Realizations

I should be studying for my math test tomorrow or getting ready to go to class but instead I’m sitting here looking at pictures and sulking.  I’ve known this for a while but it just hit me like a ton of bricks…..my mojo is gone.

I used to be a pretty good travel photographer.  I’d spend time planning shots, waiting for the right moment, testing exposures, etc before I executed the shot.  I was good, not the best, but I was good.  Then I decided to try to make a living doing what I loved, photography, and went into wedding photography.  It took some practice, guidance and a lot of second shooting but I was good at wedding photography too.  Not the best, but I was good.  Then I moved back to the US and left the business and the weddings behind.

I didn’t shoot anything other than bad food pictures for a long time.  I always thought that when I had a baby I’d have a camera attached to my hand most of the time and that I’d take beautiful pictures of him pretty much on a weekly basis.  Then I had said baby and I couldn’t have been more wrong.  Looking back at the pictures I did take I realize I have nothing but bad, bad snapshots.  They are pictures I’m ashamed to call my own.  I have no beautiful portraits of my child and it bothers me to no end.  Even the professional pictures I paid for, which I could have done much better if I had applied myself, are disappointing.

I am heartbroken, I can’t have all those beautiful moments with my baby again.  I can’t turn back time and do things differently.  I will never ever have the opportunity to photograph my baby the way I always envisioned.  I had the opportunity and let it slip through my fingers.

I cannot remember the last time I picked up a camera and took a picture that took my breath away.  I try, especially with my food blogging, but I am unable to get past the mediocrity that has taken over me.  I no longer even had the desire to go out and shoot.  Why bother?  It will be bad anyway.  All of my photo gear sits in a closet probably never to be used again.  Lights, lenses, filters, cameras, all witnesses to the distant memory of the thing I called my passion.  All reminding me that I am not, and will probably never be, even the shadow of what I used to be.