Best of 2013
"Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop". - Ansel Adams
Like most photographers who share their work online, I too have created a "Best Of" list for this past year, outlining what I consider to be my best shots of the year. This is a tougher process than it may sound like.
You might think you flip through your library, pick the most popular shots (as best as you can recall), and slap them together into a blog post. Not so much. In many ways, asking a photographer which of his or her photographs is their favorite is a lot like asking a parent which is their favorite child. You simply can't choose.
You know why? You love them all, but for different reasons. Maybe the light was just right. Maybe the clouds were perfect. Maybe the feeling of standing there was something you had wanted for a long time. Maybe laying your eyes on that subject was a lifelong goal. Maybe that day had been the best one in a long time. Maybe you were with someone that means a lot to you. Maybe you just liked the color.
When you take all the multiple variables and combine them, you come up with an emotional attachment to any particular image. That image is the manifestation of everything that you were feeling and thinking when you took it and when you were processing it, as well as everything that came before it. It's you, in a sense, presented in pixels.
So that's another way of saying that I love all my photos, even though many of them are not popular, or commented on, or shared, liked, etc. They're a part of me, part of my artistic self-expression. So picking my favorites is really hard...but I did it anyways, because hell, that's the the point of this blog post, ain't it?
And did you notice Ansel Adams says getting 12 is a good crop? I only got 8, though I admit I have a few others I really like, but they don't fit on the single page I created above too easily. So yeah, maybe 2013 was a good crop after all.
But no, I'm not saying I'm in Ansel's league, I'm just pointing out how interesting it is that with all the digital advancements, the volume of images we can and do create, and the fact that I share about 5 images per week, every week, all year...I have 8 that stand out from the past 12 months of shooting. Yep, just 8. Seems rather insignificant, doesn't it? It's not even one per month.
But alas, it is what it is, and I love these plus the thousands of other images I took in 2013. It was a great year and a very productive year, so when I look back on it, I smile.
Thanks for looking, and I hope you enjoy the shots. (Click to enlarge)
On being thankful
Happy Thanksgiving!
To anyone who reads this and is celebrating Thanksgiving today, I wish you a wonderful holiday. For anyone reading this who is not celebrating Thanksgiving today, I wish you a wonderful day just as much. No sense in keeping the thanks just to Americans, is there?
Gratitude is the sign of noble souls. - Aesop
I have a lot to be thankful for, and so I thought I would offer up my thanks publicly today. I've never done this on the blog, so I hope it comes across in the spirit in which it is intended - that's a spirit of gratefulness.
Silent gratitude isn't much use to anyone. - G.B. Stern
I am blessed with a kind, loving family and wonderful friends. I work at and am thankful for a job I really enjoy, and of course I am thankful for the time I spend on my photography, the fruits of which you find here on the blog each week.
I am thankful for my health and the health of those around me. I am thankful that I have a place to call home, especially when I have been traveling. It's always nice to have a place to call home. The road can be weary.
Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.
- William Arthur Ward
I am thankful that I have this blog, which is a passion of mine. I love to shoot and share and write about it, and will keep doing so. It's not much of a contribution to the betterment of the world, but it's a little bit that I can do every week, and I hope that in some small way it helps. I sure think our world needs every bit of help there is.
And I am thankful that people show up and read this little blog of mine. It's not a lot of people, but that's ok and doesn't keep me from wanting to continue to do this. I simply love taking the photos, processing the photos, and writing about and sharing the photos way too much to quit. So I am grateful for that as well. Thank you for listening, and enjoy your day.
Looking down the road at 2013
Hi everyone, and thanks for stopping by today. Last year I set a few goals for myself with my photography, and I was able to achieve them (whew!). I thought I would do the same for 2013.
Here are some things I intend to do in the New Year:
- Add new lists to my “Top Photo Spots” section
- Publish a handful of eBooks
- Write additional long-form blog posts
- Expand my iPhoneography posts on the site
- Continue to expand my knowledge of post-processing techniques
- See new places and photograph them!
That’s really it. I feel like if I make a long list of goals, it’s a wish-list, not a to-do list...and I want to DO things, not wish for them! So, Happy New Year, and here’s to doing things in 2013!
p.s. The photo above was taken recently in Nashville, TN. I got up early one morning to photograph the city while it was quiet (and cold!) and thought the image looking down the street was fitting for today's post. As always, thanks for looking!
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.
Best of 2012
For most people, the end of a year causes much anticipation of the new year that lies ahead, but we normally take a moment to reflect on the year that just finished. As photographers, we tend to do the same. As we hurry through our usual daily routines, sometimes it’s easy to forget just what all actually happened in a year. Especially when you are my age and you forget a lot of stuff. :)
I will say that 2012 was - photographically speaking - an incredible year. I had the opportunity to visit a lot of new places, and of course brought along my Nikon to document them. Here’s a little travel summary for the year:
- Flew over 100,000 miles
- Visited 10 foreign countries (some twice!): England, Scotland, Ireland, Denmark, Belgium, The Netherlands, Slovakia, Austria, Canada and Panama
- Visited at least as many US Cities
- Took 30,000+ photos
- Had a blast doing the above
As you can imagine, it’s hard to pick your favorite photos from a large group. It’s like asking a parent to pick their favorite child - without the negative consequences, of course. I love all my photos - that’s why I took them - but I have been able to narrow it down and came up with a group of 12 photos that for various reasons I consider my best work of 2012. And no, I did not plan to pick 12 for 2012, it just sort of happened that way.
I also realized that I chose 6 from the US and 6 from Europe. So, here are my 12 favorite shots from the year that we are leaving behind. I raise a glass to you, 2012, you were kind to me in many ways, and I am thankful for that.
Here are my favorites from Europe:
And here are my favorites from the US:
Strike a pose
...and now for something completely different!
I rarely ever shoot photos of people, rarely convert shots to black & white, and almost always produce HDR photos. This is a major departure for me! I shot this last year on the big Thomas Hawk photo walk here in Austin. This is a local model named Eight (well, ok, her name is probably something else, but that is what she is known by). Several local photogs do shoots with her, but it ain't my thing. Anyways, she showed up for that photowalk, and was hitting some poses by the lake while folks snapped away. I joined the fray. Why not?
Farewell 2011
Thanks for a great 2011 - it’s been a wonderful year at Nomadic Pursuits! I sincerely appreciate all the support, feedback, visits, comments, Likes, +1s, and all that other goodness!
Here’s a few of my favorite shots from this year, all rolled up into one image. I thought I should go ahead and put that up front, since I wrote quite a bit down below. Grab a cup of coffee and read on if you dare! :)
Ah, the end of 2011 is upon us. It’s that time when we look back in thanks, and look forward with hope. It’s been a great year for me photographically speaking. This blog grew significantly, and I really appreciate all the visits and comments! I would do this whether anyone visited or not, but it sure is more fun when you show up and participate! :)
Here are a few statistics I thought were interesting (comparing 2011 to 2010):
- 5x increase in visitors; 3x increase in page views
- 75% of traffic was from New Visitors
- 10% of pageviews came from folks who spent >30 minutes on the site (that’s long!)
- Here are the top referring sites (in order):
- Google.com (organic searches)
- Direct (someone directly typed in my website URL)
- Google referral (I believe this is Google+)
- StumbleUpon
- LightStalking (thank you Toad!)
- HDRSpotting
- United States visitors account for 67% of traffic, followed by Canada, UK, Germany, Australia, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Russia, and France
I’m not a total data geek, but I do find this stuff interesting.
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So, what am I going to do in 2012? Good question...
- I plan to get out, explore and photograph this wonderful world we live in!
- New destinations - two trips planned already for Jan/Feb and surely more after that!
- More longer form blog posts, which I put under “Photographic Ramblings” on the left sidebar - these are fun for me. They don’t really fit into my “daily photo” thing so that’s why they are off to the side. And what else would I call them??
- I recently added “Ten Tips for Better Travel Photography”. It’s something near and dear to me, and I enjoy sharing my thoughts. Let me know yours!
- Another popular feature in that sidebar are my various “Top Photo Spots in...” posts from cities like Austin, San Francisco, and London. I plan to add more of these in 2012. It’s fun and I think folks find it helpful. Have you read them? I am always open to new locations I may have missed in those cities!
- I have a new blog series idea that I plan to start soon...hopefully January. More on that soon, but I think you will find it interesting. Hint: though it’s about photography, it’s not about my photography. Stay tuned!
- iPhoneography - I am really digging shooting with my iPhone 4S and will continue pushing my creativity there (see more under my iPhoneography header on the left sidebar of this page) and blogging about it! So much cool stuff to share on this subject!
- And I have a few more things I am thinking about/working on...
Have a wonderful New Year celebration, and I hope that 2012 is a great year for you! Oh, and thanks so much for your visits in 2011! I couldn’t do it without you! I hope to make 2012 even more exciting for my readers!
My photos in Pummelvision from Jim Nix on Vimeo.
Winter's fire
Just a quick post, as I am all "wrapped up" in Christmas preparations, haha. Stay warm out there! Hope you are all getting your Christmas shopping done!
Google+ Photowalk in Austin
This past Saturday was the big Google+ photowalk here in Austin. It was hosted by none other than Thomas Hawk, the well-known photographer and blogger from San Francisco. If you are not familiar with his work, suffice it to say that he is well on his way to meeting his stated goal of posting 1 million photos in his lifetime. No, that is not a misprint. He cranks out photos like a factory, and yet it's all quality work. Really impressive when you think about it.
Anyways, being a huge fan of Google+, I was excited to get out there and meet lots of folks. Photowalks are always fun for me, but when they are large and actually have real sponsors (thanks Google and Dell!) it brings a whole new level of excitement to it.
Google+ has really taken the photographic world by storm - I consider it the Facebook for photographers. It's a great platform for meeting interesting folks from all over, and the level of engagement is something I have never seen before. It's impressive. Anyways, the walk started at the Hyatt down on the lake, which is right in the middle of downtown basically, and we walked around the lake snapping a lot of things. It lasted for a couple of hours, and then back at the hotel they even let you upload your best photo and they hosted a contest with prizes. Pretty cool huh? It was great fun, great to see such a huge turnout (there had to be well over 100 folks there), and it was great to speak with Thomas Hawk a bit. In addition to being a great photographer, he's a really cool guy. Here's us at the end of the walk. Like I said, cool guy, really down to earth despite all his notoriety and success. (Am I getting shorter or something? hehe)
So, here's a few shots from the walk. I have quite a lot actually, so I am just posting a few right now. Some others that I really like I will save for future posts. In the interest of speed and efficiency, I left the tripod in the car and went "commando", so to speak!
Here's the Hyatt where we started...along the beautiful shores of Lady Bird Lake (aka Town Lake or the Colorado River).
We even had a sign for the photowalk! This corporate sponsorship thing is cool! That's me in the white shirt on the end. Not sure what that expression is doing on my face - I was pretty fired up to be out shooting with everyone!
Thomas Hawk, lying in the dirt and shooting at something...
A model named "Eight" who happened to be standing around and posing...
Stevie Ray Vaughan statue along the lake...
It wouldn't be Austin if there wasn't some graffiti somewhere...
I love my town...
A new take on something I shot long ago...this is part of the Pfluger Pedestrian Bridge which crosses the lake...
I love doors, and this one just needed to be photographed!
Google+ : Winning! We came across this little bit of "winning graffiti", and Thomas thought it would be cool to put a Google+ sticker there. So he did. Click.
Check out all these old film cameras! This guy said he got them all free, and they all work! Cool!
Signs are one of my favorite things to shoot...
Dell even arranged a taco drop, so some kind folks met us with a bunch of tacos and bottles of water, which we needed after all this hard work and walking! They didn't last long. :)
Well, this is probably my longest post ever, but I felt like posting a bunch of shots from this photowalk and it seemed like the right thing to do. Thanks for having a look!
Takeoff - and some thoughts on Google+
Are you on Google+?
Google + is my new favorite place, and the new center for my social media efforts! I have been playing around with the site for a few weeks now, and have to say that it is pretty fantastic. Are you on there? Circle me - you can find my profile here: http://gplus.to/jimnix
Let me know your thoughts on social media!
Also, I wrote up some personal thoughts on photography and social media, and would really appreciate your input. There are so many sites out there, and it can be pretty overwhelming, and I am really curious what everyone else is doing! Check out this little article and let me know your thoughts:
http://www.nomadicpursuits.com/social-media-photography-wh/
Takeoff
Saturday morning came early for me, because I was up to go meet my friends Pete Talke and Mike Tuuk (and some of Mike’s kids, too!) to go shoot a hot air balloon launch here in Austin. So, I got up at 5am, which wasn’t too hard - surprisingly - and headed out to meet them. We spent a good while there, snapping all sorts of balloon this and balloon that, then capped it off with some caffeine at Starbucks to keep us awake! All the while we were geeking out a bit about photography stuff. In other words, a great way to spend a Saturday morning! Here's one of my personal favorites from that session:
On the road again...
By the time anyone reads this, I will be on the road with the family on a little family get away out west, to New Mexico. We are going on a road trip to see some family, see some sights, and I will probably take a few pictures (ahem). I will post from the road but will be offline through the weekend.
So, thanks everyone for all the visits, comments, tweets and re-tweets, and all that general goodness that comes from social media. I really do appreciate it. I will catch you all when I can!
(p.s. About the shot - definitely not my most serious work. Just a quick snap from the passenger seat of the car while heading out west of Austin. My Austin peeps will know Llano County. I just jacked around with it in Topaz Adjust and Aperture, having fun, and figured I might as well post a road shot - and this was all I had!)
Archie is NOT happy
A random shot from my travels for a Friday - hope everyone has a great weekend!
I was walking around in Carmel, CA and having fun snapping some random things when I entered a courtyard between some stores, and there sat Archie. I rarely post shots like this, but I really liked this one. BTW, while I was taking his portrait, some locals walked up and called him “Archie”, so that’s how I knew his name. He was tied up to a rail, just waiting on his master I guess. Have a great weekend and thanks for looking!
Choices
Some choices are tougher than others - and most are much more important than this one! I got this shot while in Abel's on the Lake, shooting some cool shots for them and generaly just having a blast. Abel's is a great spot on the lake in Austin and offers great food and lake views, plus many choices such as the ones in this shot! Have a great weekend and thanks for stopping by!
A Chinese dragon
From the Chinese New Year Festival last weekend, here's a Chinese dragon! I caught a glimpse of this wonderful creature from across the crowd and maneuvered to get a decent shot. It was tough with him dancing about and all, but I thought this was worth sharing. He only made a brief appearance, but that's what makes dragons so mysterious, right?