Last year I embarked upon a project of trying to get my photography mojo back, and this year I am intending to take what I’ve done and really start to develop upon that (pun not intended, but please give it some adulation anyway) and build some good habits. I’ve identified a few things that I want to accomplish for my ongoing grooviness.

Firstly, and principally, I want to take some photos. I have a friend who’s going to buddy me in this. We’ve decided that we’re going to have a photo-a-day challenge throughout 2026, with a different theme each week. We’ve already created our list of themes and we’re raring to go.

One of the problems that I’ve faced over the last few years is knowing where to upload my photos to. Once upon a time I used to upload to flickr, and that was great, for a while. Then I uploaded to twitter for a bit, but it wasn’t as rewarding, as it’s not a dedicated photo sharing site, so it never felt like I was really building a portfolio there. And then I stopped using twitter at all. I’ve never wanted to use instagram as it seems wholly awful and like it encourages a lot of antisocial behaviours and negative energy. Then, a couple of months ago, I discovered Pixelfed and realised that it aligned perfectly with my values – it’s just about sharing high quality photos and being oneself, so I created an account and I couldn’t be happier. My account is at https://gram.social/petedotnu

Another goal for the year is to whip my photo archive into shape. Back in the days before smartphones, I had a fairly robust system. If I’d taken my camera out with me for the day, I’d come home, I’d transfer all the day’s photos into a new directory, and I’d then go through a process of curating those photos. I’d remove blurry ones, of course, but I’d also look at instances where I’d taken half a dozen photos in pursuit of one good subject, and just keep “the good one” and delete the rest. I have fallen out of the habit of doing this. This is partly driven by the fact that so many of my photos are taken on my cameraphone, and automatically uploaded to Dropbox, so my processing workflow now looks something like the following:

1. Ooh, my Dropbox is starting to get a bit full
2. Best move all the photos from “Camera Uploads” onto my hard drive
3. Hmmm, there’s a few months worth there. Don’t really fancy looking at that right now. Let’s just leave them in the “unsorted” folder and I’ll do something with them later
4. Never do anything with them later

So as a result, my photo archive is in a dreadful state. But it can be fixed. One of the problems I need to address it that my previous system doesn’t work as well in a smartphone era, where photos tend to be taken in a more spontaneous fashion. Instead of having a day where I take a big batch of photos every few weeks, I have more random snapshots and one-offs. I need to do the following things:

1. Review the older portion of the archive that is well-structured and well-curated. Select photos of which I’m still proud – give these a bit of processing and upload them to Pixelfed.
2. Look at the slightly newer portion of the archive which is well-structured but poorly curated. Curate it. I expect this to be the quickest portion of the process, but this is relative. It’s still a sizeable undertaking.
3. Look at the newer stuff. The jumble. The aforementioned “unsorted” directory. There’s a lot to do in here…
   1. Identify “batches” of photos where I’ve taken many in one day. Collect these under the old system. Curate them as I go.
   2. For the rest, pull these into a new system that integrates better with the existing one. Be thoughtful in how I curate these. Don’t keep every single photo that I’ve ever taken of my cat.

I know that I sometimes have a tendency to chase immediate results. I need to set up this project in a way that is sustainable, that makes me feel comfortable with doing it as an ongoing process over the course of the year, and not trying to finish it all in one session. While I very much have a goal in mind here, I must also remember that there’s joy to be had in the process of going through all my old photos and spending a little time with the ones that bring back happy memories, or seem particularly aesthetically pleasing, so I need to remember to take it slowly and enjoy the journey.

I also know that I can sometimes have a bit of a “completionist” streak which drives me to keep everything, never deleting, just in case I need it some day. I need to conquer this. I don’t need to have a full and exhaustive photographic record of my entire life. Who would that even be for?