After suffering with it for nearly a year, I'm beginning to recover. I think that a large part of my dissatisfaction was equipment related. I'd been shooting mostly digital for the last five years and at first was excited about learning new technology and improving my basic photographic skills with digital's instant feedback, versatility and access to a virtually unlimited supply of "film."
But after a few years I grew increasingly disenchanted with digital and with lugging around a huge, cumbersome DSLR. I had also gradually developed the habit of taking hundreds of exposures without discrimination or sufficient thought, what some have called the "machine gun" approach to photography. After a while, I had to force myself to get out and shoot, and often came home with memory cards full of dull, uninspired images.
It was at this low point in my photographic journey that I began to gravitate back to film and discovered the OM1 and OM2 through posts on this forum. Something about the OM's captured my imagination. I found an OM1 and an OM2 with a 28/2 and a 50/1.4 and they just seemed to fit. I'm enjoying using great prime lenses and zooming with my feet. I'm forced to slow down just a bit and to more carefully consider the shot, the exposure, the framing, which lens to use - all the basics - and I love the look of film. I'm excited about photography again!
I've started using a TLR now too, a cheap Lubitel, and find that very liberating as well. I love the square format and composing using the reversed image on a ground glass screen, and though I love street photography, I've always been a bit timid about pointing a huge DSLR at people. The TLR allows me to be more unobtrusive and people who do notice the camera often start up a conversation instead of giving me dirty looks or being outright hostile. I've enjoyed the TLR experience so much that I just ordered a Rolleiflex Baby Gray from Collectible Cameras, and a few dozen rolls of 127 film. I can hardly wait for it to arrive.
Though I learned quite a bit from digital, I sold my DSLR and lenses and I'm very happy that I've gone back to film. I'm absolutely in love with my Olympus SLR's and the TLR. Now I'm challenging myself with more projects and enjoying photography more than ever.
I spend every lunch hour, weather permitting, walking around downtown taking photographs. Some days I concentrate on bicycles, others on architecture, or maybe lovers, delivery men or street vendors, something, anything. I usually do some kind of self-assigned project, large or small. Sometimes a small project turns into a larger one; sometimes a large one breaks down into one or more smaller projects or is abandoned altogether as being impractical or too poorly defined, but either way, projects instill a bit of discipline and force me to focus my efforts. I find that constraining myself in this way actually liberates me, allowing me to concentrate and do better work.
I do feel that once you've found your medium, your preferred tools and methods, that defining goals and assigning yourself some kind of project is the next step to breaking out of the malaise - coming out of darkness and into the light! At least it seems to have worked for me. Of course that isn't to say that it won't happen again. It's probably one of the main insigators of GAS attacks!
