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!)
  • Facebook
  • 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!

And here is a little Pummelvision video, which pulls all my shots which are on Flickr and sets them to music.  Enjoy!

My photos in Pummelvision from Jim Nix on Vimeo.