I’m writing this in the second week of the new year. The busy end of year rush in December meant I didn’t get a chance to sit down and reflect on my 2018 year of photography. Better late than never! As usual I’ve set myself a variety of goals for the new year and several of them of course include photography, blogging and travelling. Before we dig into my goals for 2019, lets have a look at how I went in 2018.
Highlights of 2018
Photography and travel was a major highlight of 2018 for me (and probably at the expense of some of my other personal goals for 2018).
Travel
I travelled to Malaysia with family to celebrate Chinese New Year at the beginning of 2018. Followed by a quick long weekend to Melbourne for a wedding, before my much anticipated 2 week trip to Japan for the Cherry Blossom season. The trip to Japan was one of my major trips of the year that I’ve been looking forward to. The food, the sights and the experiences were so memorable. And as expected, I haven’t had a chance to really delve into my thousands of photos I took in Japan.
In July I had the privilege of being part of the bridal party for a friend’s wedding in Bulgaria. Being summer in Europe, it was a busy but great time to sneak in some travel before and after the wedding. I managed to book off 2 weeks from work to travel to Europe. I explored and celebrated a birthday milestone in beautiful Santorini, Greece before heading to Bulgaria. Bulgaria in itself was such an experience. It was great being able to experience Bulgaria from a local and getting a sneak peak into the beautiful country side, the warm people and hearty food. After Bulgaria, I headed to one of eastern Europe’s coolest cities (In my humble opinion) Budapest in Hungary. Budapest was easy to explore on foot or public transport. It’s a city with good food, a rich history and so many beautiful sights.
In the second half of the year, there were a few impromptu short weekend trips. I travelled down to Margaret River twice (one of which was for our first Fuji X Aus workshop! A future blog post to come), headed to Melbourne for a wedding and visited Bali for the first time. I feel so grateful to have had the opportunity to explore so many countries and cities in 2018. Naturally with all the travelling I did in 2018, I’m severely behind on my photo editing.
Photography
Taking photos of the landscapes, urban environment and experiences is what I enjoy about travelling. It combines two of my favourite things to do. I’m looking forward to getting back into photo editing and really reviewing what I’ve capture in my travels. I feel 2018 was a great year for photography for me not just because of all the travelling. More so I feel like I’ve grown a lot as a photographer this year. I’ve participated more in the photographic community and got to know a number of photographers from the growing Fuji X Aus facebook community. I’ve participated in photo walks and workshops. I’ve put myself out there in more uncomfortable photographic situations by volunteering as a photographer for Fringe World 2018 and Open House Perth 2018. I’m grateful for the photo opportunities that have come my way and the photographer friends I’ve met along the way. It has strengthen my passion for photography. This is something I want to continue to do in the coming year.
What didn’t work out in 2018
It was my third year running my blog and website travellinglens.co and I had an ambitious goal of writing and sharing 70 blog posts by the end of the year. I ended up sharing 49 blog posts by the end of the year, which wasn’t a bad effort. The main reason I didn’t hit the mark was because I ended up spending more time than I expected travelling. It definitely wasn’t a bad problem to have! But it did mean I didn’t have as much time to devote to blogging.
On the same vein, because of my travels in 2018, I didn’t manage to get through my backlog of photos to edit. I finished editing photos from my trip to the UK and Iceland. I also focused on editing photos from recent photo walks and events instead of my large folders of photos from my travels as the backlog felt a bit overwhelming.
I also didn’t get to update my portfolio images as I still have quite a backlog of photos to edit.
Goals for 2019
- Share more photo stories from my travels and publish 60 blog posts in 2019.
- Get through my backlog of photos from 2016 to 2018. This year I’m going to come up with a better plan to tackle my photo backlog, which will include finding a more streamlined approached to photo culling and editing.
- Update my portfolio images on my website by the end of 2019 to reflect my current style and top photos.
- I don’t plan to have too many travel plans for 2019. The only planned trip is to Malaysia and a few days in Thailand in February. Outside of that, there’s potentially a trip to Sydney and/or Melbourne, and potentially a trip to the Philippines.
I hope you are excited for the new year ahead and set yourself a few goals for 2019 as I have. I’m looking forward to another year of fun photographic experiences and challenges. I would love to hear what goals you’ve set for yourself in 2019. Thanks for stopping by today.
J.
Leave a Reply