When Passion Becomes Obsession — Living with a Photographer’s Eye

There are days when I wish I could just look at a photograph. Really look at it — not for its composition, lighting, tonal balance, or lens choice — but for the feeling it gives. To simply enjoy it the way most people do: as a memory frozen in time, a window into another world, a beautiful moment.

But for me, photography isn’t just a passion. It’s something deeper. At times, it feels like a compulsion. I can’t walk through a street, a forest, or even my own kitchen without mentally framing the scene — noticing how the light falls across a surface, how shadows curl into corners, how a line leads the eye. When I see a photograph, whether it’s mine or someone else’s, I dissect it automatically. Exposure, framing, colour grading — I can’t help pulling it apart in my mind, analyzing what works, what doesn’t, and how I might have done it differently.

It’s not that I don’t appreciate photographs. In fact, it’s the opposite. I love them so much that I struggle to separate the emotional from the technical. I admire and critique in the same breath. I see potential everywhere, which is both a gift and a curse. Sometimes I long to turn it off — to just see, not scrutinize.

But maybe that’s just how it is when something is truly part of you. Photography isn’t just something I do — it’s how I experience the world. And while it can be exhausting to constantly carry this inner critic, it’s also what drives me to keep growing, to keep creating, to chase the next frame.

Still, once in a while, I remind myself to just feel the image. To sit with a photograph and let it speak, without needing to answer back.