2023: In Review
2023 was more of the same from 2022 – a gradual opening up of our world, shopping in person again (although usually when it’s quiet) and regularly back at band rehearsals. We’re still avoiding busy pubs and restaurants, though have had a couple of office visits.
January
In January, we would buy a couple of flowers from our local florist on occasional Saturdays, and then see what arty photographs we could make of them. This is one of the more pleasing results we got.
February
Some time in February was spent playing around with textures in photoshop. This is the same source image, with different blurs and hues applied in different ways for the different layers.
March
We had our first holiday of the year in March, with a visit to the Peak District. We stopped at Wortley Top Forge on the way through, gaining lots of photographs of industrial textures. We also visited Chatsworth and booked on a tour up the tower which gave us good views over the gardens.
April
April was a quiet month with lots of flower photography. This is one of the few that wasn’t a flower – it featured a photograph of some whitewash from Chatsworth that gave the feel of this symmetree being in front of a waterfall.
May
We had a camera club trip out to York Gate Garden, and I decided to process the flower photographs with neon shapes behind them. It was definitely an educational process in Photoshop, this was the most successful.
We also had fun with a marathon this month. It was coming through our village when we needed to be out at a band concert. We ended up staying at my mum’s house and travelling from there, much simpler!
June
We had a week in Beaumaris in June, saying near to Tim’s family who were also there. We had a good week of wandering around on beaches, photographing the textures on upturned boats and meeting up for tea and cake.
July
July we travelled down to Warwick to take part in the PAGB Inter-Club PDI competition, representing Yorkshire. On the way down we stopped to meet up with a colleague of mine that he’d never met, despite working with him remotely for over a year.
August
In August we had a day out in Leeds with Camversation. Mark, the organiser, was unable to attend as he’d just gone down with Covid, but we had a good day without him. It was good to meet up with many people and put faces to names.
This was also the month that I returned to an office for the first time since early 2020. Thankfully, there’s only a need for a couple of days a month! This was to a client site, rather than to our own office in Leeds.
September
We returned to Wales in September, travelling down to Varteg for the final tree measuring session. The plot is being handed over to local charity to look after. On the way back, we stopped at the Shropshire Sculpture Park at the British Ironwork Centre. This had many metal sculptures available to photograph, and we needed much more time to do it justice! This monkey was unexpectedly in the men’s toilets.
October
We were back photographing our favourite Zombies at the end of October, at the Leeds Scare Trail. This is a favourite photo from the set this year, although you can’t see how much zombie makeup there was beneath the helmet!
November
I finally managed to make it into our company’s Leeds office this month! It was nice to meet up with some people I hadn’t seen for years and some only on Zoom.
December
We ended the year with Christmas at my Nephew’s who cooked a great Christmas dinner for the first time. We then travelled down to Sharon’s parents for New Year.
Next year we need to think about starting our journey to DPAGB, and see if we can find someone that understands our photography to help us fine tune our submission.