Why Shooting Personal Projects Might Just Save Your Photography Soul

(or: how I fell back in love with my camera after 36 weddings and a mild existential crisis)

By the end of 2024, I’d photographed 36 weddings. Thirty-six. That’s a lot of confetti, a lot of speeches, and more canapés than any one human should consume in a single calendar year. Don’t get me wrong—weddings are incredible. They’re emotional, chaotic, hilarious, and beautiful, often all at once. But after number thirty-six, I put my cameras down…and genuinely didn’t feel like picking them up again.

I was cooked. Spiritually. Creatively. Probably also physically, because those double-header weekends? They age you.

For a while, I convinced myself it was just “winter mode.” You know—hibernate, eat beige food, pretend editing counts as creativity. But deep down, I knew something was off. The camera, once an extension of my arm, now felt like a kettle bell. Every time I thought about going out to shoot “for fun,” I’d opt to reorganise my Lightroom catalogue instead. (Rock bottom.)

Then, one bleak Tuesday in January, in a moment of desperation—or procrastination, let’s be honest—I started digging through my old hard drives. And there it was. Gold. Hidden in the digital dust: photos I’d taken just for me. Bits of street photography from aimless wanderings around Oxford. Quiet little scenes I’d captured between weddings. Repetitions, patterns, odd moments, recurring faces, shapes, shadows.

Suddenly I saw something forming. Themes. Threads. The beginnings of projects I didn’t even know I’d started. It felt like finding a secret message from past-me, whispering: hey, you used to do this because you loved it.

And just like that, the spark came back. Not in a fireworks-and-soundtrack kind of way—more like a slow burn. I started putting a few images together. Sequencing. Pairing. Letting things speak to each other. And now, I can’t wait to get out and shoot again. Not because someone’s paid me to, not because there’s a deadline—but because there’s something I want to explore.

That’s the thing about personal projects—they remind you why you started. They’re the bit where it’s just about the photograph. No client expectations. No timeline. No pressure to deliver 700 edited images by next Thursday. Just you, your camera, and a weird fascination with the way shadows fall on a bus stop at 4:17pm.

Personal work gives you space to experiment. To fail. To shoot terribly and still feel like it was worthwhile. It sharpens your eye, feeds your curiosity, and inevitably makes your client work better too. Because when you’re creatively full, you show up differently. You see more. You care more. You bring that energy back into the chaos of a wedding day, and suddenly you’re not just documenting—you’re storytelling again.

So if you’re a photographer and your camera’s started to feel like a tax return—please, for the love of light—shoot something just for you. Go chase weird light, start a series on corner shops, photograph your gran’s hands, document your walk to the café. It doesn’t have to be profound. It just has to be yours.

And who knows—buried in your archives might be the beginning of something brilliant.