Need To Be Re-inspiried

I went out today to capture some scenes, but it didn't go well.  The first place I wanted to stop I could not get access so my visions of rust quickly disappeared.

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...

What to do?

I'm in the midst of restructuring things.  I've acquired a new dot com, http://adventureroadphotography.com.  It just goes back to my website, the usual http://www.christyhunterphotography.com.  I wanted to have an identity that is associated with rural West Tennessee and the adventures I come across.  This may be scenes of old barns, an abandoned house, rusty cars and sometimes a new car or two.  In the past I've taken a lot of photos with people as the subject and my goal is to do less of that so I can focus more on the adventures I may find driving around in my car with a cup of coffee.

My postings have been limited on my usual Facebook Fan Page, but I have a new one that I have been posting to, http://www.facebook.com/AdventureRoadPhotography.  This Fan Page is going to focus on rural scenes and not many portrait type images.  I can't guarantee that a really cool portrait or some interesting scene with a person wont appear, but I want the majority of what I post to be rural scenes without people.

Instagram people!  Use it.  http://instagram.com/christyhunterphotography  Follow me and have a nice day!