What's Keeping Me From Moving To The Next Level?

I've been very unmotivated lately. I hardly want to take photos. I'm in my fourth year of a 365 project and I've missed more days that I care to admit to. The photos I'm turning out just aren't doing it for me anymore. I feel so blah about it.

So what is it? What's going on?

I've been doing a lot of thinking on this problem. A lot...maybe too much. I'm technically proficient. I can get my exposure right in the camera most of the time. My focus is good. Technically my images are quite good I suppose but they just lack something.

I suffer from a creativity issue. That's a tough one to overcome. I don't think you can learn to be creative. I think it has to come from experience and much time. I think this is what is causing me so much anguish this year. My technical skills have gotten good. I no longer think about my exposure I just make the choices and take the photo. Making a good exposure of a crappy scene though, well that's just pointless now. In the beginning it was all about practice, practice, practice. Now I'm looking for some impact.

Look at this above photo for example. Exposure is good. White balance spot on. Whites are white, colors are accurate. But man is it boring. This was all I could come up with that day. Can you say slump?

This above photo was my last creative idea. What I feel was creative anyway. I thought about it for a couple of days. I had read a blog post about calming yourself when everything seems out of control. I wanted to try to get that feeling across so I decided to add some motion blur to my surroundings by spinning in a circle while I took the self portrait. Not bad I suppose. But that was back in late January. Since then, blah.

Alright, enough of the 'woe is me' attitude. What am I going to do about it? Practice, practice, practice. Haha! What an idea that is. But how am I going to practice something so esoteric? I'm going to start looking at tons and tons of photographs. I mean constantly and from everywhere. Flickr, 500PX, magazines, blogs. You name it, I'm going to look at them. Really look at them. If I like them try to decide why I like them. What is it about that photograph that speaks to me? Is it the composition, the color the subjects?

I hope that through this practice I will start to develop more creativity in my own photography.

So, starting today that is my plan. Wish me luck. If you have any thoughts or suggestions for me, please leave a comment.

Chris.