… to have a better year than the last. Although most people I know say this, 2011 seemed to be a pretty depressing year all round (more recession, riots, even more crappy weather). I managed to start the year with a bang of the wrong sort, my hard drive that stores my photos went kaput and I lost about 6 months of photos that weren’t backed up – there’s a slither of a chance that a professional company can retrieve the data, but it will be costly.
So resolution 1. to do a back up on a weekly basis – a new back up system that creates and stores 2 copies of everything on separate drives is on it’s way and an important lesson learned the very hard way.
2. Print more often and master my craft
Last year one of my resolutions was to spend more time in the print studio, I went on a letter press course, took part in a book fair and the 20:20 print exchange. Taking part in the print exchange introduced me to several print techniques I’d not tried before, so I’m hoping that Hot Bed Press will be re-running their solar plate etch course as well as experimenting more freely.
3. Read more often
This is one that crops up year after year, mainly as I always feel like I never have enough time to read, always buy new books (a couple a month at least, every month) and have ever growing piles. Also we haven’t had a ‘beach’ holiday for a couple of years and that seems to be the only time I make a dent in the bag log. Towards the end of 2011, I set a challenge to read a selection of books before the end of the year, and whilst I didn’t finish all of them, I read more than I would have normally. So in 2012 I’m going to aim to read 2 books a month, picking each 2 at the start.
4. Get back into film photography
My film photography took a sharp nose dive this past year, in part to a my batch of B&W processing chemicals going off, which I haven’t had time/money to replace and with LCE in Manchester closing their labs making colour processing, especially medium format a suddenly pricier hobby. However Lomo have opened a store in Manchester, and although I probably wont be buying equipment from there, I’m hoping there will be an increase in demand for fairly priced processing that doesn’t involve posting across the Pennine’s (although how anyone will beat LCE’s £3 per film dev only, I don’t know). In addition to that, I also want to get back into printing – there’s a studio in Salford near Hot Bed Press that has a darkroom for hire, when I can get a satisfactory amount of photos to print hopefully I’ll be able to get in there.
5. Knitting & crafting
about 18 months ago I taught myself how to knit and joined a knitting & crafting club with some friends, however I got more interested in my cross stitching than knitting and so I never got further than a scarf. This year I hope to progress to something involving a pattern and a few different stitches.
6. Finally, regular & prompt blogging. So often I start a blog post, get distracted, or hung up on .. stuff that I end up finishing blog posts weeks after an event I’m writing about, or end up getting bored of it. So I’m setting myself a target to do my write ups within 2 days of an event, as the information be fresh in my mind and I also really enjoyed the October wordpress post a day challenge that aims to get people writing regularly and concentrating on quantity over quality (odd concept but it works).
Culturenator 