I like to use the start of a new year as an opportunity to evaluate my goals from the previous year and establish goals for the upcoming year. As far as last year’s goals, I think I made good strides toward accomplishing them although, to be honest, they are goals that can never be fully achieved. Establishing goals for this year is still a work in progress, but I have found one area in which a change of direction is needed: this blog. Let me explain.
When I started getting into photography as a young child many, many years ago, I only wanted to photograph the grand landscape. If I saw something I liked but it wasn’t a landscape, I generally wouldn’t photograph it. After years of following this approach, I came to feel very confined and limited. I realized I was arbitrarily restricting my photography and taking the fun out of it.
Understanding this, I stopped limiting my choice of subject to just landscapes. I began to photograph anything that caught my attention whether it was an interesting building, an abstract pattern in ice, or an old doorknob. That simple change opened up whole new worlds for me to explore, provided variety and flexibility, and reinvigorated my excitement for photography.
With the sole exception of a two week period in July 2022, I have published a new blog post every week since mid-April 2020. I have written almost exclusively about my images, the stories behind them, and how I photographed and processed them. I have enjoyed sharing these posts with you, and I hope you have enjoyed reading them.
On occasion, I have posted something different, but those occasions have been quite rare. I often have ideas for blog posts, but I hardly ever write about them because they are not about my images. This has caused me to have the same feeling of confinement and one-dimensionalism with my blog that I felt with my photography. That feeling has only been getting more persistent over the last few months, and it has become obvious that it’s time to make a change.
My goal for this blog has always been to provide value to you, the reader. Time is a finite commodity for all of us, and if you are going to spend some of your limited time reading this blog, I want to be sure you get value from it.
To provide that value, I’m going to try something different. I will still be posting every week as I have for nearly three years. My posts will continue to be photography related. Many of my posts will still be about my images.
But, whereas my posts have been nearly 100 percent about my photographs up until now, my plan this year is to reduce that percentage significantly and write about some of the other ideas I have had over the years. This could include such topics as photography books or articles I’ve read, my thoughts on gear, or anything else that comes to mind. And, believe me, I usually have a lot of things that come to mind.
I’ve seen a lot of advice over the years recommending that blog posts be planned weeks, sometimes months, in advance. I don’t do that. I write when an idea comes to me, which means I don’t know what I will be writing about from one week to the next. So, be sure to visit often to read my latest post. Better yet, you can click Subscribe in the menu at the top of any page to sign up for notifications when a new blog post has been published. Rest assured that your information is used and will only be used for sending new post notifications.
I hope you find the new direction for this blog both refreshing and valuable. If you have any comments or thoughts, you can contact me through email (click Contact in the menu), Facebook, or Twitter.
Happy new year to all, and may this year be even better than last year.