It’s that time. We all like to sit and reflect on the year that has just passed past us and recall the laughs, the challenges and the victories. Never is it an even balance for me with some years being a home run hit smashing it out of the park, others feel like they pass so quick that my list of goals feels neglected. 2019, feels a little of the latter but when I take the time to sit and do a proper review I always find that actually, the camera trigger button got quite a workout.
So after spending the best part of two days going through my Lightroom catalogue and the 44,580 images within the 2019 folder, I feel the number is low. This number feels low but is comparable to previous years, counting only the final “keepers” minus the countless rejects, timelapse images and test shots. Low as I felt I shot so much more than that, especially as I needed to do some big overhauls in my NAS storage and acquiring new USB drives to house all the content.
What I have not included in this number are all the video clips that I shot this year, as it was one of my main goals for 2019. Shooting four videos for one of my long-standing photographic clients allowed me to scratch an itch and I will be continuing that in 2020 but more on that in an upcoming post.
Lightroom offers a lot of info using the metadata captured in each frame, not very informative with a single frame but multiplied 44,580 times and some patterns start to appear. I won’t bore you with the details but I’ve seen a swing in my chosen focal length and a resounding consistency for one aperture. Little pieces of gold like this are a quick way to see new ways to mix up my style for the coming year.
More interestingly, for me anyway, even though I consciously made some decisions to shoot differently in 2019 my final 20+ images have one distinctive pattern to them, something I have always done and obviously appeals to my eyes. This creates a few questions in my head “Can I change my style, what means change and should I?”
This year saw less travel and more focus on local events with a resounding tilt to MTB racing. Each image has it’s own story to tell, click on any of the thumbnails to view it full screen and read the description about why it made my final selection. So without further ado here they are.
