Photo Story: Fox on the Trail
I’ve been mentally blocked recently in regards to photography. Life has been crazy, the family business has taken a lot of my time and mental energy, we have a baby that keeps us up a lot during the night, and other factors have led to photography taking a back seat bit recently. That is fine, it will happen and is part of the flow of being a creative person, but it has very mentally taxing on me. Much of my energy and passion for life comes from being creative and especially from photography.
We had an especially difficult weekend where I actually had two extra days off making it a four day weekend. I was really looking forward to it but due to not much sleep, a broken down car, and other circumstances it went by quickly and with quite a bit of stress. On the last day of this weekend Courtney encouraged me to grab my cameras and just go out for a couple of hours. She could tell I wasn’t in a great place and is such a great support to me.
My eyes were so red from lack of sleep that I was afraid a cop would think I was high if I got pulled over. I drove around for a couple hours listening to an audiobook and trying to make some interesting images.
I eventually ended up at a State park with a hiking trail that I hadn’t been to before and decided to explore a little bit. It was a beautiful morning and I met some great people on the trail, but I was still feeling pretty down on myself.
My commercial work has slowed down a lot and I felt at a crossroads. Should I give up trying to make money with photography? Should I go a different direction? Should I take a break completely? I was honestly at my lowest point and trying to figure out in my head what photography even means to me. I began praying. Just opening up to God and asking for direction. It was at this moment when I noticed a beautiful Fox in the field next to me. I immediately stopped and tried to act chill. I switched to my 50mm (the longest lens I had on me) and just waited. He saw me and walked towards me and across the trail directly in front of me looking at me a few times as he went by. He was completely unbothered by me and it almost felt as if he wanted to say hi.
It was a beautiful and completely peaceful moment. It felt as if God was saying to me “I got you, you don’t need to stress about this. It will all work out, and to prove it to you I am going to give you a beautiful moment with this fox AND give you a pretty cool picture to remember it by”.
I am not sure I have any clearer of a direction with my photography “career”, but I feel at peace about it. God gave me the gift of photography and that isn’t going to go away no matter which direction it takes me.
It’ll work out.
