Year in review, 2024
- tmcneilly5
- Jan 18
- 7 min read
Updated: Jan 20
One of my goals in 2024, amongst other things, was to produce more and regular blog posts, using it as a tool to convey what landscape photography means and does for me. In 2023, I made one blog post, and well, this was going to make my second post for 2024....but it's taken me nearly two weeks to write this one, I mean I started writing it in 2024 so surely that counts?!
It's all about having the time really isn't it and of course being in the right mindset to support being creative, in a time when we're always so busy and having to constantly make decisions about where to invest the little time we have available to us between parenting, working and doing those things in life that aren't negotiable, things like blogging slip down the list to the section titled "would love to do, but don't have capacity to do".
It sums up my landscape photography really. Many times this year my time has been enormously limited and I've needed to make those decisions about where the energy goes, when it comes to landscape photography I find it important to go back to the reason I took up this hobby in the first place, which was the joy I get and the untangling of the mind I get from being out in nature, generally on my own, experiencing some beautiful early morning light on the beach, or an early morning winter fog in the forest. It is the enjoyment and meditative effect that comes from a creative hobby that really makes it, and so when faced with the decision about where to put the time, I chose heading out to take the photos and immersing myself into the landscape, not sitting at home writing a blog or even editing previously captured images.
With that in mind, let's take a look back at the year that was 2024, a year that, while as I've indicated was extremely busy, was also a year of stepping it up again and achieving the annual goal of producing higher quality landscape images than the year before. The beauty of this goal is that its only judged by me!
Some key achievements that I've celebrated in my own way:
My highest results in the Landscape Awards - a Top 30!
Opened my online Print Store,
My largest ever print sold,
Taught a friend the basics of camera operation in manual mode,
Production of my second year of landscape photography calendars,
Calendars being sold in two separate store locations,
Produced my highest quality images to date including some of the most epic Flinders Ranges panoramas.
The first bit of the year....
Early in the new year saw me head over to Victoria, back home in fact, and some exploring in the Mount Buangor State Park, which is home to the Ferntree Falls.
Given it was peak of summer I didn't expect a great deal in terms of water over the falls, but man was I in for a treat. I've been here before on the back end of winter and had less water than I did in January.
With not another soul in sight, I slipped into the mode of having a decent explore around without the camera out. A key tip I've heard time and time again is about leaving the camera in the bag and having a wander around, exploring the landscape and letting the compositions come to you when they're ready.
Here is what I captured....
Within a month or so of my visit to Mount Buangor much of this State Park was destroyed by a bushfire.
January also provided the opportunity to capture an early morning long exposure image at Port Elliot that I'd been keen to seize for some time.
I had a desire early in the year to spend some more time on the Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia, really trying to hone in on the essence of this beautiful area, it was during this that I learned that my camera was starting to play up and was ultimately needing to go offline for a month for repairs.....more on this soon.
I'd say I really started to struggle with photography during this time, struggle in the sense that I felt like I wasn't able to capture any images "worthy" of posting or that I thought were any good, largely the weather wasn't playing ball and it felt like we had weeks and weeks of clear blue skies and no clouds to capture the light. I really had to work through the pressure I was putting on myself to achieve epic shots all the time, as if the images I'm trying to produce are about pleasing other people, rather than just enjoying the process and the outcome is whatever the outcome is.
Albeit, amongst the cloudless mornings, I still managed to capture many photos, which I quite liked and soon enough the clouds returned and gave me some of the conditions I was really keen to experience again.
Winter.....what a season for landscape photography!
Coming into winter I'd been without a camera for nearly a month and half while it was being repaired, which was tough, but honestly it did me a world of good. A forced break I called it in the end. It broke the cycle of pressure I was putting on myself and then wasn't living up too, and so when I first went back out in winter it just felt so good.
Winter really brought the goods for me this year, those epic morning foggy conditions in the Adelaide Hills, kangaroos grazing in the rain, fog amongst the gums alongside windy dirt roads, another weeklong trip along the Great Ocean Road and some of the most epic conditions in the Flinders Ranges......thank goodness for winter when it came to putting together my 2025 Landscape Photography calendar.
Until this year, I really didn't feel like I'd captured the essence of the Adelaide Hills like I was wanting too, in part this was actually about me doing some planning and research about areas within the hills that I hadn't explored before and look what I came across.....
A solo winter trip through the Great Ocean Road was absolutely in need this year, I needed it both mentally and photographically. I'd done a huge amount of research prior to this particular trip, a lot more than normal in an attempt to maximise the time and try and come home with the goods.
I mapped out all of the key locations I wanted to visit and in many ways had pre-visualised a number of the shots. It was this trip also where I'd extend much further than my previous trips to a number of places I hadn't been before and some that required a decent walk in.
Day after day the weather delivered both morning and night for perfect sunrises and sunsets and fantastic conditions during the day for time in the forest and amongst the waterfalls, plus being in the middle of July a much reduced concern for snakes!
The key to the success of this trip though was my investment in waders so I could get into the water to capture those compositions that really took the images to the next level. It was quite an incredible feeling really, being close to waist deep in flowing rivers, or being able to kneel down in the water to get the camera literally a couple of centimetres off the top of the water. The creative opportunities this opened were almost endless in comparison to what I'd experienced before.
Here are some of my favourites....
I had the chance for a quick, final trip for winter up into the Flinders Ranges, an area that I feel like has eluded me from a photography perspective for some time. This time though, wowsers what an epic night. The reality is this was a complete fluke experience, right place right time to capture the magic in this amazing panorama of the ranges at sunset. The last bit of the sun's light painting the mountain range red and giving me plenty of light on the windmill, at the same time as those epic storm clouds across the back. I was absolutely buzzing after this!
The back end of the year......
The latter part of 2024 saw a bit of a shift in priorities, which meant photography didn't get as much time, but to be honest I was totally fine that, I'd had a decent haul of travel and images throughout the year that I was really pleased with and that I felt content with, ultimately to be able to feel content with the progress for the year was a great sign.
I was able to move into preparing my 2025 calendars, marketing those across the socials but also for the first time ever placing calendars for sale into two separate stores.
I'm enormously grateful for the number of people who purchase one or more calendars each year, I get a real buzz knowing that my images will be on display in people's homes all across Australia, the UK and the America for the whole year, and I'm even more blown away to know that some of you cut the images out and keep them at the end of the calendar year....how cool!
Thank you
As always, I can't thank you all enough for your continued support of my landscape photography journey, whether it's purchasing a framed print, a canvas, a calendar, some likes on the socials or a comment on your favourite photo, it all means the world too me.
Who knows what 2025 has in store from a photography perspective, it's going to be a big year in terms of life achievements that's for sure.
I'll leave you with one final image for 2024, one yet to be published, so you've seen it here first....I'm calling this shot at Port Noarlunga jetty from December "Marry me".....because the night before I capture this stunning shot, I asked my partner to marry me.
She said yes!
