What is the biggest obstruction stopping you from taking photographs?

[OurManInTangier]

The kind of pictures I normally post here at RFF are those that I take whilst ambling around when I have a few free hours, just snaps of things I notice or people doing their thing. Recently though I've ground to a bit of a halt doing this and I was trying to work out why.

I've been incredibly busy with work so have had far less time to sip coffee, watch the world go by and photograph some of it. Maybe this was the reason, just plain out of practice or out of the 'groove.' However having pondered this for a while and gone out today, I had no jobs at all today and needed an excuse to avoid the paperwork, I realised that I seemed to be looking for something specific. Instead of simply having a camera with me and snapping whatever passed that took my interest I felt like I was thinking too much about what I either expected to see or wanted to see...and as a result saw nothing at all.

When I'm working I find that planning as much as I can helps immensely - it even helps when the plans go out of the window for one reason or another, but I think that any kind of plan hinders me when I'm simply wondering around snapping - as if I've closed my mind off to other possibilities.

We all go through ruts, dips in form and so on but I wonder if there is always one thing rather more than any other that stops us as individuals from 'seeing' or from simply getting out there?

What's your biggest obstacle?

 

[david.elliott]

Law school. :|

 

[Pickett Wilson]

Most of us do better with boxes around our goals. I know it's better for me, for personal work, to shoot within the confines of a project. I tend to shoot aimlessly without one. Maybe deciding on a project and shooting specifically for it will help.

 

[Spider67]

a) too shy to ask people
b)too uncomfortable to be caught snapping somebody
c)to lazy to get my camera or to make it ready: "I'll snap that one tomorrow...er..next week."

 

[jfretless]

my day job.

 

[bmattock]

What's your biggest obstacle?

The only thing that has slowed me down recently has been hospitalization. And even then, I tried my best to get one of the nurses to take photos of me whilst I was under the knife. She had no sense of humor about it.

Other than that, I'm more or less unstoppable. Even when begged to stop.

 

[Mephiloco]

the prohibitive cost of an m9 😉


I was just thinking about going around the french quarter or uptown to try out my new lenses, but it's looking like rain 🙁

 

[Issy]

Lack of Time​

 

[Dave Wilkinson]

We all go through ruts, dips in form and so on but I wonder if there is always one thing rather more than any other that stops us as individuals from 'seeing' or from simply getting out there?

What's your biggest obstacle?

Dead easy!...in my case health!, back to hospital on Thursday - for my angioplasty!, I've got lots of ideas and plans, but if you ain't got the health.......:bang:
Dave.

 

[bmattock]

Lack of Time

Time
(Mason, Waters, Wright, Gilmour) 7:06

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way.
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way.

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain.
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today.
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.

So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again.
The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older,
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.

Every year is getting shorter never seem to find the time.
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over,
Thought I'd something more to say.

Just go and do. Time won't wait and you'll be old and then dead anyway.

 

[bmattock]

Dead easy!...in my case health!, back to hospital on Thursday - for my angioplasty!, I've got lots of ideas and plans, but if you ain't got the health.......:bang:
Dave.

Mine was a bronchoscopy. Apparently informed the staff and fellow patients of the recovery room that I was Dorothy Hamill. Then it was back to photography. I haven't got time for time. Time will have to make time for me. I'll sleep when I'm dead.

 

[Phantomas]

My dog. Every time I'm in the city he's with me and operating a camera and a dog-leash at the same time is tricky. Lots of missed opportunities. When I travel and he's not around I come back with much better spontaneous streetshots.
Hah!
On the other hand I love my dog so screw the spontaneous streetshots, they seem to take care of themselves 🙂

 

[OurManInTangier]

Okay, health is a pretty good reason....though I like the idea of getting the nurse to cover your operation for you. Not a project I want to undertake myself until the time comes for my first hopsital visit!

 

[PaulW128]

My biggest obstacle is believing that if I buy just one more piece of equipment, I will have all the inspiration I need to get down to some serious shooting!! I have been in such a slump for about a month, thinking about going to MF or getting a second OM1 body, or a Contax G1, etc, etc....

And let me tell you something.....the great equipment popping up on the RFF classifieds is NOT helping!!!

Best
Paul

 

[dcsang]

For me, for taking street shots, it's the "gotta get xxxx done" - basically the "chores" or "errands" one has to do on the weekends that limit my "Dave time" for photography.

Luckily, I still get a chance to take photos; during wedding season and there are moments there when I get what I want.

I agree with Simon though as I really think, for the most part, at least for me and street photography, it takes patience and time. I've got the patience, I just don't have oodles of time to spend. So, I accept that for what it is and take the jobs as they come while balancing out my business with my full time work. It leaves precious little time for my own pursuits; be they street photography or anything else.

Cheers,
Dave

 

[yoyo22]

a) work
b) severe migraine (usually on weekends or days when I don't have to work)

 

[Roger Hicks]

In no particular order: laziness, RFF, over-familiarity with the area around me, deadlines, working on a house where the oldest bits are probably 400+ years old, developing film, earning money, depression, faffing around with silly old cameras that don't deliver the sort of pictures I want, worrying, cooking, sleeping, eating... Damn' grateful it's not my physical health, though!

Cheers,

R.

 

[OurManInTangier]

... working on a house where the oldest bits are probably 400+ years old...

Whilst I envy you the house in France I don't envy you the work. My sister and her husband have a place in St Yrieux la Peche where some of the property is of a similar age and the basement is far older - it's taken them years to complete the renovation work not to mention the blood and sweat!

 

[Al Kaplan]

The last few years I've been devoting more effort into getting my files in order, printing old negatives, and writing about my experiences as a photographer than shooting. I still shoot.

 

[Roger Hicks]

Whilst I envy you the house in France I don't envy you the work. My sister and her husband have a place in St Yrieux la Peche where some of the property is of a similar age and the basement is far older - it's taken them years to complete the renovation work not to mention the blood and sweat!

Yeah, but it ain't gonna fall down in a hurry, given that it hasn't yet, so we do what we feel like, when we feel like it, and we rather like what we call 'the archaeological look' (stripped plaster walls from the 18th or 19th century, battered stone from the 17th or 18th, awful 1970s magenta paint in the hall). The oldest bits are the stables and the tunnel to the well, probably 400-800 years, but they don't require a lot of maintenance.Next projects: tiling the kitchen floor (already under way), re-flooring the attic on the rear extension (probably 17th century) so that the floor is level and I can move my studio in from the atelier in the garden. Probably this year...

Cheers,

R.