My alternative was to drive around and just find stuff. I found very little. I have reached a new point with my photography where I am trying to enjoy it. The enjoyment seems to be lost. It is truly work getting things together and heading out for the day. It costs money that I spend on gas to drive around and find this stuff. I have to enjoy this because there is no immediate financial gain for what I do, there may never be.
I have a deeper purpose in life, I know that, but when it comes to my photography I feel sort of purposeless. Why am I doing this? For what? For whom? What is the end result?
As a kid I collected baseball cards. In the 90s the market exploded and it not longer became fun. Everyone was trying to profit off it and the cards had to be perfect. A grading system was invented. A player's card may have been cherished, but because it wasn't perfect, it wasn't as good. The joy of baseball collecting was stolen by a market of people just wanting to make a dime off something a kid loved to collect. More baseball cards were printed to feed the demand and the market became flooded with cards. The baseball cards I have from that era are not worth as much ones from the past.
I see photography in the same light. Everyone's got a camera and photos aren't as valuable as they used to be. I shoot old barns, cars, dilapidated buildings and so does Tom, Dick, Harry, Sally, Sue and Jen. It's hard to be original anymore no matter how hard I try. Today I got out of the car to photograph an old shed. I started to set the camera up and got back in the car without taking a photo. The sky was cloudless, an empty space of blue. It really makes for a plain picture. I'm at the point where I just don't want to take photos if I know they don't even have a chance of having the "wow" factor.
So today I spent 5 hours slowly wandering the countryside and this is what I came back with. At least there are some clouds...
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