A few days ago I realized that for the past couple of months I have been in a kind of creative slump.  September and October are always my busiest months; this fall, however, they went from busy to absolutely insane.  At work my team has been running ragged trying to meet a deadline on a software project; in September I photographed 3 weddings and 2 bar mitzvahs; in October, 5 weddings and 2 bar mitzvahs.  Needless to say, I’m pretty burned out.

In the past, once the wedding season is over, I found it very helpful to step back from photography (or at least from digital photography) to gain some perspective and to get my creative juices flowing.

During the busy months I keep a list of projects that I want to do at some point in the future.  I never leave my house without a notebook; since I tend to get thousands of ideas a minute, I run through my notebooks pretty quickly.

Whenever I actually have some downtime, I go through my notebooks and make a shortlist of more interesting/promising projects.  On my desktop, I keep folders for creative projects, writing ideas and software/code projects. For every creative or software project that I think is worth doing, I create a subfolder under the respective desktop folders. 

Since I practically sleep with a laptop, it is a perfect way for me to do research and take notes/make drawings and diagrams for each project. 

For this winter, I decided that I want to build the following things:

1. A rocking horse
2. An electric guitar or mandolin
3. A tilt-shift lens
4. Printing press
5. A crossbow

My last wedding of the season is on November 24th.  After that (and after my grad school finals) I will have a few months of rest and relaxation, at least in the evenings.  As I work/complete these projects, I’ll post diagrams, drawings, research and photos of everything.  Wish me luck…