I am looking back on the past year of photography.  It has been an interesting year with a lot of travel and a lot of focus on portraiture and art.  It was interesting to review my work over the last year and choose images to represent my year.  When you do this as a photographer, you pull images that speak to you.  I seem to be gravitating toward landscapes and documentary this year.  I didn’t include a lot of wedding photos or family portraits because I think it is probably more important (in an exercise like this) to select images that indicate where my mind is right now, what I am looking at and responding to.  I think you will find that if you are a photographer and you do the same thing that you will see that all your “work-related” images are heavily influenced by the images you pull based on some level of gut reaction.  What is the theme?  What is the glue that holds them all together?  There are landscapes, portraits, documentary, weddings, travel photos and even textured walls.  I have been paying very close attention to light and composition.  There are of course, messages and stories being told in many of the images, but overall, I think I can safely say that the past year from the end of 2017 to the end of 2018, I seem to be slowing down a bit and paying more attention to composition and light.  And those are two great things to focus on in photography.  They are not the only things, nor are they necessarily the most important things, but they are very critical to making impactful images.

I encourage everyone to take a look back at the last year and pull your favorite images (not one from every job, just the ones that really stand out to you for whatever reason, and then make an assessment… what is the theme of your year of photography.  What were you focusing on?  Then maybe you can set a direction for the new year: what will you focus on in your imagery in 2019?  Our assignments will always push us down various roads, but no matter what job or opportunity we have, how we photograph it is really up to us.

What will I focus on this year?  Good question.  Maybe the subtext.