A mid-year update
Here's a summary of what I have been up to so far this year!
Way back in January of this year, I wrote a post about what I intended to accomplish this year. Now that it is nearly the halfway mark of 2015, I thought I would update you all on my progress. You know, stop halfway and take a look around, make sure I am going in the right direction (or even on the right road) – that sort of thing.
To save you the effort of looking for that post, you can find it here.
http://nomadicpursuits.com/blog/2014/12/29/my-plan-for-2015
Basically, here is what I said I wanted to accomplish this year:
- More photos
- More product reviews
- Invest in myself
- More travel-related content
- More musings
So far, I am doing pretty well against my goals. In some cases I am way ahead, and in some others…not so much. Read on for an update and heck, I went ahead and assigned a grade to myself. It’s really not about that of course, but it helps me quickly focus in on what I need to focus in on. LOL
More Photos (Mid-Year Grade: A+)
Back at the start of January, I had already published about 2275 photos on Flickr, with a goal then to take that total to 3500 by year’s end (with a stretch goal of 4000 pics). Right now, I am over 3700 photos on Flickr, so I am way ahead of the yearly goal, and nearly to the stretch goal. So being a bit goal-oriented in my daily life, I am going to raise it to 4500 pics with a stretch of 5000. Getting to 5000 will require nearly 8 photos per day, every day, for the rest of the year. This won’t be easy, but will sure as hell be fun – wish me luck (and send coffee)!
I also stated that I would take my portfolio site on SmugMug from about 1250 photos to 2000 by yearend. I’m sitting now somewhere north of 2500, so I completed that already too. I am raising that goal to 3000 with a stretch of 3250. Fingers crossed! And I need to go edit some photos!! :-)
More Product Reviews (Mid-Year Grade: C)
So far in 2015 I have published only a single product review, and it was a lens review. It’s the Panasonic Leica Summilux 15mm f1.7 prime lens, in case you were curious. And that is a great lens. I use it all the time and absolutely love it.
Back in January, my initial thinking was that I would be trying several new software products, and assuming I felt I could add value, I would review them. But truthfully I haven’t had enough time for that, hence my grade of a C. I don’t plan to turn this into a review site by any means, but it is fun to write these things down and share them. It helps me better understand how I use a product too, which is useful to me. I have a few things in mind that I still want to review, and time-permitting, will get another 1 or 2 reviews up on the site this year.
Part of the miss here is that I left Aperture and converted to Lightroom, so a lot of my “free time” to learn new things went into learning LR. It was a good use of time, as I am now very comfortable using LR, but it’s taken a while. And actually, I have about 20 hours of video on LR that I still need to watch. I plan to do that soon. I want to really “master” it, so I am investing in that. That conversion has kept me from getting deep into the On1 Software suite, which I have had for quite some time. Sadly, I rarely use it and that is something I intend to change. I hear great things about those products, and want to experience it myself.
Invest in Myself (Mid-Year Grade: B+)
I want to be better at taking photos, using various bits of software to process them, and writing content for the blog. I seriously enjoy all three, and have spent a good chunk of time thus far in 2015 investing in all three. That's all good. The biggest thing I did was finally move off of Aperture and into Lightroom (as I mentioned above), and it’s been great. That was a major shift for me – and long overdue – but boy am I glad I did it. Now that I am on this side of things, I am much more confident that I made the right decision.
Heck, the Clarity Slider in Lightroom alone was worth changing for! :-)
And while I have spent a lot of time learning this year, I feel like I can do better, hence the B+ grade instead of an A. But hey I should get an A for the Aperture to Lightroom conversion, because that was a LOT of work! LOL You can read about my conversion at the link below.
http://nomadicpursuits.com/blog/2015/5/19/farewell-aperture-hello-lightroom
More Travel-Related Content (Mid-Year Grade: B)
This one has gone pretty well, but not great. Nearly all my posts are travel-related, so it’s somewhat hard to judge. I have not been to any new cities this year – although I have traveled quite a bit – so there are no new lists on the blog yet. But I did a summary post of a trip to Paris (which was LONG overdue!), I had a 4 week stretch wherein I took 3 trips and 9000 photos, and I shared several posts that summarized trips (like this one and this one), each with a boatload of photos attached. I enjoy going new places and then writing up posts where I share my feelings, experiences, and photos of a place. I will get that done. More to come on that one.
We have some big family travel plans for the summer, and I will sharing that soon. That will give me plenty to document here as well, which I am looking forward to!
More Musings (Mid-Year Grade: A)
Writing extended posts is actually one of my favorite things to do here on the blog, although obviously I can’t do that every week. Like everyone else, I am busy with work and family (and processing photos so I can hit goal #1 above!), so I do all this when I can make time. But it’s so enjoyable, and I work hard to get it done.
In 2015, I have thus far shared 4 of these longer “musing” sorts of posts, where I just write about something that I want to write about. Sometimes these are popular, and sometimes they aren’t, but I love doing it anyways, and will keep at it, whether you like it or not (haha). Here are the links to them:
http://nomadicpursuits.com/blog/2015/1/4/how-a-mirrorless-camera-changed-my-photography
http://nomadicpursuits.com/blog/2015/2/7/old-photos-new-results
http://nomadicpursuits.com/blog/2015/3/1/revealing-the-artist-within
http://nomadicpursuits.com/blog/2015/5/19/farewell-aperture-hello-lightroom
So that’s it. It’s been a busy half year so far, and I suspect (and you can expect) that there is a lot more goodness coming. In fact, I know there is, because we are leaving on that big family trip soon. I’ll be back to update you on that one (and you will probably see a lot of photos too!).
If you are interested, you can follow me on Flickr, which is where all these photos end up, and the iPhone shots from the road get there first! So follow along and see you out there! Keep shooting people!
