A year ago after some discussion with my friends I decided to start this blog. I had been using Flickr, but wanted a different way to present my photos. I thought a blog could be nice, as I would be more in control, and I would be able to add a little background. I had been postponing it, as I thought that I wasn’t good enough yet. However I came to the conclusion that there are two ways of looking at it:

1. I am not good enough yet (as a photographer and a writer), but when will I ever be?
2. I might as well start now and learn as I go along (it doesn’t have to perfect from the start).

Obviously I choose the second option. Now, one year and 88 (this one is 89) posts later, I am pretty happy with the consequences of that decision. Of course my photos are still not good enough, but they are better than a year ago. Partly because writing this blog helped me to look at my photos in a different way. And partly because I took a lot of photos. The blog functioned as an extra incentive to go out and shoot. Furthermore, it is nice to have a destination for my photos, some kind of finished product.

A year after it is time to look back and see what has become of it. So here are some statistics about my blog in particular and my photography in general:

• In 2015 I saved 14.878 photos. I took more, but I deleted quite a few. However I don’t have that number available.
• 13.684 of those were taken with the Leica M (Typ 240).
• I got about 4.600 views, that is around 50 views per post on average. At least that is what wordpress.com tells me. Google analytics thinks it’s closer to 10.000, so I guess WordPress has better filters. Still a large number in my opinion!
• My readers came from 58 different countries (see image below). I think that is really impressive! Thanks everyone!
• My top post was: My First Year With The Leica M with 214 views.
• I entered 4 contests and won none of them.
• 8 photos got explored on Flickr (you can see them here).

One spin-off of this blog, or more general of my effort to engage in some photo-community is that I was allowed to write guest-posts for 35mmc.com (by Hamish Gill). Because of Hamish I started film photography, and I like it as a great addition to my photography. I learned a lot from the discussions on Hamish’ website, and of course it generated some traffic to my blog as well. That is why you see this website listed as second highest referring site (Facebook first, twitter third). I was and still am honoured to be part of that, and I will continue to contribute if Hamish will let me.

You can imagine that after taking over 15 thousand photos it is quite difficult to pick my favourites. In fact, if choosing a picture of the month (which I did this year) is hard, then this is impossible! So I decided to choose some categories, and create a top three for each. In random order, here is my overview of 2015 in photos (you can click on them to get a larger-sized version):

Trees (trees get their own category as it is one of my favourite subjects):

Detail Nature:

City:

Sun harps:

Landscape Big Picture (all from the Peak District, I guess that says something about my favourite countryside):

Landscape Netherlands:

People, I don’t do it often, but I like it, and I think these photos deserve a mention in my overview:

Portraits (easier if you love what you’re shooting 😉 ):

It has been a great year with many things to be thankful for. Next year I hope to improve my photography, and find lots of inspiration both in nature and in other people’s work.

Thanks for reading!