The first day, I took 400 photos. By the third day, maybe 50. By the seventh, I sometimes forgot to take the lens cap off.

This is what happens when you remove yourself from the feedback loop. No Instagram likes, no client approvals, no portfolio reviews. Just you, a trail, and the particular quality of alpine silence that makes your own breathing sound like an intrusion.

The project I had pitched — a landscape series documenting climate change in high-altitude ecosystems — became something else entirely. I still made those images. But alongside them, a parallel body of work emerged: photographs of nothing in particular. Lichen on a boulder. The pattern of frost on my tent. My own shadow stretching across scree at 2pm. Images that will never see a gallery wall but taught me more about seeing than any assignment ever has.

The best advice I can give any photographer: go somewhere alone for two weeks. Bring your camera. Bring no expectations. Let boredom become your creative director.