Goodbye 2023. The year in review.

 

2023 was a crappy year for a lot of the world. Wars, poverty, economic downturns, rampant inflation and climate issues galore. But for those lucky enough to dodge most of the sad and desperate things happening in the world many days worked out well. Some were great, and a few were superb. I count myself as one of the lucky ones -- to be alive in this time, in the this location, in my local economy. 

This was the year I came to grips with the idea of slowing down the business or retiring altogether. In all, I did sixteen days of work out of 365 days in the year. That's not much of a workload. With this kind of trajectory I'll probably slim down the commercial engagements to six or maybe eight in 2024. Actually one a month sounds just right.

I dreaded turning down work at first but after I did so, in most cases, I felt a sense of relief. Of being unburdened.  A sense of having more finite control over my own time. With the exception of two days no other obligations to any client intruded or interfered with my daily morning swim workouts. That's an exceptional achievement for the year.

Of course declining work means that one source of fee income that I've gotten used to over the past 40 years became pretty much non-existent. You have to get used to changing your financial perspective if you are going to turn down paying work. You take money from different pots instead of living via business cash flow. It's a psychological reset but you get used to it over time. Repetition goes a long way toward instilling comfort. And, I've had good mentors show me the way to do good financial "wing walking". The secret is to not let go of one strut until you have a good grip on the next one. 

One would think that after jettisoning a previous source of income that my passion for buying new cameras and lenses would have abated; or at least slowed down. But that wasn't the reality of 2023 for me. If anything I stayed at par for fun expenses. I dipped a toe into M mount cameras and lenses and then, after some testing and shooting, I dove in with abandon. In fact, my last purchase of the year was another Leica M 240, acquired just last week. The M mount stuff joins the Fuji GFX 50Sii stuff as the "big" acquisitions of the year. 

The end result? The new gear is fun and interesting. I used the GFX for two big assignments so I made some money with that system. The M cameras, not so much. But they were really fun to photograph with. In fact, I took only an M240 with four M mount lenses, and a Leica Q2 with me on a seven day solo photographic vacation in Montreal. One of my favorite cities in North America. The combination of the M camera and the Q camera was great and helped me be productive while not dragging around huge camera bags full of stuff. I loved the vacation. More like that....

Everyone in my nuclear family weathered the year with very few bumps in the road. No health scares, no job loses and no big personal losses to speak of. 

One thing I took up late this year is "camera scanning" of last century black and white and color film negatives. Being able to access those old negatives is like having access to a time machine. Only with new PhotoShop features and camera capabilities you can pull so much more out of the film. I'm actually looking forward to cold and rainy days so I have a good excuse to stay in the office and go fishing for images I overlooked before. This will, of course, necessitate the purchase of ever more hard drives for storage...

Looking forward.

I'm committed to blogging for at least another year. Unless my readers get all judgmental about me being judgmental and start opening their comments with the phrase: "you should....." There are so few blogs left that actually discuss photography without heavy doses of malaise and moroseness that I sometimes find I write just so I'll have something to read later....

With all these wonderful M series Leicas and lenses at hand I'm ramping up travel. I don't want to go anywhere during high travel seasons when all the fun venues are crowded to the max ---- and hotels and plane fares are exorbitant --- since I have the flexibility to travel in the off seasons. And I'll be taking complete advantage of that. 

Ben had a great time in Japan so that's got to be my next adventure. Dates pending. He's a great source of logistical info. Istanbul is also near the top of my travel radar. I was in Istanbul many years ago and I'm curious to see how much has changed and how much stayed the same. 

2024 is an election year so I'll make sure to avoid all exposure to Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and most of Instagram. Spam filters on high!!!  I'll donate as much $$$ as we can to our candidates and hope for the best. But I'm not willing to carry around any of the rancor that so many seem to embrace. Almost like a hobby. And I'll work at keeping politics off the blog. If you come here to drop political comments into the mix they will most likely be expunged ---- even if I agree with your position 100%. This blog is supposed to be about a life in photography. Not the collapse of modern civilization...

I'll probably get a new phone this year and it will most certainly be an Apple iPhone. I'll piss off my video production friends by making wonderful videos on it. Ignoring their investments in "state of the art" video gear. I might even reawaken my YouTube channel which currently has no videos and 25 followers. But it's so obvious that video is the future of communications. Maybe not the future of art but yes, the future of advertising and communications. You know it is --- even if you lie about it and claim never to have watched a tutorial or review on YouTube. Or watched a movie...

2024 seems like a good year to maintain a commitment to staying in good shape. After all, if you are going to travel you may as well be comfortable walking ten or fifteen miles a day in order to find the photographs (and experiences) you want on your journeys. No "couch potato" travel here. No shooting photos through the green tinted windows of a tour bus. No skipping a great view because it's off the beaten path. No heading to the bar instead of moving forward. 

As usual, my commitment to myself is to make it to five x one hour swim practices per week. To pay attention to the swim advice and coaching of my highly professional and insanely good swim coaches while having fun and being mostly out of breath the whole time. Let's get those exercise heart rates up to 160 and move some blood through the systems. Few interesting things happen while napping.

Will also continue some cross training by doing resistance exercise at the gym two or three days a week as well as walking three or four miles per day. I knew the spare time freed up by turning down work would be good for something....

And...I will continue to eat whatever I want and enjoy every freaking bite. 

I have no advice for anyone else. And most of my audience believes so strongly that they are imbued with incredible amounts of knowledge already and so wouldn't listen if I did give out advice. That's why we make this blog about the day to day life of an average person engaged in photography and not an advice column. Use whatever camera you want. I don't care. It doesn't matter. As long as we're still having fun. 

Photography has changed profoundly. I don't have all the answers to any part of it. There is no "right" way to do it. There are few to no rules. The next big thing is the next big thing and I have no clue what it will be or where it's coming from. Mining the past is nostalgia. It's addictive but there's so much left to do in the future. Let's go.