The Winter I Couldn’t Lift My Camera

This is not how I expected 2026 would start out.

I can count on two hands the number of times I’ve picked up my camera since January. I think I’ve taken maybe twenty photographs. And it’s not because I’ve not wanted to. It’s because I haven’t been able to.

Last October I fell while rollerblading with my dog, and at the time I thought I was OK. I kept shooting and editing, and didn’t think anything of it. 

Until the first week of January when my entire right shoulder gave out. Why, did it have to be the right one?! 

What started as stiffness turned into all-consuming pain. And suddenly everything that was extra in life stopped so I could focus only on what was necessary for family and physio. (*Shout out to my amazing physiotherapist Caitlin Price who has kept me above water.)

Even typing this email today, more than two months later, still hurts.

It has not been a good winter. It’s been still and uncreative and mostly it has felt cruel. 

While beautiful moments came and went, I couldn’t lift my camera without sharp stabs and spasms. 

All my best laid plans to launch new projects, take on new shoots, say yes to everything, have not come to fruition - yet. 

For someone whose work and identity are so intertwined with documenting life, this stillness feels loud. It feels like self doubt. It feels like backpedaling. It feels like regression. 

It’s a strange thing — wanting so deeply to do the thing - to produce - but not being physically able to do it.

There’s a particular frustration that comes with having ideas constantly percolating while your body says nope you can’t do that right now. 

And patience is not my strength.

There’s also grief in this season. I’m angry for lost time. For postponed plans. 

And yet, as I am slowly coming out of this forced slow down I do think that great things are on the horizon.

I’m noticing how tightly I cling to productivity as a measure of worth. I’m confronting how uncomfortable it is to rest without a tangible output. I’m learning — again — that seasons of stillness are part of the creative cycle, even when they arrive uninvited.

The ideas are still there. The vision hasn’t disappeared. If anything, it feels like it’s quietly pruning itself, waiting for the time when my body can catch up.

So for now, I’m here — admiring the greats of McCurry, Leibovitz and Salgado - with no new images of my own to show for this lost time.

This wasn’t the start to the year I planned. But since when does life ever go perfectly according to plan?