For studio work, I plan to repeat my now regular routine of having a spring shoot, a Halloween shoot, and a late fall shoot. I'm going to learn how to use my CyberCommander to control my lights this time. I'm also going to do more with props.
I replaced the spring shoot with a summer shoot, but otherwise I met this goal.
In addition to my regular spring studio shoot, I'm going to try to organize a Friday outing to an arboretum with a bunch of pre-schoolers to practice my non-studio portrait shoots. I'm going to get a speedlight softbox (probably an Ezybox) to give me a little lighting control.
Didn't do the arboretum shoot with pre-schoolers. I did a
flower shoot there and
one with some models. Does that count? I'd like to do the pre-schooler shoot this year. The challenge is doing all the coordinating. Actually, the challenging is getting my wife to coordinate it. I did get the Ezybox and used it in my fall shoot.
I'd also like to take a lighting class this year. My ability to learn on my own and from reading isn't progressing as well as I'd like. I think taking a class will help.
I went to a seminar by Ziser and a two day lecture by McNally. Those helped. I still want to take a hands on studio lighting class.
On the subject of classes, I'm finally going to get around to teaching a few neighborhood photography classes. I've been asked by several people but never have gotten around to it.
I didn't do the neighborhood class. Instead, I taught an exposure class at lunch at work. It was a big hit and there is a considerable demand for more photography lunch classes. I may start a photography club at work.
I plan to buy a new printer this year and start working on my printing. Actually, I have a friend that just bought a new printer. I might play with his a bit first to see whether I think I'll really use it. As far as I can tell, you have to either commit to printing a fair amount or not print at all as bad things happen to idle printers. I think printing is an interesting part of the art of photography, but thus far, I haven't done too much of it.
I bought a whopper of a printer and have used it a bunch. I've tried almost a dozen different papers, printed tons of 8x10 and 11x14 and several big prints, including a life size shot of a 5 year old. It was the most fun toy I got all year.
I'd say that I'm going to revamp my Smugmug site, but I always say that and rarely do.
Other than a little cleanup, I didn't really mess with it.
I plan on buying some interesting lenses this year that should provide a good opportunity to learn. The most exciting is a Tilt/Shift lens. I'm also thinking about getting a fisheye.
I went on a lens acquiring frenzy this year. I got the tilt/shift (new Canon 24mm TS-E II), fisheye (Canon 15mm), a supertelephoto (Canon 300mm f/2.8), two fast primes (85mm f/1.2, 135mm f/2), and a superwide (Sigma 12-24mm).
I'd also like to concentrate on improving my video work. I'm going to try to integrate at least some video and audio into all of my slideshows from now on. I also plan on going to a three camera setup for our next school play video. This time, I'm going to concentrate more on focus accuracy and do more closeups.
I haven't added audio or video to my slideshows yet. I did make the improvements to our play videos and am very happy with the results.
I'm also going to do a weekend of video interviews with kids. I haven't decided the particulars (use a set or go on location, all video on the kid or split between kid and interviewer, etc), but I know I want to do it. I think that having a nice interview with my kids talking about their hopes and dreams, the fears, their friends, and whatever else is important to them will be extremely valuable to me some day. Once I ramp up the production with my own kids, I'll run a bunch of the neighbor kids through the mill.
Didn't do the kid interviews yet. I did shoot some Christmas thank you videos. I need to improve my video lighting.
I have a few other projects I want to undertake this year:
1) A home/life tour. I want to produce a mini-documentary on our current lives, with a lot of video and pictures of our house, the school, my office, the neighborhood and neighbors, etc. I want something that my kids and their kids can look at many years from now to see what our lives were like back in 2010. It would also be fun to send to relatives that never visit (which seems odd because Houston is such a big vacation destination).
I did some test shoots for this, but haven't really started. I'll probably wait until after I get a new superwide (looking at a Nikon 14-24mm).
2) Pacific Coast picture. We'll be in Pacific Grove again for spring break. I love shooting their. The challenge is doing something different from my usual shots. I think that the T/S will help. I also plan to do more shots with off-shoe flash using gels and/or softbox. In the past, I've tended to do landscape shots and people shots. This time, I want to do more people on location shots.
Did this.
3) Canoe trip. I want to take a multi-night family canoe trip at the start of this summer. I'd like get creative in telling the story of that trip with still shots, video snippets, and audio.
We scrubbed the canoe trip because of a lack of water in our favorite destination (Buffalo River). We rescheduled for spring break of '11, but we scrubbed that and decided to go back to California. If they get a wet spring, we might try again in June of '11.
I've got other plans, but that's more than enough to write about now. As always, reality will fall short of my plans, but it's fun trying to do as much as possible.
I definitely don't want to get into a 365 or 52 program. My shooting tends to be spotty. I'll take thousands of shots in a couple of weeks and then not touch my camera for several weeks. I'm happy with that. I don't want photography to become a chore.
That's about the way it went. Some months I did a lot of shooting. Other months I didn't touch my cameras.
Overall, I'm pretty happy with the way '10 went. I had some fun shooting opportunities (California during spring break, Colorado and South Dakota for summer vacation, a couple of zoo outings, a couple of studio weekends, a short camping trip at Brazos Bend, three good school plays, and lots of little shoots). I took my printing to a new level. I had fun with lots of new lenses.
Now I really want to work on my video more than anything else. I want some good video lights. I want some microphones. I want to get a hand holding rig and maybe a follow focus setup. I want to know what the heck I'm doing. I want to do more video shooting.
It made me realize how much better I could make some of the shots I'm not thrilled with, so I'm determined to figure some more stuff out.
I do throw my kid photos there but they just are in the gallery for friends/family to see. There are some of her kid photos that end up on Facebook and such but generally she hasn't been shooting much. She does plan on trying to use her K-x a bit in our upcoming trip... we'll see how that works.
you'll love this. I'm about done (finally) going through the photos of my sister-in-law's wedding from last month (still need to do the reception)... and I've been using Lightroom's lens correction more and more, which clears up the lens' natural vignetting - then going in and putting it back artificially, since a lot of the wedding/portrait photos seem to work better with a vignette. I'm going to probably still avoid it at WDW though. 
