An End Of Year Review Of One Camera One Lens

Here we are again, another year in photography is almost over. I’ve written 75 blogs this year, most of which containing images, and many with reviews and words of wisdom. The year has been filled with ups and downs, and coming to the very end of the year, I can look back on what has become a year of high achievements and a great start to a new era ahead.

I had my heart set on a few projects this year, and I was lucky enough to finish a couple, most notably my book “Alleys, Art And Architecture”. The success of this book really made me realise that printing is such an important part of photography. Copies are still available on request, but I reached my target of 50 copies sold, plus copies available in the local libraries, so any new orders are printed on demand.

As well as my book, I am happy with my limited run 2024 calendar that I put together. I have a machine that can make these calendars look very proffesional, and the calendar was sold and given to friends and relatives. Depending on demand, I may print more than my initial run after Christmas.

The website, onecameraonelens.com has also been very successful again this year. I have had the oppurtunity to try out and review a lot of different editing and video software thanks to the power of the amount of people that the website attracts. Basic stats at the time of writing this are a surprise to me, as I have stood back from photography recently, but 280,000 visitors, written 74 posts (up to now), on June 30th this year I had over 4.1k views (my highest to date), and my most popular visitors are from the USA. The website has been linked in over 50 other websites and YouTube channels this year, with many of those linking to either Darktable tutorials or Fujifilm recipes. All this, while I have released at least 30 less blogs than previous years!

Anyway, here are some photographic highlights from this year, to give you a little change from reading. Following on from these is a little more chat and then some family images from this year.

Of course this year, I also started a 30 day challenge, where we had to take a photo from a set of laid out themes over the course of 30 days. I loved this challenge, and had the images printed out into a book that I highly cherish, as it really was a great experience. You can see the results of this by visit the project page here.

I have all the images for my “Welsh Summertime 2023” project, I just need to print them off. It has been a busy year in more than one way, and so something had to give, and it was this project.

During this year though, I did manage to capture plenty of family images. This website is not a place I really share those images much, but I did take plenty, including an organised shoot. Here then, are images of myself and the family that I really like from the year.

A lot of my images I actually only show on social media, that is Facebook and Instagram. In fact, some of my best work can be found on those platforms. My Instagram feed is on the homepage of this website, and so each time I post on these, this website gets updated. It really keeps things fresh.

It has been a fanatstic year generally. I was ill during the middle of the year, and a few things changed with my group “Photography Adventures Wales” which meet on a regular basis, however, it seems to be have been for the best, as the group has gone from strength to strength, joining forces with Welsh Photography Events and attracting more photographers than ever before, there has been a noticable difference in quality of images with the group since the change.

I’m not going to set out plans for next year, as I have started another group, this time, nothing to do with photography. We meet every three weeks, and it is early days yet, but it is the foundation for something a but different in my life, and a much welcome change. But that should complement the output of this website nicely, as I do not feel so all-encompassed in photography anymore.

And, that is pretty much that for now. I will probably do a software year in review soon, as my editing has changed a lot recently, and there are a few reasons for that.

Enjoy your Christmas, and have a wonderful New Year.