A Year of Self-Study

Reflections on photography, practice, and slowing down

With the start of a new year come the same recurring questions: new challenges, new goals, new habits to build—or let go of.

This year, I made the conscious decision to slow down on shooting. Part of it is practical: the birth of a child, and the responsibilities that naturally come with it. Time becomes more fragmented, energy more precious.

But slowing down doesn’t mean disconnecting from photography. Quite the opposite.

I want to use this period to step back and study my own practice. To look more closely at how I approach photography when I’m out shooting—what draws my attention, what I instinctively react to, and what I might be overlooking. These are habits that settle in quietly over time, often without being questioned.

That also means examining my relationship with images once they’re made. The reflex to share, the pace at which photographs move from camera to screen, and the subtle shift that happens when an image is already imagined beyond the act of seeing. Not as something to reject, but as something worth understanding.

I’ve started to wonder how often I’m shooting with an outcome in mind. How often the act of sharing precedes the act of seeing. And whether certain images would still be made if no one were there to receive them.

Looking inward has also made me more aware of my own limits. There are patterns in my work I recognize instinctively, but struggle to articulate. Decisions I repeat without fully understanding why. Familiar gestures that feel right, yet remain largely unexamined.

That’s where studying the work of other photographers becomes essential. Not as a source of direction or comparison, but as a way to sharpen awareness. Observing how others construct images, handle light, or leave space within a frame helps clarify what resonates—and what doesn’t. In that sense, their work becomes less a model to follow and more a mirror to reflect against one’s own way of seeing.

This period is also about looking back. Revisiting older photographs, sitting with them longer, and asking why some continue to resonate while others fade. Finding meaning not only in the images that are shared, but also in the ones that remain unseen.

Writing this journal is part of that process. Not to document progress or reach conclusions, but to make the questions visible. To slow things down even further, and to give shape to thoughts that usually stay internal.

These reflections don’t aim to offer answers. If anything, they exist to open a quiet space where habits, intentions, and ways of seeing can be questioned—without urgency, and without resolution.

I don’t have answers yet. Only questions worth sitting with.

Would I still make this photograph if no one were to see it?