May genuinely started out looking quite promising, at least in regard to my photography. The weather was beginning to improve and the colours were beginning to shape up. My new job was a social hour catastrophe, though, but pretty ideal for shooting photos – mornings and early afternoons to myself, evenings and nights given over to work.

The problem for me, with working evenings and nights, was that my day was shaped the wrong way around – play first, work later, then sleep. I’ve always preferred to get work out of the way first, so that I’m then free to enjoy myself for the rest of the day. I’ve never enjoyed having to clock-watch, and you’re always forced to do this when you have a work shift later in the day. It’s… uncomfortable, even unsettling.

My situation changed mid-May, though. Five weeks into the new role and a different opportunity came along which, to help out a friend and also to help out my bank account, I very much needed to take. And that’s when things got bent out of shape. Photographically speaking, that is to say.

Now I’m working a traditional 9-5 job and my sleeping pattern is a mess. I wake up at 2am and can’t get back to sleep, and then I’m up to get ready for work around 6:30. By the time I’ve finished work, got home and eaten some food, I’m absolutely wiped out and falling asleep. Now we’re on the verge of summer and there are more daytime hours than night time in the day and yet I’m struggling to get a photo in the daylight.

But all this complaining is really just about changes to my routine. I’m acclimatising and, although it’s a bit of a slow process, I’m getting there. With a bit of extra cash in my pocket, in my spare time I should be able to get a bit further afield and and seek photographic inspiration in new things.

We’re now entering the high season for macro, with June through August really being the best months for finding insects to photograph. Macro is certainly the most economic genre in photography as far as sundry expenditure goes. You really don’t have to go far at all to find fantastic macro opportunities. With living costs being as high as they are now, I think macro photography is probably going to be my main focus for the next few months.