Review of 2014 Photography Goals

At the beginning of each year I plan out my photography goals for the coming year.

Here is the post where I talked about my goals for 2014. It is now 2015 and time to review those goals.

Here Were My 2014 Goals

• Become a Better Photographer
  • Attend one workshop or conference every quarter
  • 30 mins of photography education every day (see this blog post)
  • Schedule one photowalk every month
  • Schedule one photography trip every quarter (Oregon Coast, Zion, Boston, Page)
• Grow my Photography Audience
  • Post 2 photos/week on social media sites
  • Submit every new project to print publications until it is published
  • Enter a photo contest very month
  • Pursue and participate in a galley show every quarter
• Create Epic Photos
  • Schedule one large production shoot every quarter
  • Complete 4 current photo projects
    • Shoot Multiscapes II in January
    • Shoot one conceptual photo each month
    • Schedule 3 shoots to complete Paper Doll project
    • Edit and compile Reflections photos
  • Start 4 new projects

How Did I Do?

Become a Better Photographer

I did reasonably well with these goals. I attended workshops with Aperture Acdemey in Yosemite, a workshop with Glen Wexler  at the Palm Spring Photo Festival, Photoshop World in Las Vegas, and a Kim Weston Nude Workshop in Carmel.

I had photo trips to the Salton Sea, Joshua Tree NP, Oregon Coast, Rome, Yosemite and Alaska (although Alaska was not specifically a photography trip I did get some great photos).  I did a total of 9 photowalks so not quite one a month, and I did my 30 mins of photography education each day for a total of 312 days. So I consider this a success and would give myself an A.

Grow my Photography Audience

I struggled with portions of this. Let's start with the successes. I showed my work in 9 different exhibits and galleries. Two of these were art shows where I was able to sell my art and I made over a dozen sales of my prints at these 2 shows. I entered 7 contests and won awards in 5 including the grand prize in the 3rd Eros Awards. I found it difficult to enter one contest a month as there weren't a lot of contests that accept  nude works and my non-nude works I don't feel are quite up to my standards yet.

Now for the failures. I did posted a lot more photos to social media than I have in the past but it was very sporadic and was no where near 2 photos/week. Part of my challenge is I want to post some of my latest nude works, but I can't easily do so on social media. I'm going to work on this for 2015.

I also did not do well with submitting work to publishers until it gets published. I did attend FotoFest in Houston where I showed my work to numerous publishers, but no takers. My challenge here seems to be more about identifying appropriate publications to submit to.

Create Epic Photos

I did well on doing a large production shoot every quarter, I ended up doing five. I did the Rainbow Multiscapes, Joshua Tree nudes, Burying bodies in the sand, created a wet set in the studio for water shoots, and did a series of flour shoots. I'm happy with the results from all of them except the sand shots, they did not live up to my vision. Overall I'm very happy with the shots I got from these big productions and it just reinforces the idea that doing the hard work has it's rewards.

I did change my direction over the year and ended up abandoing the Paper Doll project, I also did not shoot one conceptual photo each month or start 4 new projects. I feel like I could have shot a lot more this past year, but I struggled with concepts. I tried to fit all my shoots into the overall umbrella of "The Body as Art" and I think that restricted me somewhat from trying other things that might have resulted in some significant new project. So I've learned from that and going to make sure I don't get stuck in a rut with my photography projects.

Grade A for big production shoots, F for new projects, with biased and weighted averaging I'm going to give myself a B. :)

What's Next?

Now it is time to create my list of goals for the coming year. I'll save that for another post.

So how you do last year?

by Craig Colvin