‘When subject matter is forced to fit into preconceived patterns, there can be no freshness of vision. Following rules of composition can only lead to a tedious repetition of pictorial clichés’ – Edward Weston

South Bank, London

In the almost 60 years since I first picked up and used a camera, photography, in my opinion, has become both easier, and harder… Yep, today’s all-singing digital cameras and phone cameras with their mega-pixels and auto-everything are a far cry from Box Brownies, or 35mm SLRs where everything was manual; then it was days or weeks after you shot your pictures before you saw the results (and were frequently disappointed!)

Dover Harbour

But now,  just about everyone can take a good picture – walk up, ‘click’ with your phone camera/compact camera/DSLR and there you have it – immediate result. No longer any need to understand and put into practice the technicalities of film photography like ISO, aperture, DOF and shutter speed – just ‘point and press’. No bad thing, but these days everyone is a photographer. Estimates vary, but I saw one that reckoned over 1.8 trillion photos were taken and uploaded last year! Talk about over-exposure.

Elgol, Skye

A few years back, I was at a low ebb with my photography – I had all the latest gear, but it was all so heavy I never really wanted to go out making photos, and when I did, I rarely came back with anything I was happy with. So I changed everything and downsized, and that helped some – the new system I had was somewhat lighter, but at the expense of image quality, and in reality, by the time I bought the best lenses, I hadn’t gained a huge amount in portability. But I persevered, thinking that by working harder at it, I would take better photos. I’ve read lots about photography, joined social media groups and been on umpteen workshops and courses, but…………

Street Market, France

What I’ve come to realise is that despite a near obsession with photography,  I’m not really getting that much out of it – I think that going to the same places that everyone else goes to, and setting up the same type of sunset/sunrise/long exposure shots is leading to a total lack of creativity.  Its not helped by the fact that everywhere you look on forums and Twitter/IG etc, there are the same shots in the same places etc, so you pretty much end up following suit. I’m less inclined these days to go out yomping around hills loaded down like someone from the SAS – I’m not getting any younger! Then of course there’s the issue of going to all that bother when other folks will get still better results because they are using bigger and better gear, or dedicate more time to photography than I want to.

Colwyn Bay, North Wales

Looking at what I’ve shot over the last year or two, I’m really disillusioned – I’ve got lots of ‘ok’ landscapey shots, mostly technically fine, but very few ‘wow!’ shots. Hardly anything that stands out. Technically competent, but no creativity. Certainly no real satisfaction. I need to go back to shooting what grabs me, not the clichéd shots that you see all over social media and I am (even subconsciously) trying to emulate. I think some of the shots I took 10 or 20 years ago are ‘better’ in a creative sense than what I’m doing now. Bit of a watershed really…