Making Time for Yourself in the Landscape

It is easy to make time for photography and still forget to make time for yourself.

A place is chosen, the equipment is packed, the weather checked. Before we have even arrived, there can already be an expectation of what the day should give us. A photograph worth keeping. Something to justify the journey.

I understand that feeling. When you care about making images, it is difficult to leave the desire for a result behind. But I think there is a difference between going into the landscape to make a photograph and allowing yourself to spend time there. They can happen together, although one does not always have to lead to the other.

Sometimes, simply being there needs to be enough.

There is often a period of adjustment when I first arrive somewhere. Physically, I might be beside the water, but my thoughts are still occupied by things I have brought with me. Jobs unfinished, decisions waiting, the small demands that fill an ordinary day.

Getting out of the car does not immediately leave all of that behind.

I need a little time before I begin to notice what is actually in front of me. The direction of the wind. Water moving around a post. A patch of light that was not there a moment ago. Nothing particularly remarkable, perhaps, but enough to bring my attention back to where I am.

The camera can help with that. Looking carefully through a viewfinder asks me to pay attention. Yet it can also become another demand if I am constantly searching for something to photograph.

There are moments when I think the most useful thing I can do is leave it in the bag.

Not as a rule, or an exercise. Just to remove the feeling that I ought to be doing something.

I might walk for a while without stopping to consider a composition. Or sit somewhere and watch the same small stretch of water. At first, it can feel as though I am wasting an opportunity. The light might change. Something might happen.

But I am beginning to think that this is part of making time for yourself too. Allowing a moment to pass without needing to keep it.

Much of everyday life is measured by what gets done. It is tempting to carry that habit into the things we enjoy, until even an afternoon outdoors needs to be productive.

Photography is particularly susceptible to this. We come home with something we can look at, edit and share. It is much harder to show the value of an hour spent watching the tide.

Yet that hour may have mattered more than the photograph.

I do not mean that every visit to the landscape becomes a profound experience. Sometimes it is cold, the light is flat and my thoughts remain stubbornly elsewhere. There is no particular revelation. I go for a walk and come home.

There should be room for those days as well.

Making time for yourself need not involve a distant location or a whole day set aside. It might be a familiar piece of coast, a short walk or somewhere you can sit for twenty minutes without being expected to answer anything.

What matters, I think, is that the time is not immediately given another job.

If a photograph begins to suggest itself, I can respond to it. If it does not, I would like to become better at accepting that without disappointment.

I still want to make photographs that mean something to me. That has not changed. But I do not want the search for them to become the only reason I go outside.

The landscape is not there to provide me with an image.

Sometimes I can spend a little time in it, notice what is happening, and leave without taking anything away.