Overlooking Killarney, Co. Kerry during a heavy frost

With the new year already begun I thought I’d take a brief pause to look back on the last year in terms of photography.

Photographically speaking, 2022 was a difficult year for me. I didn’t take nearly as many photographs as I would have liked, and when I did get out to shoot, I really struggled. Much of this was due to some ongoing minor but frustrating health issues. Nothing serious, just a difficult to solve problem I have with my feet causing pain in my ankles and knees when I walk too long. It sounds like something that would be easy to solve and not a big deal, but it’s been hard to get the right solution, and having seen several doctors and therapists, I ended the year pretty much as bad as I started, if not worse. Because of this, I found it difficult to stick to my usual routine of regular street and urban photography.

While this was incredibly frustrating, it did mean that I explored other avenues. In fact I ended up taking quite a bit of landscape photography, a genre of which I haven’t really done a lot.

My wife and I spent a bit of time travelling around Ireland on weekends and for short breaks this year, and it was quite an eye opening experience. When you have lived somewhere all your life, you don’t really appreciate just how beautiful your own back yard can be.

We travelled to the giants causeway in the north and then took the coast road back to Belfast, enjoying some of the beautiful scenery along the way. We also spent some time in the west of Ireland, from Connemara and Mayo, to Clare and Kerry. I had never really spent too much time in the west of Ireland, but now I’m totally hooked. The landscape there is truly stunning. It’s amazing that how diverse scenery can be in such a small country like Ireland, and if you had only been to one side of the island, you would never expect what was on the other.

For one of our most recent trips we actually visited Achill island on the west coast in December, not the time any normal sane person would try and go there. Luckily it was before the weather turned really cold. Even so, it was still pretty chilly, but it had the advantage of being almost entirely deserted. The highlight of the trip for me was standing on the shore at Keel beach and hearing the absolute roar of the Atlantic ocean. I grew up by the sea on the east coast in a small harbour town, and I love the sea, but I hadn’t realised how different the ocean could be. Just the sound alone was incredible. It was like a jet engine pounding the coast as the waves roared in. Standing there almost alone, save for my companions and the obligatory sheep was quite an experience.

We also visited Killarney in Co. Kerry, and we were there during the cold spell that gripped Ireland in December. Temperatures got down as low as -6c on a few occasions. While it was bitterly cold, it also led to an almost magical winter wonderland as the beautiful scenery of the area was covered in a layer of frost and ice.

While I’m not exactly great at Landscape photography and I have a lot to learn, it’s definitely something I want to pursue. I actually haven’t even processed or sorted most of the photos I took this past year, so when I eventually get around to cataloguing and sorting them I’ll try and post some photo essays about the experience.

We also did a little travel last year too. We went Cambridge in the UK in May, and went to Washington DC in December, which is a tale for anther time.

Because of the afore mentioned mobility issues, I didn’t get to shoot many episodes of Street Photo Diary this year either. I had even upgraded most of my vlogging kit, but haven’t really gotten a chance to use it properly. The one episode I did shoot din’t go down very well either, but I think that’s partly because I’m not posting on YouTube enough any more. Part of me wants to start over with a new channel, but that’s a tale for another day.

For the upcoming year, I really want to try and get back to doing more photography. I want to explore more of Ireland and abroad, but I especially want to try new things when it comes to photography. I also want to try and get back into street photography again, perhaps with a bit more consideration, and with a set of different goals. Hopefully I can get back to making YouTube videos too. I’m also in the never ending process of updating and redoing my website, but that’s a long drawn out process.

In the past I’ve learnt the dangers of making firm predictions here on the blog, and so instead this year, I’ll say the afore mentioned are more aspirational goals rather than plans. I’m still in the middle of some design work, but I hope to focus a bit more on the photography and video side this year, and I hope you’ll be along for the journey, whatever way it takes me. In the mean time, thanks for sticking with me over the past year, despite my spotty blogging record, and I’ll try to do better this year.

What are your photography related goals? Let me know in the comments below.

New Year: Looking back at 2022 and forward to 2023