2017 Recap: Photos, Thoughts, Insights, and What Worked for Me
2017 - my year in pictures, plus some thoughts and insights into what worked for me in 2017.
2017 Recap: Photos, Thoughts, Insights, and What Worked for Me
I always enjoy coming to the end of a year and looking back on what all I did during the previous 12 months. It’s kind of fun, and a great reminder about how fortunate I am to be able to go places, take photos, and share them with the world. But it’s also easy to forget all the things that I did, since 12 months is a long time and frankly, I am a bit forgetful at times. :-)
Nonetheless, I dug through my blog and Flickr archives to get a reminder of the places I went and the photos I took, and have stuck some of my favorites here for your enjoyment. I took thousands of photos in 2017 and have not had enough time to edit that many of them, so while these are some of my favorites, I have plenty more still to process and share, and many that I don't even remember taking at this moment that are (hopefully) good ones.
Here are some of my favorite photos taken in 2017. You can click any of them to enlarge.
Anguilla
Emerald Lake, BC, Canada
Hackberry, AZ
Cannon Beach, OR
Prague
Rothenburg, Germany
Tucumcari, NM
Fussen, Germany
Moraine Lake, Canada
PRague
Prague
La Jolla, CA
After posting them and coming back to look at them, I have made a couple of observations about these photo choices that I find interesting:
- 8 of these are HDR photos (Anguilla, Tucumcari, Fussen, Hackberry, Cannon Beach, Prague 1 & 2, Rothenburg)
- 2 of these are long exposures done with my 10-stop filter (Moraine Lake and La Jolla)
- 2 of these are quick single exposures (Emerald Lake and Prague 3)
These observations lead me to some (fairly obvious) conclusions:
- I still love to process HDR photos and often find the results are quite pleasing to my eye
- I love to take really long exposures with my 10 stop filter
- I continue to be a "big color" guy at heart (though I have grown to love monochromes a lot over the years)
But for me year-end is a time to also take stock of what has worked and what hasn’t worked, and to “adjust the sails” so to speak. In this respect I am speaking about what has worked for me in terms of growing my photography business and my blog, etc. This is a business and of course I want to grow it, so learning from the past is a big deal to me. So here goes!
So here are some things that worked for me in 2017:
On the Blog: Top Photo Spots in London, NYC, and Austin (and several others); my Macphun Presets page, Luminar Tips page, HDR Tutorial, and then some reviews.
I have learned over the last couple of years that my blog is a great resource for a couple things: lists of where to shoot, and information about Macphun/Skylum products (training, presets, etc).
I get decent traffic on some of my reviews too, but otherwise it’s all about “where to shoot” and “how to edit”. My daily photo posts get limited traffic, frankly. My blog just isn’t about “look at this great shot I shared today” and it’s more about where to go and how to edit your photos. This has me thinking quite a bit about what I want to do going forward, and I will share those thoughts once they have crystallized a bit.
I get thousands of views each month to my Top Photo Spots lists, and frankly they don’t require any work since they are already built. Sure I can add to them if I revisit a place and get more ideas to share (and I do that sometimes) but otherwise they are somewhat static. But other than just bringing in traffic, do they do anything for me? I’m not sure, truthfully. Traffic numbers are not a goal in and of itself. Sure, people join my mailing list, but that isn’t huge and I am not very consistent with it anyway. So this is a place for improvement in how I manage my blog.
My Presets page and my other Macphun pages (Luminar Tips and HDR Tutorial) get decent traffic too, which is great because these pages actually get updates from time to time, and obviously if someone purchases my presets then I make a few bucks. I have more presets in development and will share those when they are ready. So these pages will continue to grow and evolve.
Generally speaking, this site is not about gear reviews, although I do have a few and some of them pick up some decent traffic. I may add to these over time, but I am not a gear reviewer kind of guy and this is not a big focus for me. I simply share these things when I have something I really like. So maybe I will add 1-2 this year, but likely no more than that.
YouTube:
This was a year of YouTube for me, probably more than anything else. I started the year at less than 1,000 subscribers and am sitting just over 5,500 subscribers now. This has been amazing and a LOT of fun for me. This is clearly working. :-)
I created over 75 videos last year, which was really fun but also somewhat taxing. I am not sure what my pace will be this year, but I have a lot planned so stay tuned. Even though thus far my videos are all about Luminar and Aurora HDR, I still have a lengthy list of things I want to share regarding these products, which could keep me busy for quite a while. I love the products and just enjoy doing this stuff. People have asked if I will include other products, too, so that is something I am considering, though I'm not sure which direction I would go with it since I really concentrate my editing in Luminar and Aurora HDR almost exclusively. I have to give that some thought.
I will definitely invest more into YouTube in 2018. I get more engagement here than anywhere else, and this drives interest in my presets etc. It’s a great platform for me, and I really enjoy it. More to come in 2018! Subscribe to my channel here.
Instagram:
As with previous years, I find that I really enjoy Instagram, but I rarely put much effort into it. It is a great platform and I will continue to share my photos there, but I am not sure what my pace will be. As you can see in my "Best Nine", I barely got to 100 photos shared on IG in 2017, which just isn’t that many. I don’t do a great job of engaging there, and I don’t market myself either. I feel like I need to be more consistent there (I have gone a couple of weeks at a time between posts, which doesn’t help grow a channel), but it never comes to the top of the list when I sit down to do something. It’s just not in my DNA yet. I need to work on it.
Facebook:
I have always sort of been arms-length with Facebook, but I have to say that the Macphun/Skylum Photography group has been a real bright spot for me in 2017. I share my videos there, and everyone is very supportive of my work which is hugely appreciated. I frequently get on FB and go straight to that group to check out pics. There are some amazing photos shared there and some great people as well. It makes it worth it to log into Facebook.
Photo Processing:
Obviously I processed a fair number of photos in 2017, but truthfully it’s a lot less than you would think. Between being gone for the month of April (Germany, Prague, etc), and then on the road for 8 weeks or so this summer, and then upon returning jumping straight into making Aurora HDR videos for the Macphun website - followed by a project to create videos for them for Luminar, too - I didn’t edit nearly the number of photos that I would normally edit (not to mention all the time I spent creating my own videos). I was just extremely busy with other things. That is not a complaint - I’m really grateful for the work, and love to do it - but it’s just a fact.
I have thousands of unedited images from this year as well as from my overseas trips in 2016 that I still want to edit and share. I put these onto Flickr as well as into my Portfolio at SmugMug, and I want to get more of my work out there. No one can find it if it sits on my hard drive, unedited. I just need to make this a priority. Plus it's just fun!
Stock Licensing:
I made a little money this year with stock photo licensing, which is great. In some respects it’s money that comes in on auto-pilot, because once they are approved and uploaded by the agency, I don’t have to do anything. But truthfully it’s a lot of work to get photos ready, uploaded and then (hopefully) approved, and I haven’t added any in a long time.
The only real way to make any money with stock licensing is to have a huge volume of work available, which is not my situation at all. I have somewhere less than 100 photos out there, so I want to add to that in 2018. This area could use a lot of expansion and improvement in 2018. Again, I need to make this a priority, though I already have several priorities and you can only do so much. :-)
Summary and Parting Thoughts
So that’s about it for this bit of rambling and recap of this past year. I think 2017 was an exceptional year, and I was able to go to some amazing places and take photos that I really love. That’s always a win in my book. My business grew, I created a lot of things that I am proud of, and I had fun doing it. I consider that a successful year. I will look back on 2017 fondly.
I will be back soon with some thoughts on what I plan to do in 2018.
Thanks so much for your support in 2017, I appreciate it!
Highlights from 2015
It's fun to look back on the year that just ended, and today's post is exactly that - a look back. 2015 was a year of photography, travel, and change - and I hope I did it justice in this summary. Grab a cup of coffee, sit back, and enjoy the review - there's a LOT here! Thanks for visiting my blog this year!
2015 - you were a great year! You'll be remembered fondly!
2015 was a great year for me both personally and photographically. I traveled a lot (though not as much as in previous years) and took a lot of pictures. Those two things are core to what I love to do, and what this blog is all about. I continued to grow readership here, as well as on social media channels. And I continued to have a great time doing all this, which is a requirement. If it’s not fun, why spend all this time on it?
2015 was also a year of significant change. I made many changes to the blog, with the intention of making it more aesthetically pleasing to the eye (at least my eye - hopefully yours as well!). I made changes to my photography style, and then sort of changed back (I stopped processing in HDR for many months, then had an epiphany and came back to it). I made changes to my goals for the year, and realized that goal setting isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I changed camera gear, returning to full-frame with the Sony A7II system, which is absolutely amazing. And I also changed jobs at work, which is partly responsible for the slight reduction in travel. That’s a lot of change when you think about it, but it’s all good.
As I mentioned above, I didn’t travel quite as much as I did in previous years, although I was still motoring around quite a bit. I took about a dozen trips in the US, some short and some long, and took quite a few pics along the way. I took 3 trips to Europe, which is less than previous years, although that covered 6 different cities (and countless photo spots) in 4 different countries.
I started out the year focused on taking a LOT of photos - and did so - but by September I had decided that I was getting too focused on quantity and ignoring quality, so I scaled it back a little bit. I still take a ton of photos, but fewer than before, and I judge the outcome of a trip based on “winning” images, as opposed to a straight unit count. But as you will see below, all this still resulted in a lot of photos in 2015.
I took a much needed break from Facebook. As a family we had pretty much the best summer ever, which was based around an epic road trip across 10 states in the Western US. And I had the most amazing surprise recently when I was named one of the Top 100 Travel Photographers in the World for 2015. I feel incredibly honored and blessed to be included on that list among other photographers that I have admired and looked up to for years!
Jim, what about the pics?
Oh yes, as I said above, I did take a lot of pictures in 2015. As far as I can tell, I took about 30,000 photos this year (Unlike many photographers, I don’t catalog my photos by year. I catalog then by location first and then month/year. So going through my Lightroom catalog and adding them up is how I got to that number. More work that way when trying to get a summary, but easier to manage for me on a daily basis.) That’s a pretty solid amount of production, averaging out to about 600 photos per week.
And to be clear, these are just photos taken with my Olympus gear (up until about September) and then my Sony gear starting in September and going through year end. I took probably another 5,000 or more with my iPhone, although I haven’t organized them well enough to count them up quickly. Let’s just say it’s a shitload, ok? :-) I did shift somewhat away from creating iPhone-specific trip posts here on the blog though.
I still shoot a lot with my iPhone and love to do so, but I decided that I have so many "real" images backlogged from so many trips, that I would rather process and share those instead of iPhone-specific posts. I may still do iPhone posts from time to time, but not often. However, I still share many of them on Flickr and on Instagram, and have a page dedicated to my iPhoneography here on the blog.
So here is a summary of the trips I took in 2015 and a pic or two from each trip that are among my favorites. To be clear, I have many photos still to process from these trips, so although these are my current faves, it’s hard to say that they are "the best" with 100% confidence since I have so much more to process. Call them highlights if you like. (and click on any photo to enlarge and view in a lightbox)
Jan/Feb: Las Vegas (~1500 photos) - I went twice this year to Sin City - actually, just realized I went three times. I like the town, but I’m not a Vegas kind of guy, despite going there 3 times. My first trip was in January for a company meeting, and I didn’t even bring the camera as there’s just no time. The second trip was in February for a customer event, and I got out a couple of times and fired away. The third time was a brief one-nighter on our summer road trip, and I left the camera in the car that day. We literally spent one night there just to show it to our daughter and take her to Cirque du Soleil. She loved Cirque but isn't a big fan of Vegas. I love shooting there (how can you NOT love all those signs?!) but I would never choose to vacation there.
blue hour on the strip
i finally got to shoot this sign!
March: Abiquiu, New Mexico (~1900 photos) - We took a trip for Spring Break over to New Mexico, opting this time to stay out in the country a bit in Abiquiu (instead of Santa Fe, where we have stayed many times). It’s about 45 minutes from Santa Fe and is best known as the place where the artist Georgia O’Keeffe spent much of her working life as a painter. The landscapes are beautiful and I caught some images I’m very fond of while there. It's a rugged place without a lot of amenities you get in the city, but it's quite fun for hiking and photography, two things I love to do!
a stunning sunrise in abiquiu, nm
plaza blanca, or white place - amazing!
March: Copenhagen, Denmark (~3300 photos) - A day after arriving home from Spring Break, I hopped on a plane to Copenhagen. I barely got to dump my New Mexico photos into my library before I was off again! This was a great week in a wonderful city that I really love to visit, despite being a little tired upon arrival. I shot like a maniac all around the town, and then took a day to visit an amazing castle about an hour away. So much awesomeness here! I would happily visit Copenhagen yearly - it's just beautiful and peaceful there, and I love it.
sunrise at nyhavn - so beautiful!
a trip to Frederiksborg castle
April: Dublin and Howth, Ireland (~1800 photos) - Ah, wonderful Dublin! I made a return visit to this city I love. I think this was my 6th trip there over the years. I hope for many more trips because it’s a place that I really adore. There’s so much to shoot, the people are wonderful, and you just have to love all the little pubs! This is another city I could visit at least once a year. I find it especially beautiful at sunrise, when all the tourists are asleep and I can prowl the historic Temple Bar area alone. It's pretty amazing.
I also took a day trip over to the little fishing village of Howth while there. It was great to hike around the edge of it, staring at the Irish Sea and taking a lot of photos, of course. Well worth a detour over to Howth if you are interested in exploring outside of Dublin. Probably my favorite part was the ruins of the old church you see below - so cool!
sunrise at the ha'penny bridge in dublin
ruins of an old church in howth
April: Glasgow, Scotland (~2000 photos) - From Dublin, I headed over to Glasgow and ended up with a weekend in the city. I was joined by my good friend Mike Murphy, who came up from London. We shot around town quite a bit and then spent the next day exploring nearby Falkirk, where we photographed The Kelpies and the Falkirk Wheel. Really a great time in every respect! I have also been to Glasgow many times, and despite it being a little "rougher around the edges" than Edinburgh, it's a great city and quite photogenic. This was my first time out to Falkirk, which is a place where I have always wanted to visit. It just worked out well and I was able to grab a LOT of photos at both The Kelpies and The Falkirk Wheel. They are both just super interesting and photogenic spots!
sunset along the river clyde in downtown glasgow
the kelpies in falkirk - so big!!
May - home! Time to process some of that backlog! And rest! And do laundry!
June: San Francisco (~1200 photos) - This is my favorite US city. I’ve been to many of them, many times, but I continue to like San Fran the best. It’s just so beautiful and I find so much photographic inspiration here! I love to get up early (which is easy since my time clock is always askew while I am there) and wander around downtown. It's always cool outside (which I love, being a Texas guy) and I tend to find myself in front of the Ferry Building, which is my favorite structure in town. It's just gorgeous that time of day, and very few people are out.
blue hour one morning at the ferry building
just after sunset one evening overlooking the ferry building
June: Nashville and Oklahoma City (~1300 photos) - Nashville is a great town and I always enjoy my visits here - and generally come away with photos that I am proud of. I caught this most memorable sunset one evening while there which made it all worthwhile! I was shooting from the Shelby Pedestrian Bridge, which provides an incredible vantage point for capturing the skyline, and the sunset behind it. I shoot it on every Nashville trip!
Oklahoma City was the second half of that week, and I just realized I still haven’t processed any of the pics from there yet, LOL. I was with my friend Mark and we headed out to the portion of Route 66 that is north of OKC. While it's not the typical Route 66 stuff you see in places like Arizona, it's still pretty interesting and I am looking forward to sharing some of those pics.
I'm always inspired by this fabulous view of nashville!
Late June to mid-August: Our great Western US road trip! There’s still just so much to say about this trip and as you can see below, so many photos to process and share. This will keep me busy for quite some time I expect. So while I could spend ages sharing photos from all these spots, I thought it best to share a couple of my favorites from Oregon, since that was the main destination of our trip. Of the 7 weeks we were on the road, about 4 of them were spent in northern Oregon near the popular resort town of Cannon Beach. It's incredibly photogenic in that area, and well worth a visit, even if you are in Portland (just over an hour drive away).
- Arizona, ~1200 photos (most of these are around the Grand Canyon and Flagstaff area)
- California up to Oregon, ~1700 photos (from Hearst Castle up to Mendocino/Ft Bragg)
- Northern Oregon, ~4400 photos (we were here about a month and I caught some real beauties!)
- San Juan Islands, Washington State, ~ 1600 photos (we spent ~6 days here)
- The drive home from Seattle to Texas, ~650 photos (limited shooting because we were heading home)
an incredible sunset at ecola state park
golden hour at haystack rock
Late August: Boston, MA (~400 photos) - This was a quick 2 day trip, only one of which allowed me time to shoot, since I was there on business. But I made the most of it, firing away at Fan Pier (a place I had always wanted to shoot) with my friend Bob Lussier, who I have wanted to meet in person for a long time. It was a wonderful evening of shooting, trading stories over beers, and talking about photography. And Bob lent me his wide angle lens for my Olympus camera, which was quite fun. This was the last trip I took with the Olympus though, converting to Sony just a few weeks later (and in time for my next trip, which was a big one).
blue hour in boston as seen from fan pier
September: Stavanger, Norway (~800 photos) and Aberdeen, Scotland (~250 photos) - OMG Norway you are AMAZING!! I fell in love with it right away, before I even left the town and headed out to the fjords. It’s a gorgeous place. But once I climbed up to the top of Lysefjord and stared at Pulpit Rock, I can honestly say it had a profound impact on me. Just staring at this landscape below me filled my soul. I could have sat there for hours, except that I had so many photos I wanted to capture. So after some gawking at the views, I got busy hiking around and firing away!
And of course my visit to Aberdeen was rewarding as well, though limiting in terms of photography. I didn't even take any photos in the city. It's a nice place, but I didn't find anything that really got me excited. I mostly just got one afternoon to shoot anyways, and made the most of it by heading out on a train to nearby Stonehaven so that I could visit Dunnottar Castle, which is jaw-droppingly beautiful. It was well worth the short trip over here to see this castle perched on the edge of the sea. So beautiful! This entire week, visiting these two places, was just unbelievable.
lysefjord in all her majesty
pulpit rock as viewed from the side
pulpit rock as viewed from above
dunnottar castle in stonehaven, Scotland - so awesome!
October: New York City (~2300 photos) - While I have never been a huge fan of NYC, after this trip it really grew on me, and I became one. It really is an amazing place, even if it took a while to grow on me. I had an entire week here for work, which thankfully stretched over a weekend, allowing me plenty of time to fire away. My family came with me and we seriously enjoyed the city. Luckily, it was Fall and the colors in Central Park were amazing. I was pretty fired up about capturing Fall color, because we don’t get much of a chance to do that here in central Texas. But of course I also love to shoot cityscapes, and there's no better place for that than in NYC.
central park displaying a lot of fall color
sunset from top of the rock!
November: San Francisco (~1600 photos) - And as the year started to wind down, I had another trip to this city that I love, and I made the most of it. I returned to a few familiar haunts but also found new ones and recaptured some things that I didn’t do justice to on previous trips. It was a very quick 2 nights here, but I’m happy with the shots I did get and the sites that I saw. I have plenty of things still to work on and it feels fitting that my last trip this year was to San Francisco, since I am such a fan of the place.
a gorgeous sunset at the palace of fine arts
In addition to all that travel, I made it a point to get out and shoot here in Austin quite a bit, especially in the last couple of months (and thus you have seen several posts here on the blog from Austin, which in my opinion is a nice change). Part of that is that I have been inspired to capture this town with my Sony gear, but some of it is that I had a list a mile long of spots that I still wanted and needed to shoot here (and they are being added to this list). As far as I can tell, I captured about 2500 photos in Austin this year, which isn’t really all that much in the scheme of things, and it has been mostly concentrated in the last 2 months, because I have been home more and focused on things here. But there’s a reason for capturing all those Austin images, and I will be sharing that as soon as I can finish the little project I have been working on! I'm excited to announce it, and I hope that you will like it!
where I spend all my extra money here in austin! Great store!
the austin skyline on a cold winter morning during a colorful sunrise!
the Austin skyline on a recent wintry, cloudy afternoon
looking down over austin
the paramount theater in downtown austin during blue hour - i love that sign!
And lastly, I had a few quick trips to some other spots in Texas, mostly nearby ones like San Antonio, and though none of those photos made the list, it did contribute another 650 or so pics to the yearly tally! It also means I have some more things to work on, which is always fun!
Well that's it folks - a summary of my year in photography and travel. It was a great year in both respects (and many others - I feel very blessed), and I can honestly say that I am proud of what I have done, where I've been, and where I am in life. I know the future is never guaranteed, yet I am always hopeful when I look ahead and grateful when I look behind me.
I will keep working to produce new images that you will enjoy viewing (and catching up on my backlog!), and there are plans in motion for new things to come to the blog in 2016. I am looking forward to that as well! You'll be the first to hear about it, right here on the blog! Have a wonderful Holiday Season, wherever you are! Thank you for stopping by today, and all year long. I really do appreciate it. You have no idea how much so.
So all in all, I will look back on 2015 as a year of great change, great adventure, and great accomplishment. I will remember it fondly. Here’s to a great 2016!
Farewell 2012
THANK YOU DEAR READERS!
For starters, let me send a warm THANK YOU to anyone who has visited this site, or Liked, Commented, Shared, +1’d or Retweeted any of my photos this year. I am really grateful for the support, and hope to continue to share my photographs for a long time to come! I have a lot more fun stuff planned for 2013, so please keep coming back and checking in when you have time. There’s a lot more that I have in store for ya!
BLOG STATS for 2012 - HIGH LEVEL SUMMARY
At the end of a year, I like to look back and see how things have gone for me with this blog, statistically speaking. Well actually, it’s more than just the blog, as I incorporate some stats from other places too. I find data points interesting. Honestly, they don’t really mean a whole lot, but it is fun to make comparisons and see how things are progressing.
In short, 2012 was a great year for my blog and my photography in general. I increased my readership here substantially while also having a heck of a good time. That’s a win, in my book. Though I take my photography seriously, my primary goal is to just enjoy creating and sharing my photos and to create content that others find useful, or beautiful, or both.
A couple of things that stood out for me in 2012:
- I published my first eBook, which you can get for free right here!
- I began contributing articles about HDR photography to the new HDR One site!
- I started a Newsletter!
- I hosted a photowalk in London - what a great experience!
So, onto the stats. Here’s a high level summary:
Blog views: up 130% over 2011
Blog visitors: up 106% over 2011
Blog visitors were 80% new - that’s a wonderful stat in my opinion
* 59% of total lifetime pageviews happened in 2012 - cool!
* 60% of traffic came from the US, followed (distantly) by the UK, Canada, Australia, Italy, India, Germany, Brazil, Indonesia and France.
Flickr views: up >50% (not bad, considering I do zero engagement there)
500px views: up from 11,500 to nearly 80,000 (again, not bad for zero engagement)
Followers on Google+: up from 8400 to over 14,000
Facebook fans: up from ~200 to over 1400
Traffic referral sources:
- Google search ranks highest, but I think that is a given for everyone
- LightStalking was #2 for referral traffic, thanks to my friends at Toad Hollow!
- Facebook came in #3
- Google+ came in at #4
Well, that’s a high-level summary and in my opinion it was a great year by the numbers. More importantly, it was a great year photographically as I detailed in a previous post. I’m really focused on creating great photographs - even with my iPhone at times - and will continue to push myself to create in 2013.
If you promise to keep coming back, I promise to keep creating and sharing my photos. Sound like a good deal? Great. It’s a deal then. :-)
See you next year! Thanks, as always, for stopping by.