A phone shot of a new bus station I pass on my morning walks while at home. The dawn of a new day!
The end of another year is upon us so it’s time to take stock of the past twelve months and think about changing things up for 2025.
I feel like I have not yet had a complete comeback from 2020’s pandemic. A lot of business was lost, some has never returned but other areas have emerged to partially compensate.
Up through 2019, I was averaging 2-4 international trips per year. Since the start of 2020, I have been out of the country only twice. Once in November of 2022 and again in November of 2023. I also had regional travel photography clients that lost their budgets due to the pandemic and that work disappeared for a time.
This past year, things have picked up again with local travel clients but 2024 became another year of zero international travel for me — just like 2020 and 2021.
2024 – the year of catching up and getting my ducks in order
So what did I do for all of 2024 since I wasn’t traveling heavily? I mostly used the year to get caught up. For one thing, I had fallen behind in updating my stock photo libraries so I took advantage of some home-time to post hundreds (thousands?) of images that hadn’t yet made their way into the world. My stock sales have been down lately (even though I did experience a slight bounce in sales during the pandemic) but I had mostly been feeding only one agency for the past couple of years. If I’m not constantly uploading new images, I can expect sales to drop. We’ll see if I experince an uptick in sales in 2025, now that I’ve updated my other libraries and increased my available images by 15-20%.
I also had a bit of a return to regional photography this year, shooting for State travel publications, a Nationnal Park Service project, and lots of more commercial work. Mostly I’ve been helping build image libraries, rather than the more traditional assignment photography of a decade or so ago when I would actually shoot specific stories. That seems to be the way of the future, although I do hope to build some story assignment work again. There just aren’t as many opportunities — or at least well-paying opportunities — and building photo libraries for destinations or regional publishers is what is happening more now.
So, 2025. What will that bring?
I’m not usually one for New Year’s resolutions but I am trying to challenge myself on a few fronts and set some goals this year. Right out of the gate, I’m planning on leaving on New Year’s Eve (today!) for what will be the first of (hopefully) multiple international trips this coming year. This trip, and the next will be different, though. I’m planning totally self-scheduled trips, and want to spend more time in a small area. I want to try and move my photography in a slightly different direction and hope to focus more on the travel experience than just capturing the most iconic landmarks.
I want to slow down, change the way I think about shooting, and maybe develop some new ways of capturing places.
I hope to do more story-telling and convey more mood with my images this year. Maybe even incorporate a little video. But I don’t want to set too specific of goals because I want to see how this evolves naturally. This first trip of 2025 will be two weeks long with about 4 days in one city and 10 days in another. The 10-day stretch is where I really hope to embed myself and explore some new ideas.
I may not post much to this site until I’m back and have digested things a bit, but I may try and do more “experiential” posts on Instagram and possibly BlueSky. You can follow me at either at @michaelcsnell.
