Every time a new year rolls around, I look for a way to improve things. Whether that’s my outlook on life in general, a certain area of my photography, or whatever floats my boat. As 2025 looms just a couple of short days away, I think I’ve settled on Zen. I’m not really speaking in terms of the religious aspects, and I’m not ready to convert to Buddhism. I’m talking more in the sense of awakening my creativity. Digging deep to find out who I am. What, with respect to photography, makes me tick? As I look at the thousands of images which make up my portfolio, what motivates me? What’s my style? Do I have a style?

Learn to see what is.

Something I want to do is, pardon the phrase, to be more focused. The weather has been hit or miss since Thanksgiving so I’ve been spending a lot of time cleaning up my Photo Mechanic and Capture One catalogs. Something that has become painfully clear is that I hit the shutter button far too frequently. It’s time to embrace the spirit of my Leicas and slow down. I actually purchased a screen cover to turn my M10 into a M10-D since they’re so hard to find.

As I put more attention towards an increased mindfulness and fine-tuning my awareness as I look for photo opportunities, I hope to see a decrease in my image count in the coming year. While drive space is cheap, why clutter it with hundreds of images I’ll never take a look at again? My hope is that the end result will be stronger, bolder images with fewer snapshots.

Stay tuned as we go through the year together. I’ll post a separate project to keep updated.