The beginning of a new year has always reminded me to keep things simple.
Maybe it’s the bareness of nature. It’s looking out of your window one morning and realising you can see so much farther when all the leaves have fallen off, when in summer you were surrounded by abundance and couldn’t see the forest for the trees. So January, to me, is a month of quiet focus. Focus on what is important and why it is. Also, it’s a good time to think about your own creativity. What sparks it? What prevents it? Most often, a really good picture can seem so uninspiring because you tend to compare it. With the work you have done so far. With other people’s work. With how you perceive your own style of photography to be.
And then you end up doubting your work and getting tangled up in question marks when you could just be creative without a care in the world. There is nothing wrong with being critical of your own work and wanting to improve, but I find overthinking will kill inspiration on the spot.
A little distance can be helpful then. Sometimes it takes other people, beauty is in the eye of the beholder after all. Sometimes it takes time and you only see the value of some of your work in retrospect. Sometimes it’s perspective, which in art and photography is about the relation between objects, dimension and again, distance. In life, perspective is more about what is important and significant from your point of view.
So whenever I can’t see the forest for the trees, I find it helps to put things into perspective, to focus on simple details and to trust that the whole picture will emerge from there. I find that if you don’t get distracted, you discover so much beauty in small things and enjoy the whole picture all the more for it. I find that truth is neither complicated nor gaudy. It’s reassuring and simple and beautiful because of it.
