There was a stillness to the air and a chill that cut through layers of wool, fleece, and down. Mist hovered above the surface of the open water as morning light penetrated a thick layer of fog. Sunrise is still 30 minutes away, while the cold steals heat from my extremities. One can only endure so much, yet the promise of a magical sunrise is enough to fortify my resolve to stick with it.

What motivates a nature photographer to wake up early, stay out late, miss meals, hike in the heat, camp in the cold, travel for days, spend a small fortune on gear, and forgo outings with friends and family? This question haunts me now more than ever. There was a time when the solitude of wilderness was a very personal experience, one that created the opportunity to slow life down and live an inner peace that comes from being alone in nature. While some wandered the woods with binoculars or settled on a mat of moss to read or meditate, I carried a camera and embraced the solitude that many avoid.

Enter the present where photography has become an ubiquitous practice with a currency of likes and hearts motivating throngs of humans to show others that they were there and saw that. How is it possible to sustain the motivation to make new images when so many others seem to be competing for attention and affirmation? If you’ve been shooting for decades, worked with film, large format plates, medium format rolls, and the limitation of low ASA slide film, you know that photography, much like everything else, has undergone a fundamental change. The complexities of the “exposure triangle” and need to manually focus were once a barrier for many. In fact, mastering the latter often distinguished excellence from mediocrity. In contrast to the precision mechanical nature of film cameras, the modern mirrorless tools are more like computational devices than the cameras that many of us remember from our youth.

Maintaining motivation and joy in photography continues to be a personal battle. While I long for that special feeling that I once experienced when discovering an “amazing” image from a roll of 36, I do get excited when I manage to photograph a subject in beautiful light or an unexpected behavior. Staying motivated when surrounded by others who travel more, experience the exotic, and are savvy with the modern tools, require that I focus on what connected me to photography in the past. Motivation requires that I still believe that I have something unique to say with my cameras, and can find ways to embrace the moment of capture when so many other things compete for my attention. Motivation requires that I find joy in the process and peace when I’m holding a camera to my eye…. I wonder, what motivates you?