The slow season is finally here.
So Here We Are, It’s Winter.
Work hasn’t disappeared, but the pace has eased just enough that there’s room to notice the quiet between projects. It’s the kind of silence that makes a person look at their own habits and ask if they’ve been seeing clearly, or just moving quickly enough to avoid the question.
For months it’s been one job after another—shoot, edit, deliver, repeat. The kind of rhythm that feels productive on the surface, but underneath starts to blur days together. Somewhere along the way, decisions become default choices: familiar angles, reliable setups, safe ideas. It works, but it doesn’t always feel like seeing.
This slower stretch feels like an invitation to do something different with that discomfort. Instead of scrambling to fill every gap, it’s a chance to pay attention. To ask what has actually been driving the work, and whether that still lines up with the kind of photographer and creative this business is trying to become.
This winter’s priority list
Lately, that question keeps circling back to practice. Photography has always been tied to how things are seen—light on a wall, lines in a street, the way a person holds themselves when they think no one’s looking. When the schedule is packed, those details get flattened into tasks. In the slow season, they turn back into questions.
So this winter gets a different kind of priority list. More personal projects that don’t start with a client brief. More chances to walk with a camera and no shot list. More space to notice what actually catches the eye when there’s no expectation attached.
Film plays a big part in that. Loading a roll and knowing every frame costs something forces slower decisions. No instant review, no ten “just in case” versions—just a moment, a choice, and the patience to see whether the instinct was right. It’s uncomfortable and honest in a way that digital often isn’t, and that honesty feels necessary right now.
Slowing down the story
The work that happens online is shifting too. New YouTube videos are becoming less about quick tips and more about walking through the thought process behind images—how a scene is approached, why a certain composition felt true, what changed once the photos came back. This blog exists as the written counterpart: a place to slow the story down and trace the line from first impression to final frame.
There’s a workshop on the calendar for early spring—a chance to step out of routine and stand next to other photographers wrestling with similar questions. It’s not about chasing someone else’s style; it’s about testing what’s been forming quietly in this off‑season and seeing how it holds up.
Underneath all of this is a simple curiosity: when the pressure to “deliver” is removed, what remains? When there’s no brand to please, no builder waiting on images, no algorithm to think about—what does the lens turn toward on its own? Those answers don’t show up on command. They arrive slowly, in days like these, when there’s time to stay with a scene that doesn’t have an obvious payoff.
“Reflective Thoughts” feels like a fitting name for that process. It’s meant to be a record of the questions, shifts, experiments, and small realizations that shape the work when the busy months return—and a bridge between the videos on the channel and the quieter thinking that happens here. If the slow season has a purpose, maybe it’s this: to step back far enough that when things pick up again, the photographs aren’t just good, they’re honest.
