With just a couple of weeks left in the year, it’s time for my annual Christmas Holiday post. I’ve had a fairly productive year despite numerous distractions. Thank you to all my friends and readers for following my blog this year. I just renewed my domain name for 2 more years, so the blog should be around for at least that much longer.
I recently turned 67 and am still wondering where all the years went. Like most other old codgers, I’m still 30 years old in my mind, but my body is reminding me that time is marching on. I don’t know how much time I have on this earth, but I’ll not worry about it too much and just enjoy the fact that my life to this point hasn’t been boring. All in all, I’m doing pretty good here at home in Colorado and can still do most of the things I used to do, if only a little slower or in smaller doses.
We’ve been dealing with a few family health issues this pat year, and have also lost some close family members and a few friends. Everything is going as well as can be expected now but we miss those who have left us very much. Right now, it’s just my wife, me and our two dogs, still grinding it out every day and making the most of life.
We sold our cabin in Red Feather Lakes back in the Spring, so I won’t be spending a lot of time in Northern Colorado in the future. I’ll squeeze in some short trips in the future, but the days of waking up every morning and searching for moose are pretty much gone. Conditions have deteriorated up north over the years so I don’t know that things would ever be as good as they once were. At least not in my lifetime. Everything changes over time.
Back in May, while on a trip to photograph a ghost town near Buena Vista, my truck was hit by a truck tire that fell off an oncoming truck, tearing my front left wheel and suspension up pretty good. That little event cost me a month of down time with my new truck. Luckily nobody was hurt.
On the social media front. I dumped Facebook in early July. The platform lost appeal to me after many years of annoyance and my finally figuring out that it was not contributing to my life and general happiness. I don’t miss it at all. I did establish an account on Reddit and I find it far more interesting and my photos, which I like to share, are being seen by substantially more people.
On the photography front, I’ve just updated my photo editing desktop PC, along with some of the photo editing software. I’m using Adobe Lightroom Classic ver 14.1, Adobe Photoshop ver 26.1, DXO PhotoLab Elite ver 8.2.1 and Topaz Sharpen AI ver 4.1 for virtually all of my photo editing needs. Adobe still provides me with free Lightroom and Photoshop due to my stock photography contributor status, so I’m not really spending a lot on software these days. I did just upgrade from DXO PhotoLab 6 to 8. I’ve been holding off on that upgrade as I prefer to wait to upgrade things every other generation if possible.
I’m still keeping my Nikon D810 and D850 DSLR’s in my camera kit and both are getting used, along with all my Nikon F mount lenses. Full frame mirrorless just hasn’t wowed me yet as solving any photographic gear problem I may have. I added the crop sensor Sony a6700 three lenses to my kit, which more or less replaces my old Nikon D500. Doing good with all the gear right now, so we’ll play these cards for the time being. All things considered, I’ve really slowed down the gear acquisition over the years. Having owned dozens of different cameras, I’m now in a more conservative mode with my finances. I’m tired of throwing money at new stuff simply for the collector aspect. My office is looking like a storage locker.
I managed to take about 10,000 photos in 2024 and my productivity is hovering below pre-2010 totals at the moment but I have several ongoing projects and have been adding to my stock photography portfolios, which are doing fine. My stock photo sales for 2024 are pretty solid, having my second best sales year since 2017.
I got in a trip to Monte Vista with my friend Jonathan Steele back in March. About that time we had a major blizzard land on the entire state so poor Jon had to endure my winter driving through Moab to get home. Quite the adventure.
May was a good month for bird photography here at the local lakes.
During June and July, I found myself parked on the deck in my back yard much of the time while my wife traveled to New York to help her sister-in-law with a medical issue. That down time gave me the opportunity to learn my new Sony a6700 on the back yard birds and critters.
I did a brief moose photography trip in August to Northern Colorado, but that was disrupted big time by road construction.
One again, my friend Jonathan Steele came out for a Autumn Photography trip to the San Juan Mountains in late September and early October. Lots of fun and lots of great photos on that trip.
My most recent trip was back in November to Kauai. My wife and I hadn’t done a serious vacation together in years, and it was a wonderful experience for her and me to get back to Hawaii to enjoy the tropics.
I’m now planning my photography activity for 2025, with two trips already scheduled and I’m sure to add to that.
I’m also going to put together a photo gallery from 2024 in the near future. Stay tuned.
