“I Have Nothing to Shoot” Is the Worst Excuse

I started working in my dad’s studio when I was 19. From then until now, I’ve made a living with a camera in one way or another. Almost 15 years.

And a lot of what my dad taught me in those first few years has stuck with me through all of it.

My dad has been a commercial photographer for more than 50 years, and one of the things he taught me early on was to never really “take a day off.”

I don’t mean that in some hustle culture, work-until-you-die kind of way.

Commercial photography just has an ebb and flow to it. There are busy weeks where there isn’t enough time in the day, and then there are days when there isn’t much going on. No client in the studio. No shoot to prep for. Nothing that is going to make you money that day.

But those weren’t days to do nothing.

They were days of practice.

One of the things my dad used to tell me was to take the thing I was worst at and practice it until it became the thing I was best at.

But there was another lesson that has probably stuck with me even more:

Learn how to make boring things interesting.

I remember one particularly slow day when there was basically nothing going on. My dad took me to the drugstore and bought a bottle of ibuprofen.

We brought it back to the studio, he put it in front of me, and that was my assignment for the day.

Photograph it.

But not just photograph it correctly. Make it interesting.

It was a boring plastic bottle of ibuprofen. Something you probably have sitting in a bathroom cabinet right now and haven't actually looked at in years.

That was the point.

Because anyone can point a camera at something incredible.

Put someone in Iceland with a camera and eventually they're probably going to make an interesting photograph. Give someone a beautiful person, a vintage Porsche, an incredible landscape or perfect light and you're already halfway there.

But what do you do with a bottle of ibuprofen?

I think about that assignment a lot.

Especially whenever I catch myself saying, “I have nothing to shoot.”

Because when I say that, what I usually mean is that I’ve stopped noticing what’s around me.

The problem isn't a lack of subjects. It's a lack of curiosity.

I’ve had to work through this a lot in my own photography, especially with the town I live in.

I live in Grand Haven, Michigan. People literally come here on vacation. They drive here to see Lake Michigan, walk out to the lighthouse, watch the sunset, go to the beach and spend time downtown.

And somehow, because I see it every day, I can convince myself there is nothing here to photograph.

I’ve photographed the pier.

I’ve photographed the lighthouse.

I’ve walked these streets.

I know what all of it looks like.

Or at least I think I do.

Familiarity breeds apathy to an extent. When you experience the same things over and over again, eventually you stop really seeing them.

And therein lies the problem.

It’s not that there is nothing to photograph. It’s that my surroundings have stopped sparking my curiosity.

There are a few ways to fix this.

The bandaid fix is to go somewhere else.

Take a trip. Drive to another town. Go somewhere you've never been before. Everything is new, so suddenly everything feels worthy of being photographed.

I love doing that. Travel is probably one of my favorite reasons to carry a camera.

But eventually you come home.

And a few days later you're driving the same road to work. You're drinking coffee from the same mug. The same light comes through the same window. You walk past the same buildings and see the same people.

And you start saying there is nothing to photograph again.

So maybe the issue with our photography isn't a technical problem at all.

Maybe it's an awe problem.

At the center of being a good photographer, I think there has to be a constant curiosity about the world.

The photographers I admire seem to have this ability to notice things that everyone else walks past.

A person standing in a certain patch of light.

The way two colors interact.

A weird sign.

Someone's hands.

The way your kid left their shoes by the door.

Steam coming off a cup of coffee.

Things that aren't necessarily important until someone decides they are worth paying attention to.

And photography gives us a reason to pay attention.

I think somewhere along the way, especially in the Instagram era, we lost a little bit of that.

We started looking for “bangers.”

We started thinking about what would perform well in the carousel. What would stop someone from scrolling. What photograph would get shared. What location hasn't been overdone. What image will make someone hit follow.

And I want to be clear, I don't think Instagram is bad.

Instagram has been an incredible tool for photography. I've discovered photographers I probably never would have known about otherwise. I've found places I want to visit, cameras I want to try, books I want to own and ideas that have genuinely made me a better photographer.

But Instagram is a place for photographs.

It's not the place for photographs.

Not every photograph needs to perform.

Not every photograph needs to be posted.

Not every photograph even needs to be good.

Some photographs belong in books. Some belong on walls. Some belong in family albums. Some will sit on a hard drive for twenty years until you find them again and realize they mean more to you now than they did when you made them.

And some photographs don't need to live anywhere at all.

Sometimes making the photograph was the point.

That's something I'm trying to remind myself of more lately.

I want to be curious about the place I live.

I want to photograph the same pier I've photographed a hundred times and still wonder if there is another photograph there.

Because the pier might be the same, but I'm not.

The weather isn't. The light isn't. The people walking past me aren't. My kids are getting older. My interests are changing. The things I notice now aren't necessarily the things I noticed five years ago.

There is always something different if I'm willing to look long enough.

So the next time I catch myself saying, “I have nothing to shoot,” I want to remember that bottle of ibuprofen sitting on a table in my dad's studio.

There is always something to photograph.

I just have to be curious enough to see it.

“I Have Nothing to Shoot” Is the Worst Excuse

Why I’m Making More Room for Photography