Mojo Rising

Nikon D200, Nikkor 16-85mm f3.5-5.6G VR DX

I've been struggling in artistic terms for a few years now. Frankly, my will to shoot's been increasingly erratic, and the last year or two have been the worst. I normally shoot a little over 10k frames a year. Last year was under 6K, up until last week I'd shot about 1700 frames for the year.

The odd thing here is I'm not terribly unhappy with the work that resulted. Most of it has been up to my standards and some, especially from last fall, was among the best work I've shot. But I've been struggling to get out and shoot, and that's been something which has driven a lot of my gear shuffling.

In considering this, I've come to the realization that this issue dates back more than a couple years, and it had simply been masked by the amount of event work I shot from 2009-2013 while I was in school. The last year I really shot a lot of my own work was 2008, although 2012 was an OK year for my work as well.

The flip side of this? I've shot 400 frames since Saturday. Frankly, I've really got my mojo on. And 360 frames of that has been with the D200. Now some of this might be new toy syndrome, except for the fact that the D200 is the sixth camera I've bought in the last year, and only one of the other 5 saw more than 600 frames (the X-A1, with 800 frames in 3 months).

So what am I going to do about this? Keep shooting the D200 as long as it tickles my fancy. If I keep shooting like this I'm going to put something close to my 2008 kit together. That kit was a D300 and a D40 with a 10-20, 16-85VR and a selection of primes, plus an FM2n for film. Well I've got the D200, that self-same 16-85 (on loan) and an FM for film. we'll see how the rest works out.