A hasty retrospective look at my 2010 photographic achievements and a look at what’s planned for 2011.

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I started out last year with what seemed like an easily obtainable photographic study goal of completing 52 photowalks in a year and starting a blog to write about the experiences and things learned at each. But 2010 flashed by with many work and family obligations and the everyday requirements and diversions of life.

I am glad I more or less achieved a substantial amount of the core goal by completing 49 photowalks, meetups, and practices. However, I only blogged about 28 of them. Trying to create a decently written blog post takes a great deal more time than I anticipated. Sometimes I just don’t feel like taking that much time. I do plan on writing up posts for the other 21 in the early part of the new year. 

I also took a number of classes, read at least the first 3 chapters of more than a dozen photography books, and began a more serious study of Lightroom and the digital darkroom.

In addition to upgrading to Lightroom 3, I invested in the complete suite of Lightroom plug ins from NIK Software and have spent about 15 hours in online seminars from their site on how to incorporate them into a concise and simpler workflow and to start looking at the creative possibilities that can be incorporated into post processing. I fear that Photoshop may be in my future if not this year, sometime in 2012. There are some things that as of yet can only be done in the layered and masked environment of full blown Photoshop and it seems to remain the gold standard for professional and serious photographers.

A few spots opened up for 2011, so I’ve joined the Houston Photographic Study Group in an effort to refine my skills and develop a unified vision for my work. I also plan on entering Learning Curve, Houston Center for Photography´s annual juried teacher-student exhibition when it’s presented in the fall of 2011.

As a result of the significant amount of time I spent there last year, I signed up to be a volunteer at Brazos Bend State Park. In less than an hour, I can be out of the urban jungle of downtown and in a unique and beautiful place that changes dramatically throughout the year. Laszlo Perlaky of NaturalPerl photography who has lead a monthly photowalk for the past 20 years  has invited me to help lead his monthly photowalks at the park. I’ve learned a lot from Laszlo both at the park and from classes I’ve taken from him at HCP and consider it a privilege to help on his photowalks.

So, in 2011, I am keeping the same goals as 2010 – get out every week with a camera and try something new or refine something I’ve already tried. I am also scheduling 2 hours a week in post processing/digital darkroom study and practice as well as time for rereading the books I only skimmed through in the last half of last year. For me, scheduling the study and reading time is as important as scheduling the photowalks. Knowing what I know now, this is a significant investment in time, but it is my passion and creative outlet.

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