Hello, Jon. Don't get discouraged. It'll come back to you, just give it time and stop trying so hard.
I'm not a photographer but I do dabble with writing. In our (the writer's) case, what you're suffering would be referred to as "writer's block" and it's common and as accepted as a baseball player's (or in the Chicago Cubs' case, the whole team's) batting slump. It bums you out, but it rarely lasts forever.
With writing, I find I have two clear choices. Either I write something even if it's bad, so long as I'm writing, and worry about cleaning it up later when I get out of my slump, OR I walk away from the project completely and wait for the block to pass. I had a story once that I started but couldn't find a way to finish for over a year. Then one day, it just popped into my head and I finished the story in a matter of hours. Turned out to be a work of which I am still quite proud.
Perhaps just stop trying so hard to find the "beauty and forms" that seem so elusive to you right now. Instead, just go out and shoot whatever you see, however you see it, and make it just for fun again (even if it means sitting out a few challenges). After all, it's digital, i.e. easily deleted if you don't like the results, right? And who knows, maybe through the course of making it fun again, you'll find what you're missing along the way.
Good luck. |
