Winter is a tough time to be an outdoor photographer, summer can be just as hard.. I don’t mind telling you that it can be a struggle to get out and shoot, even more so to shoot at the best times of day.
I do most of my photography at four times the two golden hours and the two blue hours. My preference is for the morning version of both. However, that can be hard. Good sunrises in the winter are later in the day but infrequent.
In the summer they are more frequent but ridiculously early. June in North East England sees sunrises at 4.30am. Even shooting locally you need to be on location 45 minutes before, then factor in the travel time and sometimes, it hardly feels worth going to bed.
The converse is true in the evening light. Dull overcast nights in winter, often before kicking out time at work. Long, seemingly endless twilights in summer, you can grow a beard waiting for the sun to set.
Given that despite the disadvantages, these are by far the best time of day to shoot, how do you motivate yourself to get going?

Plan, But Not Too Much
You need to have a fixed idea in your mind. Location, what you wish to achieve, rough idea of angles. Plan your route there, working out how much time it will take to arrive on scene. Google Maps direction function is ideal for this as you can put in the time of day either you want to depart or arrive.
Don’t go too into detail, for example mapping out on an ephemeris where the light might fall. The weather will always be fickle and if it’s not suiting your plan, you may well persuade yourself not to go.
There have been many times where I very nearly canceled due to less than ideal weather only to find that despite it not being what I wanted, it is in fact great for shooting anyway. These days I tend not to use an ephemeris and only check the weather the day before. Pretty much every weather app I use gives me a different result anyway.
Get Going In The Morning
Despite being a photographer for over forty years, I still suffer anxiety before going out to shoot. I have no idea why that is, but I suspect I am not alone. No matter how early I go to bed, I will not sleep well. At best I will doze, at worst I will be awake all night.
That makes motivating myself to get out and shoot very difficult. It’s very easy to justify the need for sleep if you have not had enough. However, you can catch up with sleep. Go to bed early the next evening and you will be fine.
I push past that tiredness by deliberately getting up earlier than I need. Often one hour before I need to go. I make a strong cup of coffee and enjoy it without tv or social media. I find both of these can demotivate you to leave the house. It’s very easy to make excuses slumped in a chair reading your Facebook feed.
Although I set alarms, I am nearly always awake when they go off. For those rare times that I am not, I get straight out of bed as soon as the alarm goes. I try to pick a jarring sound that jolts you awake. I never use the snooze button. One tip is that if you are using your phone as your alarm. Put it as far away in the bedroom as possible. The physical act of getting up quickly makes it much easier to stay up.

Get Going In The Evening
Evening shoots can be equally hard to motivate for. There are two main factors that can affect motivation. The first is work. If you have had a long day working, it can be very difficult to persuade yourself to then go out and shoot. The second is comfort. If you are planning a shoot on a day off, it’s very easy to get too comfortable in your chair watching tv and making excuses not to go.
So how to get going in the evening? If it’s a working day, and you can, take your gear with you. It’s much easier to go to a location directly than to be allured by the comforts of home. Have a light lunch and a warm drink before you finish work, this will help you feel less tired. When you leave work, focus your mind on what you want to achieve from the evening’s shoot.
Much the same applies to going out from home. Eat lightly, avoid too much tv and Internet and keep yourself busy. Set an alarm to remind you to get ready around an hour before you plan to go. Again focus on what you want to achieve.

Be Prepared To Get Going
One of the easiest excuses we can make to not shoot is lack of preparedness. Batteries not charged, lens not cleaned, not downloaded the last shoot from the memory cards. If you have set in your mind that you want to go out and shoot, then prepare everything the day before.
By everything, I mean everything. All batteries are removed from the charger and put in your camera/bag. Memory cards cleaned, formatted and packed. Gear clean and ready. Then pack everything you plan to take in your camera bag and put it near the entrance door to your house. This makes it very difficult to use the unprepared excuse in your head.
If going by car, make sure you have enough fuel for the trip, there and back, this is another excuse to throw up especially on early morning shoots. Preprogram your satnav to save time in the morning.

Summary
It's very easy to throw up excuses and demotivate yourself. I am as guilty of it as the next person. However, beyond the tips above, there is another way of motivating yourself by using guilt. That is to turn the guilt on its head and think how guilty you will feel if you have missed an amazing photographic opportunity. That can be an incredibly strong motivator.
Using these tips and applying them frequently and regularly, you will find yourself increasingly motivated to get out and shoot. Because of that, you may well find yourself increasingly creative to boot. That can only be a good thing.
1 Comment
Being a wedding photographer was really fun. Finally I became a wedding professional in Surabaya, specifically at Indonesia’s sustainable paper company