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B+Wactually need to look that hard
to find periods of less busyness
within my week, be it the odd
half hour spent wandering down
an online rabbit hole or the one-
too-many movies and box sets
distracting me of an evening.
So I have decided to set
myself a very simple task: to
spend one hour every week on
the photographs I want to take,
rather than the ones I need
to take. It’s not a lot of time,
granted, but it’s 60 minutes more
than nothing. I know full well
that some weeks I will achieve
little more than a sketched idea
or a few lighting experiments,
but it doesn’t really matter how
many shots I take: the point is
to start doing what I can in the
time I can make available, rather
than making excuses about what
I could do if only I had the time.It’s about refocusing.
Of course, it would be easy to
talk the talk and not walk the
walk, so I’ve set up an Instagram
account where I can post my
weekly progress in an attempt
to keep myself honest. You aremore than welcome to join me
@chrisgatcum and it would be
great to hear from any other
time-impoverished snappers
who want to set aside one hour a
week for their own photographic
odyssey. Who knows where
it will lead? Perhaps as time
progresses we will find that
one hour can become two, that
two can become four, and in 12
months time we’ll all be multi-
million-follower influencers
with manufacturers throwing
equipment at us. Or maybe we’ll
simply be getting back to doing
something we love.Above Carrying a camera in case a photographic opportunity presents
itself, or combining a family trip with a photogenic location, is one way
of squeezing in some shutter action, but it becomes exactly that: an
exercise squeezed in around other things, rather than the main event.‘So I have decided to set myself a very simple task:
to spend one hour every week on the photographs
I want to take, rather than the ones I need to take.’