As you’re possibly aware from reading other blog posts of mine, I live in the middle of England, in a provincial town that basically survives. It’s not a dynamic town and definitely not pretty, not exactly a tourist attraction.

And if you live in England, or have been paying attention to the weather across England, you’ll know that this winter has been wet. I mean biblically wet. If you watch this video, you’ll see it took me three attempts to get the shot I was after, simply due to the amount of rain we kept getting. I even made a video about how it was possible to get artistic landscape images in the rain while staying comfortable and dry, here if you haven’t seen it yet.

So, although photography and creating images & videos in the rain is possible, I believe that as creatives, persistent bad weather is not great for our creative minds, let alone your general mental health when your entire creative process requires you to be out and about. But again, photography is possible when it’s raining, or snowing. Take a look at the work of Saul Leiter for example, he made a huge collection of images, many of which were taken during snow storms or rainy days around New York, many simply from his apartment windows or on a commute. It’s how we utilise those conditions that make or break an image. It also helps if the bad weather comes in small doses.

But back to the here and now. I truly believe that sometimes, as image creators, we must see, must experience, fresh and exciting perspectives. And there’s no better way of achieving that, than to travel to somewhere new. Obviously it helps if the new place has a little more sunshine to fuel our souls too.

And that’s why at the beginning of March, I hopped on a plane and made my way to a city I’ve never been to before, even though it’s only a cheap, two hour flight from England, Barcelona.

I decided to go pretty much last minute. I literally booked it 6 days before departure, just because I was getting seriously frustrated at my plans to create images and videos for my blogs and YouTube channel being scuppered by bad weather. Often changing from what was promised on weather apps on the day I was heading out. And you can tell how frustrated I was getting, because I’d already got a photographic road trip organised for the middle of April, which was epic. So check back for new blog posts here, and subscribe to the YouTube channel if you haven’t already to watch those upcoming videos.

But while in Barcelona, my aim was to create a couple of videos and get some shots of the incredible architecture and art that Barcelona excels at. I also just soaked the different culture and atmosphere, because it’s these things that refresh your artistic soul. Different cultures and being able to create the images you truly love to get.

So here’s my advice, if you can, travel to somewhere new. Instead of caving in to advertising and buying the next great photo gadget or next generation camera, save your money and explore somewhere different to the norm. It doesn’t have to be for a long time, I was only in Barcelona for three days, but just arriving there, somewhere new, had me excited for what images I’d create over the three days. If you live in the UK or Europe, you have so many different countries on your doorstep and so many of them will have completely different cultures to your own to experience. If you live in the US, visit a new city or go out of state. I absolutely love travelling around the US and no one state is like another, some are like completely different countries, it’s awesome.

So charge your batteries and go charge YOUR batteries.