Lots from London
I haven't been to London in a while - but still have loads to share from there! It's one of my favorite cities!
It's true - I have not been to London since sometime last year, but that's ok. I have so many photos from my various trips there over the last few years that I am still working through. So I thought today I would take you on a little virtual trip through a few parts of that lovely city on the Thames. Buckle up and enjoy the ride!
Part of this is that I am determined to hit my goals for the year - which you can read about here. One of the key goals was to increase the number of photos that I have finished and posted. The intent is to get more of my work on Flickr and my portfolio site at SmugMug. So far I am way ahead of plan. I may have to raise my goals for the year.
But it's more than just a game or a goal. It's simply that I love to do this stuff. I love to process photos, and experiment with new tricks in post-processing, to see what I can come up with. I've really been digging the results I am getting from Analog Efex Pro 2 lately, especially on some of the sign shots that I have been sharing over on Flickr. It's quite fun to play with. You'll see more of that, I am sure.
The other part is that I want to create more opportunities for people to find my work, and ideally, license images or purchase prints. I never spent much time thinking about this in the past, and while chasing the almighty dollar is not my primary goal, I do want to turn more of what I am doing into a "business" of some sort.
And it's pretty clear - no one will ever license or buy a photo if it's still sitting in my library, collecting virtual dust.
When I started (and for several years after that), I only wanted to share what I considered my best work on Flickr (apart from iPhone shots - I have put some of those out there for years). But a funny thing happened - someone licensed a photo that I didn't consider that great, or even very unique or interesting. But they found it, and they liked it, and they licensed it.
This was a bit of an eye-opener for me.
I realized that just because I consider a particular image to be 2nd or 3rd rate in terms of my collection, someone else may consider it to be exactly what they needed for something. In other words, there is no way to predict what will attract someone to an image.
This has propelled me to up my production considerably. And why not? I have thousands of images just sitting on the external drive - why not get them out there? Someone may have a need for one of them.
So I have spent my free time this year cranking out as many photos as I can. It's been quite fun, and I have really started to try different things in post. Experimenting and getting creative is another thing I wanted to focus on this year, so all this photo processing has been exactly what the doctor ordered.
