Year End Photography Checklist

Posted by Mark on Dec 27, 2011 in nature photography | 16 comments

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It is around this time of year that I start a number of activities to tidy up another year of photography.  The year end gives us a chance to reflect back upon where we were at the same time a year ago, evaluate any goals we set, and do some organization and filing chores.   So here is a short list of my items, feel free to contribute your own.

1] A Quick Review all my images shot in 2011

This is easy enough to do in Lightroom (my organizational tool of choice since its initial release).  Since my photographs get scattered to different folders after I edit them, all of my 2011 shots aren’t necessarily in one hard drive folder.  In the Library mode, I click on “All Photographs” in the left side Catalog panel.   I then set the Library Filter on Metadata, and make one of the columns “Date” – and select the current/past year.

This gives you a total number of photographs you made in that year, in this case 2011.  You can see how it compares to other years – did you shoot more or less?   A quick scan through this list of images tends to turn up photos I had forgotten to process, such as the one at the start of this post.   If you have rated your images or flagged favorites, it makes the next step easier.  If you set any photographic goals, this is a good chance for a quick review of them.

2]  Start a new Collection folder for 2011 Yearly favorites

I have been doing this since 2007, and enjoy the exercise.   It is a chance to review some of your photographic highlights of the year and perhaps some nice memories along the way.   I also submit these to Jim Goldstein’s monster list of year end lists from photographers abroad.  Each year it gets more and more massive.  Jim has quite an army now of social media followers, I can only imagine how big this year’s list will be.  It takes nearly until next year’s list to look through them all.

Even if you don’t participate in that list, I think it is a good exercise for anyone to do and keep it on your own blog, or just for yourself personally.  I create this Collection folder in Lightroom and then start dragging candidates for my top 10 here as I work through my reviews.  Narrowing it down to 10 can be quite a challenge.

After a few years, you have accumulated all of these yearly favorites that are great summaries of where you were in your photography and where you think you are going.

3] Clean up your image filing

Everyone has their own system.  I tend to import all of my images into a master “Uncataloged” folder with date sub-folders and then when I have edited and processed them, I move them to subject specific folders.   Well, sometimes I edit them within the context of one particular trip and don’t move them immediately to their subject folders.   If you have any stray photos, you want to make sure you put it in its proper place.   It is also a good time to create virtual folders or collections if you haven’t already to keep track of all images from a particular trip or photo session.

4] Prepare a Copyright submission

If you don’t do this on a regular basis, the end of the year is a great time to do a submission on “Photographs from 2011.”   Submissions can be done online now and the process is fairly simple at the US Copyright website.   Even if you don’t sell your work, if  you are sharing your images online via a website, in forums or social media sites, registration gives you the ability to collect for damages, attorney fees, etc. beyond what would have been the sale price of the image.  Basically it puts some muscle beyond the automatic copyright to your work upon creation.

5] Throw out the trash

Maybe you have been keeping some images around that have been marked for deletion.   While some images may have alternate uses for them, the junk ones should be trashed.  I filter on my Lightroom Black Flag “X” images, review them quickly one last time, and then delete them.  Set them free and move on!

6]  Website housekeeping

If you have a website, it is also a good time to review the content you have on it, and make a list of changes or deletions you might want.   Websites are constantly hungry monsters demanding your attention.  Maybe you have the itch for a complete redo (good luck on that.  ;-) ), or just want to clean up some older material that you don’t feel is what represents you as a photographer anymore.

I usually rewrite my bio and tweak my artist statement at least once a year.   This year I reformatted the entire page and look of this section.

It is a good time to revisit keywords on your site.  Look at your stats and see how your visitors are finding you.  I don’t have much sage advice on keywords and SEO these days as the search engines seem to be changing their methodologies and making them more personalized every day.  Pretty soon SEO will be quite meaningless because everything will be customized to the individual doing the search, what they have searched for in the past, their location, etc, etc.

Having a backup copy of your website should be done more frequently than year end for sure, but if you don’t – it is as good as time as any to start.

7] Update all of your backups

Note I didn’t state – backup your work.  Because if you aren’t doing this on a regular basis, well, doing it once a year will be basically putting a years worth of work at risk.   Many people do it daily, I would think weekly is as long as anyone should wait if you are regularly shooting.   So this is just a double check to confirm – yep, all of this year’s work (and all years prior) is safe and secure.

8] Next year goals

I am usually not too formal about this, but have considered actually writing these out.   When I look back on 2011, I know some techniques I wanted to develop in general, but nothing really specific.   I try to include some business goals along with this.  It can be whatever you like – if you want to concentrate on other subjects, travel to specific places, or take new directions with your work.   If you write it down, then next year when you are going through all of these handy steps, it is a great reference.

Seek inspiration from some great e-books by Guy Tal, William Neill, Michael Frye, or some of the great Lenswork materials.

9] Pay it forward – Like, Follow, Circle, Enjoy

It sounds a little bit like stalking when you look at the terms derived by all of the social media sites around now, but that isn’t what I mean.  Think about some artists that inspire you, and either let them know, post about them, comment on their blogs, like their Facebook pages, follow their Tweets, circle them on G+, share with your friends.   Whatever way you choose to connect, chances are your next year will be influenced in some way or another by one of them.

I hope you found some value in this list, feel free to add your own year end suggestions in the comment section.