2024: the Year of Photography

I don’t often write reviews of the year. Back in the early days of this site I used to do them regularly, but more recently I’ve only done them when I felt I had something worth saying – or, more often, because I had the energy to write one and managed to get it finished in time.

I’m not entirely sure at what point I decided that I was going to make 2024 my Year of Photography. I certainly was using it very early in the year to justify paying for a lineside photography permit at the Bluebell Railway and buying the odd lens or two. But with such a bold declaration, it is probably worth having a look back at the year to see how it’s gone. Did it end up being worthy of being called the Year of Photography?

As with most years, 2024 started out with my annual check in, the one true constant on this site. At that point I wasn’t making any bold promises about what I’d be doing in the year, other than suggesting vague aspirations of shooting, editing and posting more, which frankly is what I say every year. This year, though, I managed to stick to it better than previous years.

My next post came out on February 29th, in truth because I wanted to get a post out on an irregular date. It was just a few shots from a short wander around Brighton, but it was enough to get some pictures out there.

I wish I could say why I then both decided to and kept up with posting on a fortnightly schedule, but I did. I settled on a Friday evening for no real reason and have been posting every two weeks since, with a few exceptions. The posts have been a mixed bunch: some of them taken years ago that I’ve been meaning to post for years, others ones that I’d only been out and photographed the day before.

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The problem with posting every two weeks on a hard schedule is that it does lose some of the immediacy and spontaneity. This can best be seen with some of my posts from the Bluebell Railway earlier in the year. I had taken my first steps lineside in April, but it didn’t make sense to me to post them until I’d released a pending set of previous visits to the railway, and I also wanted to keep a variety of posts, so I didn’t want to post them back-to-back, preferring to get at least a couple of posts between them.

I decided to use the fact that May was National Photography Month (although in which country I’m not exactly sure, such is the Internet) to post once a week, although in truth it was mostly to catch up with my backlog to the point that Lineside at the Bluebell Railway could be released sooner. Even then, it was released a month after I’d made the visit, by which point I’d been back again for the Branch Line Gala, and the problem started over again. Once that post was out I was caught up, and decided that I’d release the next sets from the Bluebell Railway outside of the normal posting schedule, partly to make sure I had images out there whilst people would be looking for them. This lasted up until Giants of Steam, the event I had been planning towards for the whole year, which took a week to edit and write, by which point it ended up releasing in the normal schedule anyway. And when I went back a week after Giants to photograph Sir Nigel Gresley again, I figured I might as well put it back in to the schedule so I wasn’t posting nothing but steam train images.

The other set of images I shot that weekend – of a replica Ectomobile from Ghostbusters – is the other exception to the posting schedule. Instead of posting it on Friday 1st November, I posted it a day earlier to share it on a more fitting Hallowe’en.

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The photographs I’ve taken this year have been amongst the best I’ve taken. I’m obviously incredibly proud of the pictures I’ve taken at the Bluebell Railway, which have only gotten better and better with each visit (even as I take a photo and wonder how I’ll top it), but there is a varied assortment of quality posts I’m very pleased with dotted throughout the year too, alongside the older posts.

Standouts are Derelict, a long-desired wander around a (mostly) abandoned building, and Hove, a walk where I stuck to a theme and got some far more considered photographs than I think I would have otherwise. There are also some photos I took that I’ve not gotten around to sharing yet that I’m particularly pleased with, including a big wildlife set and another set from Dorset I need to figure out how to break down.

I’ve also figured out my workflow. I know I make promises every year of shooting, editing and posting more, but this year I seem to have stuck to it. For the first time in a while I don’t have a backlog of photographs to edit (although I do admittedly still have a backlog of content to post), and that’s partly because I’ve figured out a routine that means I get the images edited usually within days of taking them, if not the same day (1,000 image days like Giants of Steam notwithstanding).

I’ve switched up my posting style too. I’ve started trying to have less words, and post fewer pictures in the main post, and end with a gallery of pictures, much like I used to many years ago. I still try to make sure I get the overall process and experience in the post, but I try not to have a comment for each and every picture.

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In 2024 I published 27 posts, my highest number since 2015 (and the first time I’ve even hit double figures since 2017). That has brought with it an increase in visits to the site, which is not that unexpected.

That said, the most viewed post over the last year, as it has probably been for every year for the last decade, is Boscastle Pottery, which pulled in over 1,000 views, 10 times anything else. One of the benefits, I presume, of photographing something internationally known that doesn’t have its own web presence.

Although to be honest, I don’t really dwell on the stats for this site. What matters more to me is the interaction I have with others. Disappointingly I haven’t had a lot of interaction on this site over the year, despite the increased posting and the subsequent increased traffic. As such as the year wore on I’ve started exploring other ways of getting my work out there in front of people. That is partly why I set up the @robdoestrains Instagram account, and started posting on the Daily Photo site for the first time in 11 years (near enough to the day – the previous post was 18th November 2013, and I started up again with a post on 19th November 2024, acting like I never missed a day). I rejuvenated the Daily Photo not so much for the site itself but because it was an effective way to spit a photo out onto multiple social media platforms on a schedule. It hasn’t really worked, if I’m honest – I get a few likes on now and then my Creative Splurges Bluesky account, but next to nothing on my @creativesplurges_ Instagram account. Part of that might be my lack of any real effort other than scheduling posts. It’s my @robdoestrains account on Instagram that has been the biggest success. From starting out at nothing in late October, I’ve now over 450 followers, and just about every post I share will usually get at least 20 likes, which is substantially more than I get anywhere else.

I’ve also made sure to keep up with uploading my images to Flickr, which has brought in a bunch of views but not much in the way of interaction.

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And what about 2025? Well, this isn’t my normal place to talk about my plans for the year ahead. I’ll save that for my anniversary post in a couple of weeks. But rest assured I am hoping for 2025 to be one just like 2024. Only maybe better.