A Late Start to 2026

Yes, 2026 Started 6 weeks ago and while most people have already given up on their New Years Resolutions this seemed like the perfect time to adopt a few. With all the hype of the New Year gone surely I will take these seriously and commit to them in the long term because this is what I really want? lol . Anyway, better late than never and as they say "nothing ventured, nothing gained".

2025 Proved to be a great year to be behind the camera for me. Traveling to England, Vietnam, Nepal and Saudi makes taking photos extremely easy. Everywhere is new, every time you step out the front door feels like a new adventure, taking photos feels like a reward. That being said though I definitely did not put in the graft needed to make the most of the opportunity that I had. Taking photos is great, taking good photos even better but if that is where the work stops then it feels a bit like a missed opportunity. Do I know what that opportunity was? No but I do know that I was not looking for it either. Which to be fair I was living my best life out in Asia, so I will happily cut myself some slack.

2026 However I hope to tackle differently. Not just focusing on taking photos (which I have not done enough of yet) but focusing on just trying to find opportunities where I can let my camera do the talking, get my foot in the door of a few small, odd jobs and see where that lands me. This is going to mean sending out a few cold emails (my literal worst nightmare), speaking to people and just trying to market myself to those around me or within the space (A continuation of my worst nightmare). The step up from part-time hobbyist photographer to still part-time but hopefully paid photographer is going to come from the leg work that I put in, no matter how uncomfortable it makes me.

So yeah 2026 we take ourself slightly more seriously, do the things that we don't always want to do, act like a business owner and adopt more discipline. Starting with my website, no more sporadic, infrequent blog posts, but the attempt to write a weekly post about who knows what. We will worry about that next week but hopefully the discipline of writing every week will remind me of the work that needs to be done and the promise I made to take myself more seriously. I will need to be on the look out for jobs, conversations and ideas to hopefully give myself a leg up and take a step towards a more serious "career" in Photography. So let's see, there is still a long way to go this year and lots of steps to be taken, but this right here was the first one :)