An honest update
I'm starting this blog post talking about something I spoke about not too long ago in one of my recent YouTube videos; mental health. As much as I love going out to local nature spots and across the country to find and photograph wildlife, I forget that I also have a full-time job with 12-hour shifts. Recently, it was becoming clear to me that I wasn’t giving myself enough time to rest between doing my job and the projects associated with my photography, as well as doing other activities that I enjoy in my spare time. In the end, my mental state began to suffer and it ultimately led to burnout. It was the worst I have felt for a long time and luckily I was able to recognise it before I ran myself completely into the ground.
I have the habit of creating multiple projects for myself, sometimes forgetting that there is no real deadline for them and that no one else has asked me to take them on. My mind gets into a state of wanting to be productive almost constantly, wanting to research, plan and find as many subjects as I can in a short amount of time (mainly to stay consistent with my online presence on social media and YouTube) without considering how it’ll impact me physically and mentally. There is an underlying fear of missing out on seeing seasonal events in nature, and that if I don’t do it as soon as possible I don’t know when the next opportunity will come around. This is probably something that a lot of you might relate to, and not just in the world of photography. While I have been taking these past couple of weeks to take a break from doing photography, I have thought more about how I can manage my free time efficiently and still have the opportunity to photograph wildlife. This includes organising short trips to distant locations where certain subjects can be found, and avoiding one-day trips so that I am not travelling tens or hundreds of miles in one day. These thoughts closely resemble the advice and tips I wrote about in my blog post about planning photography projects, so doing more of what I have talked about is probably a good idea!
Making a project out of every species I want to photograph has sometimes led to me not enjoying the time spent with my camera. I often find myself thinking that every outing needs to be successful in terms of the type of images I take, or that I need to get a story out of each encounter I have in nature. This way of thinking can take away the simple joy of seeing the wildlife that I am lucky to have an encounter with, and not being able to fully appreciate the surroundings that I find myself in. While I have been resting I was able to enjoy sitting on my garden swing and listening to the calls of different bird species in and around my garden. I also took a few shots of the house sparrows and the adult starlings which for the past few years have been nesting in the roof of my house — the chicks are expected to emerge very soon! It reminded me that I don’t need to go to distant locations to see interesting species or interactions and that I don't need to take the best images every time I have my camera on me.
I have a couple of trips planned from the end of next month within the UK, where I hope to record videos for YouTube as well. While I enjoy documenting my travels and encounters with wildlife I do have to remind myself that I am a photographer first, so it is likely that I won’t be creating and sharing as much video content as I was doing before, which was on a near-weekly basis. But this could also mean that the videos I intend to create are longer than what I have made previously and I’ll have the chance to take the viewers on the journey to finding certain species across the UK, and maybe beyond. I will also have the help of my husband to take extra video recordings on certain trips, which I am very grateful for!
I intend to return to posting photo content gradually over time, and while I look forward to sharing some of my images again I am putting myself first, for my mental and physical health. To end this personal update on a lighter note, here are some images of the starlings that I took in my garden in the past week. See you all soon!
