There is something about the start of a New Year which is quite intriguing. It seems that our human nature needs a kind of marker to show the passing of time - like a notch on the wall - almost as a kind of comfort or security factor. We view it as a means of looking back and reviewing the year just passed and either congratulate ourselves on what a successful year we've had or ruminate over what a disaster it has been, how bad the weather was or both. We determine that the New year will be better, that we will make more effort, we will give something up or start doing something new or get back in contact with someone we haven't heard from in a while. We make all kinds of promises, to ourselves as well as others, as to what we will or will not do and, for a few days or weeks, we do try before normally slipping back into regular habits after a while. It seems like a process we need to go through.

Many of us also view it as a time to have a clear out, to get rid of old things no longer used or wanted, to tidy up the loft when the Christmas decorations get put away for a other year and find other old things we'd forgotten about, putting yet more in there out of the way, probably never to be looked at until another new year when we clear it out again and throw them away. We clean up the house, and tidy things away. Drawers and cupboards get emptied and refilled, things get re-organised and moved around or put away where you forget you've put them, so you'll never find them again until next new year.

I also regard it as a time to re-organise my computer files, move last years' work into a new folder, make room for this years' work and generally tidy up my hard drives, move stuff around, back up onto more discs, which are then labelled and put away tidily and general spruce everything up. I then go through my images in Lightroom and do the same as I did in the loft and in the house - throwing out those images which I now feel are not good enough and move categories around, archive, re-caption and keyword some, frequently asking myself why I used certain keywords originally as they are obviously not right, spending hours sorting through and re-organising.

It is a good time for reflection as I go through these images, on what I plan to photograph in the coming year, the opportunities I want to capture, the places I want to visit and the goals I want to reach. Due to many other commitments last year, I did not get out to photograph as much as I would have liked, missing many opportunities and allowing myself to be distracted. My life/work balance tipped the wrong way and I found myself almost falling back into old ways. It became necessary to do some serious self-reflection and to spend some time re-evaluating my goals and the direction I want to take during this new year. I needed to re-focus, both on a business and personal level. I want and need, to spend more time on photography and to build on that side of my business - doing what I enjoy most. Being outside photographing nature, in front of my computer processing images or in producing fine art prints for myself and for other artists and photographers, this is what I love - goal for this new year therefore, will be to focus on achieving it.

Happy New Year? I am sure it will be!