Due to the whole covid thing, my own personal photography has been on hold for about three years. Well, in terms of pushing forward with new locations, and new places to go and visit.

I think each of us needs to ‘tend the garden of inspiration’. All creatives / photographers, whatever you like to define yourself as, need to work on tending their own creativity and one major area is to look for ways to bring inspiration.

I have been feeling stuck. The last three years really put a stop to some of the places I had hoped to go and visit, and I had envisaged that by now, I would have new portfolios of new locations. This was not to be. Instead, I had to go backwards to a degree: revisiting places that I have been doing so for a long time now, or places that I had thought I’d outgrown.

The silver lining of being stopped in my tracks was that I did find it very beneficial to return to some old haunts. I have particularly enjoyed going back over some of the landscapes here in Scotland as I feel that I am seeing them differently. It stands to reason that this should be so, as we are never the same person if years pass between visits to a landscape.

But I am yearning to go somewhere new this year coming, and this is always a difficult thing for me to do, as I have to find the free time between my workshop schedule to go somewhere. I am not looking for anywhere new to run a tour or a workshop. I am talking about personal development here. Going somewhere without the pressures of thinking about it as a potential business opportunity for my workshop business is key to just being able to be creative.

I have two places in mind, of which I am not prepared to say where right now. I just think I’d like to not have the pressure of making it known where I want to go, only to find out that perhaps I don’t get there. All I really want to point out is that I think it’s really healthy to keep looking ahead. To think about where you want to be in a year’s time, and to try something out that you’ve not done before.