Checking in on My 2026 Photography Goals.
If you have been here a while, you will have seen that I set myself some goals for landscape photography throughout 2026. I am using this blog as a means of checking in on them and will be updating it around once a month and posting 6 months through the year, I’ll do another check-in at the end of the year.
Just as a reminder, here’s the goals I set at the beginning of the year.
Go out and shoot every month.
Build the community aspect of website.
Sell at least one workshop.
Get my print store up and running and sell enough prints to buy a new set of inks.
Try something new in photography (probably ICM).
Shoot at least one new location every month.
Develop my woodland photography skills.
Explore macro photography to develop my landscape skills.
Shoot more personal work in the studio and develop my lighting skills
Carry on enjoying doing what I love!
So here’s the update for January:
Disappointingly, I haven’t been out to shoot this month. Work has been hectic and there’s been a lot of other stuff going on around my photography that has meant this has been really difficult. This already feels like an excuse, but sometimes life happens and you need to get on and deal with things. I have to remind myself that I have a full time job, which takes up way more time than I even realise sometimes. I am going to allow myself a pass on this one and give myself the chance to make it up with at least two shoots in February. This also means that shooting in one new location each month gets the same treatment. I have shot in zero locations so far and this is really at odds with shooting in new locations! It also means I haven’t tried anything new with photography yet… I am not off to a strong start in respect of the actual taking photos part of being a photographer this year!
Building the community aspect of the website however, is taking a step in the right direction, I have written a blog about what I want to do and this will go live in a couple of weeks. I need to make sure that I am really prepped for this and have some ideas ready to go. There’s a lot going on in the background here, so watch this space. If you want be notified about this then sign up to my mailing list to get the updates and be notified when the blog goes live. It’ll be coming out around 5th April!
I haven’t sold any workshops yet, and to some extent this is one of the aims that I don’t have much control over than carrying on to market them and hope that someone wants to come along and learn about landscape photography in the Lake District. If this is something that you think you would like to do then click here and get some more information. (See, I even managed to do some marketing right there!)
Getting my print store back up and running is coming along nicely, but it’s a lot of work and I am doing this in my spare time. I am hoping to get the print store live in the next couple of months. I have enough blogs saved up for the next six months, so that should give me some time work on other things!
I have done some experiments and some test shoots in the studio and have a couple of other things lined up ready to go, I just need to plan and deliver on these. I have been reading about, watching videos about and experimenting with lighting in the studio and I am starting to have a much better understanding than I did before. I feel like I am making good progress here and I’m really looking forward to updating my portfolio with some of the shots when I am happy with them.
Macro photgraphy is something I have been working on in the studio, so that when I go out into the field I have a good grasp of the lens and the process before I go out and start doing this outside. I’m excited to go out and explore with it.
Finally, developing my woodland photography skills. I have been out and explored a couple of places near to home and have a couple of compositions I would like to shoot, but I just haven’t had the conditions that I wanted.
All in all, apart from actually making any landscape images (!) I think that this is going to be positive year for me in terms of photography. I just need to be a little more organised!
February
Ok. I am bad at this. Really bad. I think I have even surprised myself with this, but I haven’t been out of the house, with the camera since Christmas 2025. For someone who spends a lot of time telling people that they should go out whatever the weather, I have spent a lot of time, looking out of the window, saying to myself that the weather isn’t quite right. For those of you outside of the UK, you might not have heard that it rained it everyday in the UK for the whole of January and for most of February. That's not to say that it rained every day in the Lake District, but we didn’t get much respite. Couple that with work and the days still being quite short, it didn’t fill me with much inspiration. This means that my one new location every month has also fallen by the wayside - I need to pick it back up!
The community stuff is still rumbling along in the background, I have blogs scheduled about this and I need to create some social media. The blog post is coming up in just under month. Click here to join the mailing list and be notified.
My print store should be back online soon, I am just working on some mockups and then I need to spend some time setting it all back up in Squarespace.
The studio work on the other hand has really picked up and I have spent lots of time in here working on new stuff for my portfolio. You can take a look at this new work by clicking here. I have learned a lot doing this, especially about lighting and just how important attention to detail is… especially when it comes to cleaning up a set so that you don’t have to spend ages removing dust in Photoshop!
The workshops haven’t made much progress, but part of that is down to me spending my time shooting in the studio and not really working on the marketing side of this part of what I do. I have made some SEO changes and these are starting to have a bit of an effect. If landscape photograpghy workshops in the Lake District are something you would enjoy or benefit from, click here to check out what we can do together!
Woodland photography - not much progress here other than some scouting, but again, I am going to blame the weather!
See you in a month for another update!
