Monthly/Yearly/Review
Monthly/Yearly/Review
Hello again and welcome to another NP Blog, this is the one where we are all back to work/school/regularity/routine and Christmas/New Year feel like a distant memory, quite welcoming a bit of routine, bet I won’t be saying that by the end of the week.
Speaking of routine we are a little out this year as usually we’ll have discussed the #NPMonthlyWord but as I started the year looking forward, I skipped it, but saying that I’ll return to it, and that is now. I will also need to reflect on the images for the whole year. I’ll start with the December word, which of course was Christmas, every year for a while now I’ve done an advent daily photo post in various attempts to recapture a Christmas spirit through this powerful medium of photography but by the time you read this they’ll be gone!! I usually delete the page on my site on twelfth night just like taking the decorations down!
As I’d taken around 31 images for the month there is a lot to choose from, more than I usually take for the #NPMonthlyWord so going through them was a bit trickier and now in the cold light of January they seem a bit frivolous and a little out of synch, I won’t go through a smaller selection I’ll just talk about the image I thought was best for the month.
Overall I feel that some images worked well, some not so well, I missed many that I wanted to take and some surprised me, the Christmas tree shape theme, which I worked so well in 21 resurfaced in the kitchen this time when I was chopping a romaine cabbage so I can see some wider themes developing (possible into publication?) The overall winner for the month for me, was the reflection of the giant Santa Claus outside the library in a puddle and you can see it in the collection of images in the year review below. I specifically liked this one as it brought a few elements together, (recurring ones it seems judging by last weeks post!) Manchester weather, Manchester Santa and looking at things in an unusual angle. Another aspect that came together in the image was the holy photography trio of right place, right time and right equipment so that played into the selection of the image. Overall the Christmas images were fun, some worked well, some had massive cliches, some had my usual themes running through them, some could be improved, some fell completely flat. Seemingly the usual NathanPhoto set of images then!
Moving on onto the whole year review as a recap these were the words for the year:
January - New,
February - Love,
March - Spring,
April - Routine,
May - Mindful,
June - Celebration
July - Glorious.
August - Holiday.
September - Return
October - Scary
November - Autumn
December – Christmas
Here are the images
What do you think?
Well as a recap, I designed the #NPMonthlyWord to be an extension of my teaching, as I used to pose one of these weekly for my classes and as I’d like to do more of that in 2023, thought it would be a fun way to incorporate it. I have also developed the illustrating of the word into making stock images for archive/future sales purposes, stock is an area that I wish to explore in the coming years so thought this would be a good marriage of purposes.
What do I think? Well I think my reflection on the December words rings true again here: Some work, some don’t, some could do with further work, others not so much but they are all here present and correct so that counts for something. This is the first full year I’ve approached this subject and believe it is something I’ll be continuing with in ’23 and beyond, so you’ll see more work and more musings and cogitation on them.
Speaking of which this month’s #NPMonthly #NpMonthlyWord #NpMonthlyPhoto word is:
‘New’
I’ve changed the single hashtag to three tags for 2023 to give it more information and balance and I will most likely be changing the words as well as time goes on but I think new fits January so well that I’ve kept it from last year.
There we go then, that’s January started, and we are all back into it. As usual I’ve mainly discussed images so I shall leave you with some words, these from Susan Sontag in Photography: A little Summa, the first and the last ones:
1) Photography is, first of all, a way of seeing. It is not seeing itself.
and
14) There is no final photograph.
Thank you for reading as ever if there are any comments, any feedback, any thoughts or just anything then please get me through the usual channels.