Battling My Photography Rut

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

As a general rule, I don’t believe in putting things off to a convenient calendar date. Especially January First.

Sure, we’re all excited at what the year ahead has in store. I think the excitement is a two-headed monster. One is looking at twelve months of possibilities and saying to ourselves “Hell yeah, I got this!” The other is looking back at the previous twelve months and saying “Next year has got to be better than this raging shit show.”

So we barrel headlong into a fresh, new year and end up overextending ourselves. In all of our hope and optimism, we get unrealistic. We set ourselves up for failure when what serves us better is slowly building habits—and not tied to arbitrary dates and constraints like the calendar.

However—

Yet, here I am, saying “Hey, join me for a 2026 project!” Call it irony or hypocrisy. Whatever—you pick. Because in this case, I have discontent reaching a head right now that just happens to coincide with the new year. And I need to fix it. Pronto.

The problem? My photography. Or lack thereof.

I don’t exactly know where it went to shit. But I don’t shoot much these days. Not seriously anyway. And when I try, the joy isn’t there. I’m often phoning it in and relying on muscle memory. (Which is deteriorating over time, by the way.)

I do know that doing a bunch of client work became a problem. The contracts, negotiations, educating clients on copyright and “why it costs so much“, etc. It was fuck-all exhausting and took all of the fun out of the craft.

That certainly contributed to my photographic fatigue so I stopped doing the soul-sucking client work. I realized I need to be shooting on my terms. To see, create, and craft on my own, without expectations of “deliverables”. ^*shudder^*

Another contributing factor is not having been to a photography workshop in many years. Being around other photographers creates contagious energy and inspiration. I can’t fix that anytime soon with shit going on in my life right now, though.

The cherry on the photographic rut pie is that being so off my game, when people praise my work, I feel like a fraud. Sure I’ve created some lovelies in the past. But my body of work is faltering and imposter syndrome is sneaking in. It feels like something I used to be good at, not something I’m currently good at.

A 2026 project

So how to get moving forward again? The answer—or inspiration for it—came from photographer Anne McKinnell. She wrote what I needed to read exactly when I needed to read it.

She outlined some photographic exercises to help work through creative stuck-ness. And they actually sounded like fun. A little flame of photographic excitement found its way into my creative ennui.

But I knew that in my fairly epic rut I’d need to create a framework—a personal curriculum of sorts—to work through. Something I could be methodical about in my otherwise chaotic life.

Using her suggestions as a catalyst, I built a list of weekly assignments to focus on this year. The goal is to re-create my photography habit.

I used to shoot all the time. My camera was an ever-present extension of my right arm. Now I often forget to capture moments even with my phone, much less take the time to carefully craft images. How far I’ve fallen, huh?

The plot thickens

Far be it from me to keep all the fun for myself. I figured, why not open it up and see who else is interested in reinvigorating their photographic creativity?

And this is where my projects collide. In a good way. So I’m tying this effort to one of my other ambitious projects that I haven’t talked about here much yet—Southwest Art Towns, our new online community.

If you subscribe to my Val in Real Life newsletter, you’ve heard a lot about it. If you don’t, this may be new info to you. (And if you don’t subscribe—um, why the hell not? Here’s the link.)

I’ll be using Southwest Art Towns to manage this study group. It’s a place we can share our images, bounce questions and ideas off one another, and get constructive feedback—that sort of thing. It’s pretty loose—it’s supposed to be fun after all.

So photographer friends and photog wannabes, come join the party! Once you’re registered on the platform^*, introduce yourself in the photography study forum.

Footnote

Also note I’m not calling this a “challenge”. I dislike challenges—they’re often as arbitrary as the fucking calendar. And in this case, the notion of a challenge is too aggressive.

But I struggled with what else to call it. Looking in the thesaurus, the vast majority of synonyms were negative. So that was a hella confirmation I needed to reframe it.

That’s why it’s a study group. Let’s grow together. Show up when you can. But don’t make it a “thing” that just creates stress and leaves you in the new year failure bucket. Hopefully it simply becomes so much fun that participating comes naturally.

See you there.

Happy 2026!

Cheers, friends! Wishing you a prosperous 2026. Keep moving forward.

^*We have multiple membership levels, including free forever if you like. And no, you don’t have to live in the Southwest to participate.