New Year - Here we go again

1st post of the year, a couple of weeks into the new year (a month actually). We went out for three weeks to Mexico over the holidays and don't know if its the stage I'm at in life, or COVID, or any of the other factors surrounding life at this moment, but the holidays came and went without the usual luster. Sometimes I set off vacations with certain expectations: Have a good time, hang out with family and old acquaintances, reflect on myself, find revelations, and bring home some convictions. Sometimes it is this, and so much more. This time it wasn't. Lately it just seems like a continuous stretch of "wonder what will happen next", which has taken a toll on everyone.

I also find myself in a weird spot, being an artistic photographer in my "spare" time. I say "spare" because its usually not spare time, but time I'm taking away from other things. During vacation, when one expects to have more time to "spare", that usually translates to more time for family or leisure activities. However I remember feeling guilty for taking time to shoot amongst family/vacation plans, but it provided a necessary respite from everything.

I was looking forward to it, because I haven't gone out in Mexico properly to take photos much. Last time I did was 4 years ago, which was the last time we visited, and back then I only had a chance to do so in Monterrey, and not in my home town of Saltillo. I was curious to see how it felt, after several years of evolution.

My first walkabout was when we were staying in a cabin in the mountains. I drove about 10 mins to the closest town by the name of San Antonio de las Alazanas, in Arteaga Coahuila. One of towns that grew around the road, and as the resorts up in the mountain attract more traffic, the town grows and adapts. To put things in perspective, this town doesn't have a single street light but already has a regional chain restaurant opening a location there.

For one thing the overall light was bluer. Its hard to describe how exactly this was perceptible, but the overall light seemed as such. Guess its years of toggling the temperature and tint sliders back and forth in Lightroom, trying to get the white balance to feel good.

Otherwise the visual differences felt both familiar and strange. Familiar because I've seen them growing up, yet strange because now I was exploring how they stimulated me into a picture.

Emotionally confusing to navigate, everything seemed so luscious, it was hard to

distinguish depth: Hard to say for sure if something was exciting because it was new AND interesting, or just new.

You can't second guess yourself though, you got to keep going to the next shot and the next one, trusting something will come out of it, even if you aren't sure at the moment yet allowing yourself to respond to the stimuli.

I have learned how to push through shoots that feel "uninspired" or confusing in this sense. Perception, and this case of one's self, is a fickle thing and in general not trustworthy in the sense that it doesn't necessarily guarantee quality one way or the other.

You can feel great about a shoot and review the photos later to find out your initial reaction was exaggerating things, and the other way around, coming back disappointed only to find really great shots when reviewing them later.

The constant seems to be: doing the work.

Instead of being compelled to tease out an unique shot, I found myself most of the time just shooting directly at what I was seeing. A seemingly awkward and simple reaction, taking things in, just as they were.

AG