Why Results-Driven Thinking Is Killing Your Love of Photography

Losing the joy of photography is easier than it sounds, and getting it back isn't always about better gear or more exotic locations. Sometimes the problem is entirely mental, and recognizing that is harder than it looks.

Coming to you from Andrew Lanxon Photography, this candid video follows Lanxon as he takes a walk through his neighborhood with his Hasselblad 907X and a 90mm lens, not with any grand creative agenda, but just to shoot. He's honest about what's been going on: a brutal stretch of work, a major personal loss, and a creeping feeling that his photography has quietly stopped being something he enjoys. That kind of honesty is rare in this space, and it makes what he's working through feel genuinely relatable. The images he captures on the walk are simple street scenes, nothing technically demanding, which is exactly the point.

What Lanxon identifies as the core problem is results-driven thinking. Every time he considered going out with his camera, he'd mentally inflate the trip into a full production: a scripted YouTube video, a planned narrative, a justifiable reason to spend the time. That mental overhead made even a short walk feel like a commitment he couldn't afford, so he'd skip it entirely. He traces this pattern back to a work trip to Barcelona for Mobile World Congress, where he shot frantically just to have footage, not because he was enjoying any of it. The weather was flat, the schedule was punishing, and the whole experience left him with nothing he actually liked.

The fix he lands on is deliberately unglamorous: just take the camera along on ordinary errands. Walk to get coffee. Catch a bus to see a friend. No script, no video plan, no expectation of a portfolio piece. What's worth paying attention to here is how the pressure of content creation, even for someone who genuinely loves photography, can quietly hollow out the hobby itself. It's a slow erosion that's easy to miss until the enjoyment is already gone. The distinction Lanxon draws between shooting for work and shooting for himself is one that anyone who mixes a creative passion with professional output will recognize immediately.

The video doesn't just diagnose the problem. Lanxon walks you through what that low-stakes outing actually felt like, what he noticed, what he shot, and whether it worked. That second half of the video is worth watching on its own terms, because the shift he describes isn't abstract. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Lanxon.