How to Overcome Burnout in Photography: Reclaiming Your Passion

Have you ever taken your camera out of your bag while overlooking a beautiful scene, only to put it back because you felt nothing? Well, folks, I'm here to tell you that you are not alone.

I'd like to take a bit of a deep dive into the discussion of burnout and why it is a prevalent and important topic to openly discuss and examine through many different focal lengths. Burnout is defined by emotional, mental, and physical exhaustion from prolonged stress. Now, if you read that sentence again, you can start to get a deeper understanding of just how impactful this can be on your creative endeavors and your life as a whole.

Whether it’s your own creative pressures, client demands, or the comparison culture we find ourselves in today, I’d like to discuss the root causes, some recovery strategies, and a few long‑term prevention tools that one might use to bob and weave around burnout. This is as much a guide for myself as it is for others, because I currently sit here writing this feeling all of the above.

Recognizing Burnout: Are You Just Tired or Truly Burned Out?

I think it’s first very important to distinguish actual burnout from merely being tired or slightly fed up. The unfortunate reality of working professionally in photography is that it can tend to become just a job, which is one of the main causes of burnout. When the creative spark is buried in the mundane, it can feel like the onset of burnout. These feelings, if left unchecked, can lead to dread (as dramatic as that sounds) when it comes to picking up your camera. It hits particularly hard when working on personal projects. This, I feel, is quite the distinction between feeling burned out rather than merely fed up with your work.

Another symptom of burnout is constant dissatisfaction with the work you create. There is nothing worse than opening your batch of freshly captured images and thinking, “What the hell is this?” or “What was I thinking with this shot?” It’s important to distinguish your own overly analytical or critical mind when reviewing images from the persistent doubt that burnout can produce.

Procrastination—this is a big problem for some of you as it is for me. Case in point: this article. It’s funny how burnout bleeds into every aspect of your creativity, not just your main work. I find myself reaching for anything else sooner than I do the camera or keyboard. While I get great satisfaction from creative endeavors, burnout pushes you away from the things you want and need to do. I can honestly admit I’ve doom-scrolled a day away when I should have been editing, writing, or doing something creative.

There are also physical signs of genuine burnout. One is fatigue—feeling tired all the time feeds your lack of motivation, which then spirals into not getting things done. Feeling irritable can be a clear sign, especially when sitting in front of your computer and feeling that nothing is going right and you'd rather be anywhere else. This can negatively affect you on-site at a job, leading to coming across as short with colleagues or clients, which you want to avoid. Sleep disturbances are another symptom: as you become aware of burnout, you start thinking about how it’s affecting your work and income, which can keep anyone up at night. And, as we’ve learned over the last while from many podcasts, getting enough sleep is paramount to your health and well-being.

So just to recap before we continue: there’s a clear distinction between burnout and being stuck in a temporary slump. A slump can equate to short-term lack of inspiration. We all get this, whether or not photography is your profession. Lack of inspiration, at least for me, is part of the process; when a slump subsides, I feel an overwhelming urge to create, seek better compositions, push myself higher, or stay up late to photograph the Milky Way.

Burnout, however, equates to chronic exhaustion and total detachment from photography or any creative endeavors. As we’ve outlined above, these can manifest in many ways—shapes and sizes—and it’s important to be fully aware of how you feel when diagnosing burnout, rather than mistaking it for momentary lack of inspiration.

Why Photographers Burn Out

I think one of the first main reasons photographers can be burned out is creative stagnation. This can come down to, for example, shooting the same subjects or styles, approaching your photography shoots in an autopilot mode. Now, I have shot a handful of weddings in my early days of photography—10 to be exact—and I think it was 10 too many. But within those 10 shoots, I garnered a huge respect for the photographers and videographers who pursue wedding photography as a career, and I have to imagine that over time, this sense of autopilot mode can rear its head much more frequently than, for example, for a landscape photographer. Wedding days have very set timelines and guidelines that a photographer would want to fulfill, whereas landscape photography can be very off the cuff and spontaneous, but that's not to say that these differences can't also make a landscape photographer feel burned out. Also, I feel social media has a huge impact on the mindset of photographers and them feeling burned out. There can almost be this fear of experimentation due to some sense of social media comparison that can lead to a lack of creativity and, again, this sense of creative stagnation. This, I feel, can lean more into the landscape photographer’s world, and particularly one who pursues YouTube as a means to garner interest in their work.

So overworking and hustle culture, for me personally, has a huge impact on my mentality when it comes to the work that I create and take on. When I first started out as a professional photographer, I was under the somewhat crazy mindset of "I have to take every single job that comes my way in order to make this work," and as the years have passed, I have somewhat learned that this is a bad mentality to have, but still sometimes find myself repeating that cycle, because working as a freelance photographer can have its serious ups and downs when it comes to regular income, etc. A strong line must be drawn between "I'm going to do this for the money" versus "I'm going to do this because I feel very passionate about it."

The "always on" mentality—this, for me, is a big one. This feeling of constantly needing to share on social media, be available, and be constantly self-promoting has played a huge role in my recent bout of burnout. I absolutely love to tell a story with every image that I post to Instagram, for example, because for me, I love to give a greater context to the images that I create and ultimately share. But this, over time and every day, can be quite taxing creatively, and while I am not out chasing likes or follows, it can be still sometimes quite anticlimactic when an image you feel proud of gets 10 likes on Instagram, and while this is a ridiculous sentence to even write, one can't help but feel it affects you in some way.

This leads us nicely into external pressures, and as I just mentioned, the algorithm anxiety can indeed negatively impact your creative spark and can lead to a greater sense of burnout when you fall into the cycle of chasing likes over your own personal fulfillment with the work you create.

And on a professional note, client demands can also have a huge impact on how your feeling of burnout is exacerbated. The big one for me is clients' unreal expectations and how they devalue the work that you create. I have a fairly substantial and strong portfolio in the world of real estate, architectural, and food photography, which I pursued for many years at home in Ireland and is still something that I pursue while traveling. I, of course, adjust my pricing according to the location that I am based, but that doesn't mean I am going to work for pennies. This lack of understanding from a client's perspective—a real estate agent, for instance—in relation to what is genuinely required work-wise to create the images that they want to see but can't get from their phone, it's a constant justification to charge a reasonable rate, and this can be quite jading over time and in turn feed this sense of burnout.

Finally, neglecting self-care can have a huge impact on your burnout. Skipping breaks and having a poor work-life balance all can culminate in this feeling of stress and strain that weighs down your shoulders. And while that feels a little metaphorical, there is a physical strain that us photographers can feel too when it comes to carrying gear for extended amounts of time. Whether you're hiking or following a bride and of course, the countless hours we spend sitting during our editing sessions, these all play a part in our mindset and how we ultimately feel. It's so important to get this balance right as our physical and mental health is so important to our work.

How to Recover From Burnout

Okay, so what is the answer? You find yourself in a predicament where reading all of the above has resonated deeply with you and you think, "Yes, I may in fact be burned out as well." But Neil, you might ask, where do we go from here? I'm just going to give you my own personal experience about overcoming a recent bout of burnout. I don't know whether this is a scientific explanation as to how to do it, but here we go.

A Short-Term Break

Take a break from anything and all photography-related. This may seem like a no-brainer because one of the main symptoms of burnout is not wanting to take any photographs. But the point is to allow yourself to not take any photographs and to be okay with the fact that it is happening.

After taking a 1- to 2-week complete detox break from any photography-related endeavors, start to ease yourself back into things. Just simply take on a little bit at a time—relearn to walk before you can run. This could take shape in only taking on one new client at a time. Or perhaps, if you work with an agency, mention to them to go into drip-feed mode.

The unfortunate caveat is that if your sole income is photography-based, finding a happy medium will be of the utmost importance because bills still need to be paid and food still needs to be in your belly. So be sure to sit down—if you're like me, with a pen and paper—and make serious lists that can be followed and adhered to.

Reconnect With Why You Started

Another big thing in getting over burnout is to simply reconnect with what it is about photography that you fell in love with in the first place. A wonderful thing to do is to revisit old photographs that mean a huge amount to you. Remember the feeling you had of capturing the image, processing the image, and sitting and admiring the image. This, at least for me, has played a huge role in reminding myself of why I do what I do, and I very much believe it can help you if you find yourself in a similar situation.

Even if it's not an epic grand vista photograph or something that got a million views on Instagram, once you reconnect with the story behind your favorite images, you will then start to remember what it is that draws you to photograph the things you love.

Shoot for Yourself

And on another note, just coming up with a personal project that is simple and easy to execute can play a huge role in your mentality and how you move forward out of your burnout. For me, this is a "shoot for yourself" project. I have absolutely no intention to share any of the images that I capture for this or make any YouTube videos about the process. I just want to go out and photograph what catches my eye, like I did at the very, very start of my photography journey.

Experiment Without Pressure

Another simple way to overcome burnout is to experiment without pressure. Perhaps try photographing a new genre? If your passion is landscapes, why not wander the streets with your camera and try some street photography? Or if your income is based around photographing people, why not take your camera to the top of your nearest hill or mountain and witness nature's splendor and try to photograph it as best you can?

Looking at it in this way is like a splash of cold water in the face—a refreshing change to what you are so long in the tooth at, and one that can really help rekindle the feeling you are searching for.

Perhaps even go out of your way and, if you have a film camera, blow the dust off and take that out, as this will force your hand to think differently about how you photograph a given subject. Personally, I would absolutely relish the idea of having a film camera at my disposal, but it's something you could consider as a way to overcome burnout.

Address Physical and Mental Health

On a final note in this regard, addressing physical and mental health will play a huge role in overcoming your current burnout. Being mindful of your sleep, your hydration, and absolutely your exercise can tend to be an overlooked aspect of one's life, regardless of whether you're burned out or not. But these play massive roles in how you feel, act, and achieve the goals you set out for yourself.

Preventing Future Burnout

Yay! You have now come out of your burnout and now look to the future. A key role in preventing future burnout will be to set realistic boundaries on your creative works. Don't go into the future thinking you must take absolutely everything in order to survive, but limit the client work to a certain amount per month, and this will give you greater creative freedom and a greater sense of achievement when you are not rushing from one job to the next. If a job presents itself that you feel like would be a bit of a drain on your mental and creative health, then be comfortable with saying no, because the flip side, as we have just discussed, can be detrimental to your work moving forward.

Another wonderful way to prevent burnout in the future is to simply diversify your creative inputs. Don't just circle the parapet of the photography world. If you enjoy music, lean into that more. If you enjoy paintings, go to more art galleries. If you enjoy being around other like-minded people, perhaps attending a workshop as a student and not a professional could be a nice way to overcome future burnout. Simply looking past what it is that gives you the anxiety and burnout can sometimes help pull you from that hole.

Building a sustainable workflow can work wonders for the long-term creative output you can have. If you have the means to outsource your editing or administrative tasks, perhaps this could be something you might consider, because if you lighten the workload from your own shoulders, it therefore gives you the creative freedom you are looking for.

Failing this, you could simply schedule an admin day, and on this day you get through all of the emails, the schedules, the correspondence that you have ahead of you. Approaching your administrative tasks in a batch-edit sense can free up the rest of your week and ultimately free up any anxieties you might have about jobs you keep putting on the long finger.

Lastly, as new age as it sounds, a little journal can help work wonders for preventing future burnout. Keeping track of particular shoots that really sparked your creativity can work wonders in your creative direction moving forward. Another thing you might consider is to regularly review projects and clients that you have that you may feel are a drain on your physical and mental health, and if you find these, perhaps it could be an option to reduce the workload from them or to simply let go of them entirely.

Final Thoughts

So all this rambling has come to an end, and I very much hope you may have garnered some helpful insights from my own burnout. It's very important to remember that burnout is not failure and that it is a simple sign to recalibrate, refocus, and move forward. It's very important that topics like this get openly discussed because they can tend to fall by the wayside so much that people can suffer in silence, and that helps nobody. And always remember that your love for photography will return with patience.

If you are comfortable sharing your own thoughts and opinions on this topic, I would absolutely love to hear about them in the comment section, and open dialogue will help other folks dealing with these issues. And, of course, if there is anything I missed above, you are most welcome to share your own thoughts and experiences.

Cheers!