It’s again time of the year to recapitulate. Already while I was browsing through my photo archive to select photos for my 2019 calender earlier this year I was quite shocked how the amount of photo folders declined this year.
Here is a little overview of the amount of photo folders which correspondent to occasions where I took photos, over the past 7 years.
– 2011: 33 folders
– 2012: 33 folders
– 2013: 42 folders
– 2014: 39 folders
– 2015: 33 folders
– 2016: 31 folders
– 2017: 31 folders
– 2018: 9 folders
At least it’s not surprising to me when I think about all the other time-consuming things I’ve been doing this year, like attending a Japanese language class once a week, plenty of training for my first Olympic triathlon this year, finishing a three semester long degree at an online university which required approx. 18h/week and constantly learning new stuff for work in my free-time, while working full-time and still accumulating plenty of over-hours.
For next year I can already say that I want to do less different things at once and focus more on fewer things, especially photography. At times I was really missing the free-spirited feeling on being outdoors and on the road, experiencing new places and get inspired by them while trying to capture the essence of those places.
That’s why I want to give a big shout-out to my friend Alexander Otto who has been such a great company and source of inspiration during all my big photo trips this year, to Tenerife in late March, to the Alps in July and to the US South-west in October. Who knows, without him and his constant drive to explore new places I might have not done many photo trips by myself this year.
Last year I was writing that it might take a couple of months to catch up with processing of my shots from Japan, Australia and Tasmania from 2017, I could not have been more optimistic, I think I barely processed a half of the shots yet. The same goes for my shots from 2018, that’s why I have to cheat a little bit this year and probably next year with my top 10 photos of the year. For this years’ photos I considered also photos from 2017 which I was only able to process this year.
When I look at my abstract architecture prints hanging above my TV I feel really sad that I again didn’t shoot anything like that this year and for 2 years in a row already.
I really hope I get to do this next year again, I already have plenty of places in mind which I want to experiment with.
Now I’ll leave you with my personal top 10 photos which I published this year and wishing you a happy new year, enjoy 
