Busy without focus

This past few weeks has been a little odd in terms of my photography. I seem to have built up lots of unfinished activities which I am struggling to complete. I have my quarterly newsletter (in which I like to include a decent article), a shoot in Wales last weekend, a book on Nik Color Efex that is much longer than expected, a book on photographic vision that I am drafting, working with Olympus and ePHOTOzine on new projects, developing a new presentation for some Camera Clubs that have booked me and writing this blog to name but a few. On top of this I need to take some photographs.

What seems to be happening is that I start lots of interesting and valuable work, but it’s hard to bring things to a close. I end up flitting between different activities so that it feels that I am busy without a focus and nothing actually gets finished.

Now here is the interesting point, I have started doing the same in my photography. I came back from the weekend shoot in Wales thinking I had a great time and some great shots in the bag. Reviewing my Lightroom catalogue I found the images didn’t really live up to the expectation of the day. This is quite normal but the difference this time is that I realised I didn’t slow down and consider my inspiration from each scene and didn’t spend time working to develop my vision for the images. The result is a lot of images each showing different variations but none standing out as being great.

I think I need to slow down and find my focus again.