Finally I have had an opportunity to sit down and review a manic 2023, with trips to Skomer, Iceland, Poland, Morocco and even a trip all around the Baltics all punctuating the year that made up 2023. It should have been a fantastic year for my photography and in a lot of ways it was with some notable photographic highlights. However that’s not the whole story. Overall my productivity has been way down, with these trips really being all the photography highlights of the year, with lots of periods of inactivity around them. Typically I would always try to get a blog post together for one post a month, but from the end of the summer until now my camera has hardly come out of my bag recreationally. I hope that this trend doesn’t continue on into 2024, but with a Croatia trip already in the calendar for May, all might not be lost after all. Back to 2023 with some highlights below for your viewing pleasure…

Wildlife

This was an area of my photography I was really looking forward to with a trip to Skomer Island planned to finally take some images of the puffins there. This along with the Crested tit image (below) at the start of the year meant 2023 was shaping up to be a great year all around for my wildlife photography.

However despite these opportunities I was finding the hit rate on the XT-4 paired with the 100-400mm with a 1.4 teleconverter to be frustrating. I was getting a lot of blurry, or just missed shots so started taking off the teleconverter for sharper images. This did help somewhat but now I was missing the length I was used to, meaning getting close up images were proving to be difficult.

despite these frustrations, I can’t complain about the ones that did come out. A change did need to be made however, with the year ending on very few useable wildlife images taken overall.

Its January and of course as per the usual trend in my camera set up, the start of 2024 has seen me invest in an upgrade on one of my camera’s to try and combat the issues I have been having with my wildlife images. I have now moved up to a Fujifilm X-T5 from the X-T4. With its faster tracking, bird identification and 40 megapixel sensor. The key upgrade however will be in the autofocus which I really hope means a lot fewer just missed shots when it comes to wildlife photography. Fingers crossed this paired with the 100-400mm lens will work a little better for me and produce better/more usable results. If this does not satisfy then it will be a lens change or a switch back to canon or maybe sony in 2025. For 2024 though we will stick with fujifilm.

Travel

Travel was where I really found my groove in 2024. I found being somewhere new and exciting everyday the perfect excuse to have one of my camera’s with me at all times. I was especially excited to do some street photography when I was back in Marrakesh, a places I had not been back to since 2007! I knew this was a place made for street photography, so really went to town there trying to get as many photos as possible.

Thankfully Morocco did not disappoint and got my image of the year. A photo of an old man deep in one of the Souks of Marrakech. I love how timeless this image is and the pained expression on his face. It for me summed up the souks and the people that inhabit them.

Drone

With more and more restrictions and issues taking the drone abroad, my time flying the drone in 2023 can be counted on one hand. I have been putting off the decision to sell the drone for a little while now but doing this blog made me realise that it may be time. I have loved my time with it, but I just don’t find the experience of flying it that pleasurable anymore, and find little time when I want to get it out and fly. more often than not it finds itself sat on a shelf and not put into my camera bag for when I am out and about. I think I might hold onto it for my croatia trip but I find flying it when in other countries quite nerve racking and tend to shy away from getting it out if I am near any people. This is almost always the case as I suddenly become the centre of attention which I despise.

So that’s all she wrote for 2023. A year I will fondly look back on, with some fantastic and diverse shooting opportunities but with a lot less productivity. Maybe quality over quantity is the name of the game for 2024…

FIN