Week notes #9: missing my window

Nearly 2 years ago, I suggested I may have made an error in titling a series of posts ‘week notes’. That was #8, and today is #9.

Rather than waste time coming up with a new title for (clearly very) occasional general-update posts however, I’m just going to run with it.

This year has just been incredibly weak for me photographically. In June, while waking up this blog/journal, I mentioned how relatively few photographs I had taken so far. Looking at Lightroom, I’ve only added photos on two more days in the 6 weeks since.

There are all sorts of reasons for that lack of productivity but finding a few minutes to myself this evening and looking (again through Lightroom) for a photo to share here, I stumbled across a not-great image (below) taken from my office window in our old house and I realised quite how much even that simple view used to inspire me photographically.

Although my old office only looked out onto our street and across neighbours' houses, it did give me a lovely view of the sky from which to observe the changing conditions and acted as my window on the world. My closing line when I wrote about in 2020, while a bad closing line, shows the power that window used to have for me:

“ Finally, we’ve had some interesting sunsets in the past week or so (which triggered this post) that have had me wishing I could be down at the beach with my tripod set up…”

That little rectangle of the outside world triggered me to write for this site, and inspired me to get out and photograph things.

It’s so easy to be busy and to find things to get in the way of getting out with a camera, but when you’ve got a reminder of the possibilities happening outside to your left, it builds up that need to get out and create.

Our new house is fantastic—actually closer to the beach where I’d most likely head with a camera—but my office sits on the side of the house and the windows look out at the side of our neighbour’s house, so I just don’t get that openness of view to really notice the sky change.

None of which is of course the main reason for not taking many pictures this year, but it’s something I’d noticed before and struck me this evening. The little things can matter; they build up into big things. And those little doses of longing to be out photographing an interesting sunset did build up into forcing the time to get out somewhere with a camera.

All of which means I need to find another source of mini-inspirations to build me up into creating time for photography. 

I did find one very seasonal potential contributor this evening as I decided to go and sit in my garden for a few minutes as the house quietened and the sun was dipping low. The sky wasn’t particularly inspiring tonight, but as I sat in a garden chair I happened to look straight up at the sky and my attention was caught again.

I shifted low to rest my head on the back of the chair and simply stare up at the sky, a few wispy clouds slowly gliding over me and a handful of swifts looping around too.

It made me think about being outside and taking pictures again.

So I should do that thing.