Photo above – Intentional camera shake (ICS) from back in 2009. Just like this website it’s all over the place.

---

This website started off years ago as a photography blog, a companion to my Flickr account and gradually developed as my interest in photography continued and I started doing a number of projects. But then sometime around 2015 I decided I’d had enough, abandoned my cameras and concentrated almost exclusively on cycling. It became BikePackingJapan.com as I wanted to try something new, then OutdoorAdventure.jp to break away from bike packing, and now as I write I can sense everything coming full circle and morphing back into SeanBreslin.net again. I find my focus regularly shifting between different photography genres, outdoor activities, and personal goals.

It’s tiring. The constant flip flopping around is frustrating, always digging away at my inner self preventing me from achieving what I want. But I can’t stop it.

Some days I just want to ride my bike through remote Japanese villages or in the English countryside or to be alone in India with an old film camera and a few rolls of film. Perhaps waking up on a mountain with a full day of hiking and adventure ahead of me. Sometimes I just want to wander the streets of Nagoya (or Tokyo, Osaka, London) with a small digital compact, and on others stay home reading, watching films, printing photos and making photo books that nobody apart from myself will ever see. If something interesting develops from those little adventures I want to be able to share it. But if I do share I want it to remain true to my goals and to myself and not be influenced by trends.

In a recent online exchange with photographer David Alan Harvey via his Patreon page I asked him about starting but never finishing projects (any project) and here is part of what he said:

Sean…it is pretty normal EXCEPT at some point you must land on an idea and FINISH…having no ideas is tough and having too many ideas but not really starting any of them is equally bad….it takes weeks months and years to evolve into a complete photographer IF you want to be taken seriously as either a documentarian or an artist…again, finishing is the hard part…..I start many things and then do not finish….I lose interest or the subject wasn’t as good as I thought or ?????? nobody must finish all that they start…but you must finish at least SOMETIME!!

He goes on to say:

look at your own life….make work…and what is amazing if you document your own life , others will relate…we all read books and go to movies to see stories about OTHER PEOPLE yet we still relate…same with photographs….relax…look at books, then go pick up your camera!!

David Alan Harvey

That all makes sense. Be true to yourself, lead an interesting life, but aim to finish something as well.

I can see the Outdoor Adventure title to this blog being dropped sometime in 2020. Maybe. It’ll still be about the outdoor life in Japan (and elsewhere) because that’s what I do but dropping the name will give me the freedom yet again to post a variety of things related to where I’m heading and hopefully to get some things finished.

If that’s for you, please stick around.