit and I stopped going out, I became pretty depressed and doubled down on social media, needless to say I became rather addicted. That year I gained the most followers and sold the most prints, sounds great right? Well it didn't feel right and quickly led to burnout and not feeling fulfilled anymore. I realized that I wasn't enjoying it anymore, I was only taking photographs solely to get likes/validation - you know to feel good. But we know that doesn't end well.
Things slowly started to decline.
I made the costly mistake of switching camera systems multiple times to try to keep the inspiration alive but that didn't help much, it was only temporarily inspiration until the newness wore off and quickly hopped back into the same boat.
Recently I decided to forego all my social media accounts. I deleted them all, including my own website, nobody was visiting it anyways. Social Media has been the hardest thing for me to comprehend. My logic side of my brain knows that likes don't mean a damn thing but it wants to be validated badly too. I was spending at times 8-12 HOURS a day on Instagram, sometimes 2-3 hours just researching hashtags to get the maximum reach. When I didn't get the response I was hoping, I became pretty upset and that voice in my head that keeps telling me I'm a failure. But when I had photos that became popular on the platform, man I felt great. Everything was great, the inspiration filled my head and went out and took MORE photos. Gotta love that powerful drug of Dopamine.
But those days were few and far in between. Everyday I was using Instagram to essentially dictate my mood for the day which obviously isn't healthy at all. Photography was turning into something I once enjoyed and made me feel good into something that I started to get angry and stressed out over. So after one really bad day, I deleted all my social media accounts thinking that it would somehow improve things. Maybe it would get me to take photos for myself again, but it didn't.
I took a few months off doing actual photography, apart from a few snapshots here there to keep the camera and battery good. Looking at lightroom, in the past 6 months I barely taken 100 photos and I'm usually in the upwards for a couple thousand by now. I've gone on road trips solely to take photos and ended up not taking a single one. I often find myself forcing myself to take pictures but in reality the motivation and inspiration isn't there. I feel empty inside, I don't feel the flame anymore. Social Media was gave me a purpose to photograph which is pretty sad because I feel like the entire time of my photography journey wasn't even really for myself but for others.
I don't feel like I ever had a connection or direction with my photography. I don't even fully know why I got into photography in the first place, it was something that kind of just happened. I think mainly I was into tech at the time and I loved how cameras worked and the tech involved in them, that was cool to me. It was fun to take photos to see what they look like.
Do I want to give up photography? I don't know. I do know I feel lost currently and partly blame my social media addiction for this.
I've tried a lot of different things, not much is really helping. I came close to deleting all my photos off my hard drives just to forget and move on but I know that's obsessive but part of me sometimes do feel like starting over in a way and do things different.
Has anyone here who had a dark time during their photographic journey? What helped you?
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