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My Week In Photos Wrap Up (2024)

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So here we have it, the wrap up of my 2024 photography project, **My Week In Photos!** I started this project at the beginning of 2024 for several reasons, but above all I wanted to create an ongoing log of photographs I'd created over the year, good and bad. I love the idea that us photographers shouldn't always strive to create ever better images each time we go out with our camera. I'm not a competitive person, and this is probably why I like this concept.

I feel that we should be able to go out and enjoy taking photos without the ever looming pressure of whether or not the photos we are creating right now are going to be portfolio worthy. Another reason for wanting to do this project is that I am due to hop on a plane and fly to Canada where, along with my partner, I intend to immerse myself in the Canadian way of life, and with it, photograph Canada. So it felt right to create a group of photographs of my home country, the place I grew up, and the place where my photography career was born.

So the culmination of this was the My Week In Photos project.

Highlights

Dippers

There have definitely been some highlights of this project. Across several weeks I documented the nesting, growing, and fledging of some adorable dippers. This was magical to watch, but it wasn't without its ups and downs! It was devastating to learn that their nest had been washed away by heavy rain! I was relieved to discover that they had managed to re-nest in a safer location before laying eggs...phew! The chicks successfully fledged thanks to the hard work of their parents!


The Week of 6th May: An adult dipper brings food to a hungry chick!

The Pratincole

One of the most incredible weeks was the 1st of July where an unusual visitor dropped into a nondescript field about two miles from my house. This visitor was a black-winged pratincole, a bird I'd not even heard of prior to this week. I spent a few warm summer evenings looking for this bird and was grateful to be able to create some photographs of the stunning rarity. A big thanks goes to the knowledgeable birders of the South Yorkshire Birders group for this one as they helped me find it.


The Week of 1st July: A rare visitor, a black-winged pratincole!

Northern Lights

The third highlight of the year has to be the incredible Northern Lights which most of the UK was treated to in October. I was lucky enough to head up to a local dark sky spot with a good friend to photograph the show. This image is one of my favourites from the evening. It was the first time he had seen the Northern Lights, a bucket list item for him. I had two copies of this printed and we now both have a copy of this proudly displayed on the wall!


The Week of 7th October: Dave and I photograph the Northern Lights!

The Full Year

While the photographs from 2024 can be viewed on the original project page here, I wanted to bring the photographs together into one huge collage which shows the breadth and depth of the photographs I've created this year. I spent about 4 hours writing a script in Python to create this collage, which is longer than it would have taken to create it manually, but hey-ho! The images are descending with those at the top being the most recent. Every three images left to right roughly equates to a week.

I encourage you to view large and have a browse.


To view in full click here

To Wrap Up

So, to wrap up this project down I wanted to briefly reflect;

While I was strict with my weekly updates, I didn't really apply any rules to the number of photographs shared. If I was to do this again I would set a hard limit of three photographs per week. In 2024, I always managed at least three photographs, but also sometimes shared more, which seemed to take away from the meaning of the project, to share a snapshot of my week. I was essentially saying "I have more than three good photos here so I'll share more!" which isn't really what I was going for.

In terms of the positive feelings about the concept of this project, I really enjoyed it. I found it challenging sometimes to update on time, and I also didn't always have photographs to share. I was completing a master's at the same time as working 9-5 which meant I didn't always get a chance to go out in the evenings to create photographs. This was a nice challenge, but also something which I felt held me back a bit.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this project so please do get in touch!

Niall.


Created by Niall Bell (niall@niallbell.com)

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