It’s been over five months since I last posted a photograph on Instagram.
The longest I’ve gone in over three years.
And the funny thing is, I didn’t even plan on taking a break.
I just stopped posting.
And the world kept spinning.
I don’t think I realized how much pressure I’d been putting on myself until it wasn’t there anymore.
I’d go out with my camera, take some photos, and feel like I needed to come home with something good.
Something worth sharing.
Sometimes I’d take a few extra laps around a location, looking for a photograph I could feel good about posting.
And slowly, something I genuinely loved doing started feeling like something I had to do.
It wasn’t that Instagram was changing what I photographed.
I was still making the photographs I wanted to make.
But I was starting to let it change how I felt about making them.
I’d find myself wondering why my photographs weren’t reaching more people.
Why something I thought was interesting might barely get noticed, while something I didn’t connect with nearly as much would get thousands of likes.
I’d look into algorithms.
Hashtags.
Posting times.
All these little things that had absolutely nothing to do with why I picked up a camera in the first place.
And somewhere along the way, I started letting the reception of my photographs affect how I felt about them.
But here’s what’s interesting.
I never actually stopped taking pictures.
I still leave the house with a camera almost every day.
I still stop for the same shadows, people, and little moments that catch my attention.
The difference is, I don’t feel like I have to come home with anything anymore.
Sometimes I’ll take ten photographs.
Sometimes I won’t take a single one.
And I’m perfectly fine with that.
I’ve also been shooting with my Leica IIIg a lot more than my Sony.
Not because film is better than digital.
I just love how easy it is to carry around, and there’s something about using a completely mechanical camera that I enjoy.
No screen showing me what I just made.
No immediate results.
Just me, the camera, and whatever happens to catch my eye.
And get this.
I haven’t developed a single roll of film since last year.
I have no idea what half those photographs even look like.
But I remember going out and taking them.
And I enjoyed every bit of it.
The rolls aren’t going anywhere. I’ll get to them when I get to them.
I think that made me realize something about why I love photography in the first place.
It’s not always about the photograph.
Sometimes it’s just about what having a camera makes me notice.
The way light falls across a building.
Somebody walking through a shadow.
A moment I probably would’ve walked right past if I was staring at my phone.
Even when I don’t take the picture, I still catch myself thinking, damn, that would’ve been a good photograph.
And I like that.
Photography makes me pay attention to the world around me.
And the photographs I do make become little pieces of my memory.
Things I can go back to years later and remember exactly how that moment felt.
I still love sharing my work.
I still want people to see it.
And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Instagram, or social media in general.
I’ll probably start posting again at some point.
But I don’t want to go back to feeling like every time I pick up my camera, I owe somebody a photograph.
Because these past few months have reminded me that I don’t need to make something good every time I go outside.
I don’t even need to make anything at all.
I can just enjoy being out there.
I stopped posting.
I kept taking pictures.
And the world kept spinning.