It's a little quirk of mine that I've been doing a review every year based on numbers and some facts - so here we go...This year, there was a big gap between quantity and quality, and I would like to go into this in more detail. Let's start with the quantity.
One trend continued: apart from our travels, my "days of action" were now significantly reduced to just 93 days. In fact, this year they were lower than they have been for 9 years. On the other hand, I spent a little more time planning the (sometimes more elaborate) photo projects.
But above all, apart from the photo projects in Iceland, Norway, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands, the interest in photography near my hometown was not as high as in previous years, especially with the difficult weather this fall, but also in the last snowless winter here in western Germany.
However, as the average number of images per day was about 4 again, I still managed to take 369 photos, which I was able to publish on this website in 22 blog entries. Over time, it looks like this (left-hand image):
On the right, you can see the figures in relation to each other - they give the yield per day. Especially since 2020, the steady growth is due to the rather selective choice of “days of action” and locations, whereby the weather forecast via live satellite images helps a lot.
I have also included the raw data below. The number of pictures results from how many I actually publish on my website and at the same time meet my current "standard" - in 2009, for example, I already spent a lot of time with nature photography, but by today's personal quality standards there is actually only one picture left that made it onto this website:
Divided into the various "genres" of nature photography, I had a very even mix in 2023: about half of my time was spent on wildlife photography (53%) and the other half on landscapes and their details (47%).
So that's the numerical facts for the year 2023. Quality can't really be deduced from this. So what was it like?
Even though the number of days I worked was lower than it had been for years, it was the best year for me personally in terms of photographic yield since I started taking pictures.
I was simply able to take a lot of photos of the subjects I wanted, which I had failed to capture several times in previous years. I also somehow had the light on my side when I was traveling.
Besides I think I was able to take some decent pictures in every genre. Here are 20 of my favorite moments from 2023, starting with landscape photography:
My wildlife year was just as varied, with new animal species in my portfolio and many long-standing dream objects. Here are 20 moments that I like to remember:
And finally, 20 great moments of natural details, colours and shapes:
As I write this article, we are once again in the Algarve this year, where Christina and I will be leading a landscape photography workshop with some nature enthusiasts in the first week of January, alongside a private vacation. We are currently enjoying the spring-like weather here and switching off a little.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your interest in this blog, wish you a good start to the New Year and, above all, the best of health for 2024, because that is always the most important thing.
With best regards,
Thomas