Windows XP Restart screen.

It’s that time of year again.  Time to review how I got on with my 2008 New Year’s Resolutions and to set out my objectives for 2009.  A time to restart my resolutions and to reboot my objectives.

For those who want to read what I said on 1st January 2008, you can find it here:
http://www.imb.biz/page.php?pg=diary&d=2008-01-01

But to sumarise my intentions for 2008 they were:
1. Keep my finances up-to-date
2. Clear my image backlog
3. Prevent a new image backlog from happening
4. Post a photo of the day for each day (Although not stated in the POTD on 1st Jan the challenge was to take a new photo every day)
5. Continue to read a passage of the Bible everyday.

So how did I do?

1. Keep finances up-to-date. 

Well I didn’t keep the the timescales I set myself on 1st January.  But I did get them up-to-date part way through the year and my tax return was submitted months earlier than I normally submit it.  So that’s a partial success… although I do need to have anther session pretty soon to ensure that I don’t get into bad habbits again.

2 & 3. The Image backlog.

I’ll deal with these together.  This hasn’t been as succesful as I would have liked.  I still have a backlog…. however… I do feel in more control of it than I did last year.  I don’t feel as though the backlog is any larger than it was this time last year and that is despite taking more photos this year than I have in any previous year (I took more in 2008 than I did in 2005 & 2006 combined!). 

Why didn’t I make as much progress as I wanted?  Early in 2008 I upgraded my PC and as readers my recall I had a LOT of problems following that upgrade.  One direct effect of that was that although I almost as soon as the year started I was behind on my schedule for working through the backlog and never recovered.

The second reason was that I was taking many more photos this year than I had previously and that meant concentrating on 2008’s images and not on the backlog.  Part of that increase in image taking was the POTD challenge for 2008…

4. POTD

I set myself a challenge in 2008 that the photographs posted on a particular day were taken on that day.  Did I manage it?  Well you be the judge here’s the facts:
a) Every day in 2008 has a POTD entry.
b) Two days don’t have photographs but have suitable graphics instead.  One because of the death of a friend the other date due to the PC crashing again.
c) Some days the images were taken but not posted until sometime later (Eg the period I spent in Syria and the knock-on effect that had on the POTD).
d) On three occasions the images weren’t taken on the day for which they were for.  Once because I simply forgot.  Once because I was behind with posting and somehow got out of synch with taking the images, and once because I had convinced myself I’d taken a photo which when I came to post it I clearly hadn’t taken!

Was it sucessful?  I have 8 stock/library sales of images that would not have been taken had I not set myself the challenge of taking a new photo every day in 2008.  Two further sales were from POTD shoots but those probably would have happened regardless of doing the challenge.

The downside to the challenge was the large number of times I was hunting for an object in the house to photograph because I had not photographed anything that day.  This started feeling very repeative to me and no doubt very boring for you the POTD reader.

5 Bible Reading
This was not as sucesful as 2007.  Having said that throughout 2008 I did read a passage on a lot more days than I didn’t.  I was doing reasonably well up till the trip to Syria with, I think, only having missed on day uptil that time.  After that trip my routine of post POTD and read a passage had been broken because I wasn’t posting my POTD everyday at night and the bible ready became patchy. 

The Challenges for 2009

1. Bible Reading
This is my first and most important challenge – to get back to reading a passage everyday.  I’ve recently discovered www.deovox.com a bible reading postcast and this is helping. 

2. Finances
Need to keep on top of this.  I’ll keep the objective the same as before that by the end of one month the previous months finances should be up-to-date.

3. Marketing
One of my objectives for 2009 is to market my business more effectively.  I can’t be more specific about it at this point as the first part of the challenge it to workout how I should be doing that marketing.

4. Image Backlog
Again the aim is that by the end of 2009 to totally clear the backlog.  Again I’m going to try to deal with images with the same date on that date.  ie Anything taken on 1st of Jan any year I will process today, anything taken on 2nd Jan of any year I’ll deal with tomorrow and so on.  As I started this last year, I know I’m already a couple of month ahead of myself so that should help me achieve the target.

5. POTD
A number of people have been asking me about my POTD challenge for 2009.  As I have mentioned taking a photo every day has made reducing my backlog that much more difficult.  So this year the photo I post each day to my POTD (and yes I am still going to post a photo every day) will be either….

a) something that I have uploaded to Alamy on that day.
    Or
b) something taken on that day.

Option a) will always be my first choice as that will actively encourage me to process images from my backlog to reduce them.  Option b) is included to cover those times I’m away from home and can’t prepare images for upload or those times I’ve taken images for a client (Eg theatre images) that I wish to showcase on the day they were taken.

And just in case you are wondering today’s POTD image was both taken today AND uploaded to Alamy today!

Happy New Year.