Why I Sometimes Fear I Have Photographed Everything

Sunday 4 May 2025, 13:31 by Michiel Heijmans | 3,680 views | 8 comments

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

Sometimes I catch myself feeling a strange kind of tiredness. Not physically, but visually. As if my eyes are saturated. As if I woke up one day and thought: I have photographed everything.

Every street corner seems familiar, every scene feels like a repeat. And deep down, that little voice starts to whisper: what do you still have to add?

That annoying feeling that everything has already been made

It's not even that I have no inspiration. On the contrary, my head is working overtime and freelance work and commercial assignments are fighting for attention in my diary.

But in my street photography, I mainly see a great many new street photographers all making the same work. Don't get me wrong: about four years ago, I was that new street photographer.

I see 85mm lenses making the same portraits from a distance and get annoyed by the f/1.2 apertures. People quickly think that looks nice, I think, and I know that photo will end up on Instagram and be forgotten. They aren't exciting photos, and of course I made those too once.

I see a 28mm lens used very close up at f/8 and understand that photographer better, but those photos have already been made too. Sometimes I see a hidden gem and end up on Julia's Street Repeat, and realise that gem is also one of thirteen to a dozen. Everything has already been made. It gnaws at me.

The same round again

Maybe a change is as good as a rest, and I decide to choose other cities for my wanderings. They inspire me and for a brief moment I think I have found the holy grail. New cities, new images.

Then I get home and put them next to my old images. There are still a lot of similarities. A different background doesn't make the story fundamentally different.

A man runs for the train and I think: 'I've already got that one'. As if I collect football stickers and only need that one goalkeeper from that one club before my book is full.

I stare seriously ahead for a moment and remember sticker albums with pictures of the A-Team, one red and one yellow. I spent hours sticking in the pictures, saving up for new packets and swapping them in the school playground. When the album was full, the book started gathering dust. I never looked at it again.

What if I have already taken my best photo?

Seriously. What if that's true? Maybe it's the window-cleaning lady in Domburg, or the little boy on the New York Underground. I also like that photo in Paris, of the woman in a hat on those incredibly wide steps. Would those be my best images? Am I carrying water to the sea? Who knows.

The doubt sets in. It feels as if I trained for a year for the Nijmegen Four Days Marches and the organisers decided the day before the start never to organise the event again. What now?

I feel frustrated. Mainly frustrated, and actually just not in the mood to go out onto the streets at all. What am I doing it for? I repeat myself, time and again. The biscuit seems to be running out, or?

It's all about how you look at it.

On YouTube, I watch Hayden explain that, driven by the urge for likes and views, he deleted his YouTube channel. 1,000,000 subscribers gone, deals with companies such as Sony gone, and Jesus helped him remove the madness.

I am shocked. This feeling of having done everything can drive you completely mad. Hayden in this case, thankfully I am still a long way from that.

I watch his second video on his new channel and realise that on this newly started channel, he is doing exactly the same thing again as on his old channel. Photobattles and the like. Popular. Nothing new.

Thoughtlessly, I scroll through my own photos on my website michielheijmans.com and see change. Improvement. My older photos and recent photos sit perfectly well next to each other, but the light is different. I open my Instagram. The same change.

My old photos are sometimes a little dark and flat, and I seem to be looking for light, looking for light much more in those new photos. Interesting.

Looking differently

I don't think I have changed that much myself. And perhaps it makes sense that I then think I keep making the same thing over and over. Change comes slowly and lies in small things. It seems that I am definitely making new things. Not because I have become different, but because I have started looking differently.

Things are falling into place. I understand better why I no longer find many street photography photos so interesting. I understand why I retain that urge for a better image, because my way of seeing is changing.

What I thought was beautiful yesterday doesn't have to be beautiful today. A photo is a combination of the moment and how you feel at that moment. And my doubt seems to have blocked that feeling.

Maybe it isn't a bad thing to hear that annoying little voice from time to time. It forces you to look again, not at the world, but at yourself as a photographer.

Because even if you have photographed everything before, today is still different. The light falls just a little differently. Your mood is new. And that is exactly where, in that difference, the reason lies for me to go out onto the streets again. To see again what I thought I already knew.

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