2020 Roundup - What happened this year?
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A new feature that I’m going to do every year is a blog post about what happened throughout the year, the good, the bad and the ugly, but mainly the good. A celebration of all the accomplishments from that year and my favourite images that I captured…
January
The year began in Chile for me, I was visiting family and friends of my partner who is from that beautiful country. It was the height of summer in the country but the celebrations of New Year were amazing as always, and at the time no one knew what was coming. While in Chile I continued to work on various projects, editing pictures I took just before Christmas and a big overhaul on my website as I changed my logo. That took a long time but I definitely prefer the logo I have now. The one thing I didn’t do in Chile is take any pictures. I needed a break from the camera and it was more important to spend time with my partner’s family rather than going off to explore photography, that will be another trip in the future…
February
Getting back from Chile I hit the ground running and tried to get some new images in the bag. I went to one of my red deer locations and got some great pictures, the best of which is below. That day there was some glorious weather: sun, snow on the hills and it was relatively windless for Scotland. After that I wanted to head up the mountains to get some images of ptarmigan in the snow, something that has been lacking in my portfolio over the last couple years.
I chose a day that was beautiful. No risk of wind ruining my plans. The snow was deep, however, and after a treacherous crossing over a river, I was scrambling up a snowy patch when my foot fell through a hole in the ground that I couldn’t see and pulled me at a bad angle. My ankle was fine but I had severely pulled my neck and back, thanks to the approximate 12 kilos of gear I was carrying (including my large 500mm lens, camera and tripod, and some extra clothes for when I was sitting in the snow.) I had to head back off the mountain and home for some rest, unfortunately it took several weeks for my neck to heal. That combined with constant stormy weather meant that I was confined to the apartment for most of the time!
March
In March, after the write off of February I began work on a new project and one that I am continuing to do and will be doing for the foreseeable future: my YouTube Channel. Back in January, I started to nurse the idea of making a vlog for my landscape and wildlife photography as a way for you to see how it works in the field and to give some tips in a practical situation.
The first vlog I filmed was terrible! I should really be ashamed of it but I can’t help but be a little proud. The idea was simple: to photograph Loch Morlich at Sunrise and Sunset, combine the 2 shoots into a single video. When I started filming in the morning I just froze up and couldn’t talk to the camera. I was feeling rather stupid, nervous and unable to break the silence of the morning. I went about my business filming B-Roll and taking the images I could see. I was even treated to a great sunrise, spectacular colours across the sky, right where I wanted them, but I messed everything up! When I got home and edited the film and pictures, I found that I had missed my focus on the images, so apart from a beautiful sky they were useless! I hadn’t spoken to the camera so I had to make a voiceover. Luckily the afternoon went a little better. I spoke to the camera in the field and I was able to get a focus, but the conditions were nowhere near as good as the morning.
I filmed 2 more vlogs in March, the next one was a snowy morning in Loch Garten and I had gotten over my stage-fright and I couldn’t stop talking to the camera. The next one was back with the red deer, a very difficult vlog to film but I got some ‘ok’ pictures from the evening.
Then the world fell apart, the pandemic started and at the end of the month we were plunged into a national lockdown. Unable to leave I hung up the camera gear and got on with other things.
April - May
One thing that I really had been putting off and I really wanted to accomplish was my next objective and I worked on it throughout April. I have been working on my photography constantly for several years and I established this as my job, but I didn’t have any revenue streams available to me. That needed to change so the project of April was to get my Shop up and running.
I had to pick the images that would become products, figure out pricing, have a go at printing, create mock up photos, write the descriptions and figure out every detail of the shop. This was when the lockdown really helped. I had nothing else to do! I couldn’t go out and get pictures or film vlogs, so I had plenty of time to work on creating my shop.
I decided on a range of products from Postcards and Gift Cards to Limited Edition Prints. I’ve made a few sales since opening the shop, especially when I opened an Etsy shop as well. I have yet to sell a Limited Edition Print but they are priced quite highly compared to the other prints and that’s because I will not use those images for anything other than Limited Edition Prints, excluding online/social media personal use and maybe a book project in the future. They will never be produced as a postcard, or jigsaw or cup or as packaging for another company. Their sole purpose is to be a piece of art for a few people. The lack of sales, however, means I may take another look at my strategy. I’ll see what happens in the future.
After I got the shop up and running, I then started devising my next revenue stream: The Guided Sessions. I wanted to offer 1 to 1 guided photography days were myself and a client could delve deep into photographing a particular landscape or animal species. We could spend the day talking about photography and with a bit of luck we would come away with some great images. I could teach them some new techniques or talk about my approach to photography in person. Of course thanks to the pandemic nothing ever happened with that this year, I had a couple enquiries but nothing formalised into something solid. I tried to give my time competitive pricing, using what others in the area were charging as a guide but I had some cheeky people asking for discounts! It seems people are oblivious that this could be someone’s livelihood and that thanks to the pandemic there was no work… Hopefully next year I can work on this a bit more (although I was hoping to organise some group tours but with everything that’s going on I haven’t yet.)
June
June was the best month so far in the year. Restrictions were being eased and that meant I could get out and work on my projects. The first project to come up was with James Roddie and his Black Isle Pine Marten Hide. The year before I had started to photograph pine marten and it was a thrill, I got some great pictures and I really wanted to get some more. James was wary about opening the hide up completely and instead offered some of the local photographers an opportunity to use the hide. He took several precautions, sanitising the hide, maintaining social distance as we walked through the woods to the hide, but luckily as this is a solitary activity that was all that was required. It helped him out because like all of us, he needed some income coming in and it meant I was able to get some amazing images! Especially when the resident pine marten brought her kits to have a feast…
As well as a couple of sessions with the pine martens, I could get back to my vlogs and YouTube channel. I had put my plans for that on hold as I was unable to film anything, but with the easing of restrictions I could once again begin pursuing this project. In the intervening months I had edited together the 3 films that I had managed to film before SHTF, and I went out and started filming some more. Giving myself time to edit them together before my launch.
The last thing I did in June was one of favourite activities. As I’ve mentioned before in a few blog posts, the first lens I bought with my own money was a macro lens and I spent most of a summer in the garden experimenting with this macro lens. I was oblivious to camera settings at the time, but I was having a lot of fun with that lens. Over the years, macro photography had sort of fallen off my radar. I started to overthink it and I couldn’t get any images I was proud of. So I went out one morning to photograph dragonflies or damselflies depending on what I encountered. It was time to rip the band-aid off and start to work on a macro project. And I was glad I did, I got a few images I was proud of but this was my favourite. I will continue to work on macro this coming year as well…
July
July was the month in which I launched my YouTube Channel. I uploaded the vlogs that I had prepared back in March and the month before. I continued to film new vlogs to keep on top of my ‘content schedule’. But it was the height of summer and this is my worst time of year. I struggled to get out of bed in time for sunrise as it is at stupid o’clock, and to compound on my problem, the light is horrible during the day. There are midges everywhere and it’s just the worst time of year to get images. The fact is, my favourite image of this month was not filmed during a vlog. It was a beautiful summer evening and my partner and I went to the coast to watch the sunset. And what a sunset it was. It was definitely worth driving home late at night and it re-invigorated my desire for photography.
August
This was a busy month! Following that wonderful sunset shoot I was determined to keep getting images, so for most of the month my schedule was to wake up at about 03:00 AM and go out for a sunrise photography session and vlogging the journey. Somedays I would also be out at sunset and not getting home to near to midnight. It was a very tiring month but I filmed 8 vlogs which was brilliant and I got some fantastic images. I mainly focused on landscape vlogs. I tried to do a couple wildlife but I’ve been finding those very hard to film. Although I had a great session with red grouse in heather toward the end of the month.
The other job I finished this month was my 2021 Calendars! I decided to make a landscape and wildlife calendar to add to my shop. I spent a long time selecting the images, I wanted each image to reflect the season that it was going to be representing. I designed the calendars and ordered 50 of each type. It cost a considerable amount up front, as I couldn’t find an on-demand calendar printer that I liked the look of, so I had to settle on ordering them ‘wholesale’. They were my biggest earner of the year and I managed to sell quite a few, considering this was my first attempt and I have a lot of competition from other photographers, and being little known meant it was a bit of an uphill battle! But because I have leftover stock and they are only useful for 2021, lately I’ve been brainstorming possible ways to recycle the images (they are good quality prints) and to earn back some of the initial capital I spent in having them produced. So, keep an eye out for what comes up…
The best news of the month was that restrictions were more or less gone completely and my family came to visit which was very nice and we had a great time.
September
As the restrictions were lifted and all seemed well, I had a friend visit me a couple weeks after my family. We went out on many walks and I took the opportunity to keep vlogging and creating images whenever I could. I kept trying to organise our walks at sunset or sunrise to get the best light but sometimes it was just not very practical! I managed to film a few vlogs and I definitely got some images I really like, 2 moments stand out the most though.
The first was an evening walk we planned on a route that neither of us had walked before. The weather was extremely variable, there was rain, sun, wind, etc. Due to these changeable conditions I was like a kid in a candy shop. The landscape was changing and had some incredible light, I got distracted with the photography and vlogging, and while I was doing this my friend just continued walking. I had sat in an old grouse butt to shelter from the wind and film a piece to camera, when I looked up to a rainbow. I ran off to try and get an image, leaving the vlogging camera behind with my gear. As I crested a hill there was a flock of sheep running across the hill underneath the rainbow and I got a quick snap. That was a lot of fun!
A few days later we went to a beach we had never explored before on the Moray Coast. To get there we had to walk miles through a pine forest that was planted to stabilise the shifting sands. As we came to the beach there was a forest of dead trees, a sight I had never seen before anywhere in Scotland and looked better placed in some of the desserts of the USA or Australia. When we sat on the sand we could see a feeding frenzy of gannets not far off shore, I told my friend to keep an eye out because there maybe dolphins in the group. Although we didn’t see any, later on I learnt via Twitter that there had indeed been dolphins visible from a better angle! I got to work photographing this dead forest that I was in awe of, forgetting the beach (the reason we walked out there!) While concentrating on the forest I was oblivious to the stunning sunset happening behind me. When I did notice I ran out and framed up the sea with the sunset colours. As we were heading back, the day done I captured a quick image of the dead trees with a colourful sky beyond. The walk back through the forest was a bit eerie but that eeriness was abated by several cyclists stumbling out of the dark.
October
In September we had received some great news, my partner was accepted onto a Master’s degree. This was the end of our time in Scotland for the moment. I would be returning regularly to keep working on my photographic projects that I had begun but we would be moving to somewhere new. I went on a vlogging frenzy as a consequence! I had a couple of weeks to film as much as possible, aware of the fact that it might take a while to find my feet in my new home. I got some great images, my favourite of which was a golden hour reflection across Loch Alvie…
My wildlife vlogs up to this point had been a bit wanting. The best had been the red grouse in purple heather and I really wanted to get another wildlife vlog done before we left Scotland. As luck would have it, I ended up having a great session with a mountain hare and got a fantastic characterful image that fits nicely into my portfolio.
With those vlogs done, it was time to get moving and we left Scotland for the wonderful country of Italy. On arrival we were given a Covid test and by our second day in the country we had been given the all clear. We could start assembling our new lives in a new country and a new city: Como.
November - December
Unfortunately, in November things started to go sideways again across Europe. My plans to rent a car and explore some areas of the Italian Lakes and Dolomites to create some vlogs were dashed by the pandemic accelerating across Europe. Como is in the Lombardy region which means we had a very strict lockdown due to Milan. I focused on editing the vlogs I had filmed in September/October and getting the paperwork that’s needed to live in Italy organised. Meanwhile, my partner began her studies remotely, having lectures via Zoom and beginning her studies.
It gave me time to review my progress and start to think about what I want to do next for my channel. How I can improve it moving forward, what vlogs I want to make, and to focus on what I want for my career. I started work on a couple of other projects, mainly planning them. I hope to be able to return to Scotland in February/March 2021 but we will have to wait and see. The good news for everyone was the vaccine being distributed and hopefully we will get some normalcy back soon and we can all pursue our own objectives. In the meantime check out my YouTube Channel to keep up to date with what I’m doing…
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Written by Daniel Long
Daniel Long created DRL Photography as a place to showcase his work as a photographer. Daniel has learnt a lot about photography and wishes to impart this knowledge with you, although the world is an ever changing place and he always says “you can never learn everything.” So as he makes his way, he continues to learn knew techniques, skills and information about photography. He focuses on Landscape and Wildlife photography and Daniel has a special focus on Scotland, his home away from home. As well as writing about photography and taking pictures out in the field, Daniel offers guided photography days so he can share his knowledge and locations in an effort to give his clients the best opportunities possible. Have a browse around this website to see his images, guided experiences and articles about photography. If you have any questions don’t hesitate to get in contact.
