My Photography Resolutions for 2010

New Year's Resolutions… so cliche, I know. But you can't deny that the turn of the year is a good time to evaluate your life and make some goals for the next year. I'm in the process of defining my photography goals and resolutions for the upcoming year, in part thanks to Andrew Boyd and his list of “Photographer’s New Year’s Resolutions” (and it seems as though his goals are very much in line with my own). I find that writing them down helps me out, so here are my big ones for 2010.

TAKE MORE PHOTOS

After pulling together my favorite photos from the past year, I realized that I had been very passive about taking photos. Several months were filled with family photos, but no art/commercial photos. The reason for this is because I didn't make the effort to get out and take photos of new things. So this year, I'm planning on getting out there more often, either by myself or with friends.

I also want to get the kids taking more photos. They both shoot 35mm now, and they love to print their stuff in the darkroom. The problem is that I don't take them out enough to have a good base of negatives to choose from.

WHAT'S THE PLAN?

At best, I can probably afford to get out once each week with the the cameras. At worst, I should be hitting twice per month. I'll be making an effort to head out each weekend, even if just for a local walk-around to fire off a single roll of film. I'm also going to be bringing the kids with me more often so they can start building up their archive for printing. And every one or two months, I want to do a bigger outing that requires me to be out most of the day shooting.

PRINT MORE PHOTOS

I've been investing a lot of time and money into my darkroom, so I should make better use of it. At first, I was getting in there a few times each week learning how it all works. Lately, I'll be lucky to print something once every two months. This sucks, mostly because the chemicals go bad before I can finish them and I waste even more money. And now that I'm almost ready to print color in addition to b/w, I'll need to be a lot better about conserving money for those expensive chemicals and papers.

WHAT'S THE PLAN?

I think at least one night per week is a reasonable goal. This will allow me to keep producing a constant flow of prints (most of which are for my personal portfolio or living room wall). I'll probably also have to allot one of these nights per month to develop film since I'm doing my own b/w and color stuff now. The rotary processor will allow me to run more rolls at once, so a month's worth of film in one night shouldn't be unreasonable.

NO NEW EQUIPMENT

I have a confession to make… I have G.A.S. Yes, it's true. I can't help myself when I see a good deal on a great piece of equipment — I just have to buy it. I do use most of the stuff I've purchased, but I also have a cabinet full of cameras that rarely get used because there are so many of them. At this point, I pretty much have all the cameras I could need. The only thing I've been craving lately is a large format camera, but that needs to be put on hold for a while.

I'm also just about there with the darkroom and I don't anticipate needing any big ticket items. The last outstanding item is a power supply for the dichro head. After that, I'm all set for b/w and color, film developing, and prints up to 16×20″. This is another reason I don't want a large format camera yet — my current setup is only good up to medium format (large format will require a whole new enlarger).

WHAT'S THE PLAN?

Well, hopefully I can resist the temptation to buy new toys. I've been really good about it lately, and the last purchase was the rotary processor for the darkroom. I haven't bought any cameras for a while, so I think I'm in a good position to keep it up. I'll have to keep buying film, paper, and chemicals, but the cost of developing my own color film should go down from $4/roll (at the lab) to $1/roll (in my darkroom).

TURN MORE PROFIT

There are two ways to turn a higher profit: make more money, or spend less money. So this resolution includes a little bit of both. I've been doing the photography and blogging thing for a few years now, but I don't have much to show for it. My hobby barely pays for itself at this point, but I'm also spending every bit of my free time doing it. I wouldn't mind making a few extra bucks by the end of the year.

WHAT'S THE PLAN?

The “spend less money” part is basically the point above: no new equipment. If I can manage to follow through, my profits should be considerably higher. The “make more money” part needs to come from selling photos and selling advertising space on the blog (I actually make more with the blog than with my photos). I've been slacking on my ImageKind uploads and Fine Art Photoblog posts (I don't do stock, I just can't get the hang of it) — so I need to spend more time on those things. I also need to make this blog more profitable because I know it makes far less than what it could. I have a plan for this point, but I'll lay it out later this month.

MAKE TIME FOR BLOGGING

I spend far more time blogging about photography than I spend actually taking or working on photos. This thing is a huge time-sink, but I won't give it up anytime soon. I've learned so much and met so many awesome people through blogging. My problem is having enough time to do it. I would love to spend every night with a clear agenda and a head full of ideas to write about, but that just isn't the case.

WHAT'S THE PLAN?

First off, I need to be more productive and more organized about my time spent blogging. I usually just get around to it whenever I can, writing up the articles right before I publish them. This is not a good way to blog. I need to set aside at least 2.5 nights per week to write content, answer emails, update software, brainstorm, proofread, feed-read, etc. Eventually, I need to work my way back up to having a few finished articles in the queue at any given time.

MAKE MORE TIME OFF

I have a full time job, a family, plus all this other junk. So I thoroughly enjoy my time off when I can afford to take it. Every once in a while I'll just drop everything and lay around for a few days watching movies or playing video games… then I spend a solid week catching up on things. This sucks. I need to give myself breaks and nights off here and there so I don't burn out and go AWOL.

WHAT'S THE PLAN?

It ultimately boils down to the fact that I need to schedule my time better. Work time means work, lazy time means no work. I've scheduled my time in the past, but it never stuck because it was either too aggressive or too inflexible. Having a family to look after means that my time comes second, so I have to be flexible with it. But seriously, I love turning off the computer and wasting time with movies and video games.

THE FINAL VERDICT

It's obvious to me that I need a schedule of some sort. Like I said, I want it to be somewhat flexible, but I also want to cover my bases each week so I don't put off the important things for too long. What I came up with is a method of blocking off 2 or 4 hours at a time for individual tasks (and the day job eating up 8-9 hours). Some of the pieces can be moved around from day to day so I can adapt to my seemingly chaotic life. Here's a sample of what my week might look like… keeping in mind that “day job” and “family” time blocks are universal constants and completely inflexible.

I'll have to give it a shot for a few weeks to see if the time blocks work out for me. But the idea is that each block of time can be moved around to any day of the week to accommodate my life at that time. Oh, and this is also assuming about 16 hours of blocked time, 6 hours of sleep, and 2 hours of “who knows what” time that manages to escape me every day (probably eating food or something else stupid like that).

What about you guys? Do you have any “New Year Resolutions” for 2010? And are you so busy that you have to schedule your time with chunks of paper?