Goals for 2020

Well, here we are, over a week into the new year and new decade, and over the past few weeks I’ve been thinking and pondering over what goals I would like to set and achieve in 2020. In the interest of adding some sort of accountability to them, I thought I’d post them here. At least the ones that are relevant to my photographic life. So without further ado, here they are:

  1. Make 8 new woven pieces.

  2. Make 4 new collages

  3. Print more often (the weaves do not count toward this)

  4. Take a photograph every day. I don’t intend to share each of these every day. I’ll try to share at least one a week, but this is just a personal exercise.

  5. Post to this blog at least twice a month.

I have another big goal for 2020 that is very much about photography, but separate from this website. Last year, late summer and fall, I made a few family portraits of my in-laws family and my own, and, in contrast to the “college years Andy”, I really enjoyed it. For years, almost two decades, in fact, I never really liked photographing people, and dealing with something that is independent and autonomous. The landscape didn’t need to be posed. I only needed to find the right point in space and click the shutter. But Tommy changed all that. And after doing these few portraits of my families, I’ve decided to take the plunge. So this year in 2020, I’m officially going to start doing portrait photography. My business will be (is) named 1 of 1 Photography, and I’m super excited to enter a new phase of life!

Goals for 2019

Here it is mid-February, and I’m just now thinking of and setting goals for myself as an artist for 2019. Actually, I’d set a few of these in early January, so this is me finally recording them and making my declaration of what I wish to do and achieve this year:

  • Figure out how to display my woven pieces. This has always been at the back of my mind over the course of my working on this project; it’s now time to bring it to the front of my mind more consistently.

  • Complete the woven body of work, or, at least by the end of the year, have 15-20 pieces that I can declare being Finished

  • Begin a project I’ve had bouncing around my head for 10 years now, dealing with walking. The concept revolves around 10,000 steps, or the recommended daily amount of steps to take in order to maintain good health. It also deals (maybe even more so than the first point) with walking in the mountains, or, hiking, and why hiking is such an important passion.

  • Continue my Through Tommy’s Eyes project. This includes coming up with a better title. Though I suppose that might come organically as the project matures. There may also be different phases to this project.

  • Revive my Parks project. I still feel like this project, which began 14 years ago as my BFA project, has so much more life in it, and there are new things I wish to articulate within the bounds of the project.

  • Read, read, read.

  • And lastly, generally photograph like mad! Part of that comes from a desire to revive this blog and post as frequently as I did when it first began so many years ago.

In the interest of full disclosure, there are a few more goals that I won’t list here, mainly due to them being more personal in nature. But these are the big ones I’m working towards in 2019.

What goals have you set for yourself to improve as an artist in 2019?