Reflecting on 2025
Exposure, Fewer Frames, and Learning to Tighten the Screws
Reflecting on 2025
As we sit in the perineum between Christmas, mince pies, New Year’s festivities and the return to working life, I thought I’d take a moment to reflect back on 2025.
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” (George Santayana).
Social Media and the Death of Hashtags
The majority of the work I share and gets seen is on Social Media. I guess it’s probably the same for you. It is an evolving landscape. I don’t think there’s a right and wrong way to use it, I just try to make sure I'm not working for it.
Instagram: I’ve cut down a lot this year. I’ve made about 40 posts (vs. approx 80 in 2024). I'm not fussed about posting regularly for an algorithm, just as and when it makes sense to me. In the last couple months or so, Instagram has limited me to using a max of 5 hashtags on any post. How do you pick which 5? I made a bit of a joke with it and it seems to make no difference. In my last couple of posts I’ve just dropped them entirely and again, no impact. I never really liked them so I'm glad they’ve gone to be honest.
Substack: This is a good one. It’s what I wanted Threads to be; longer form posts with deeper conversations. I'm taking a quality over quantity approach there (or here depending on where you’re reading this), just posting when I have something worth sharing.
Website: Is this social media? Just thought I’d add it to the list as while it’s optional, I think it’s good to have somewhere that isn’t at the whims of the platforms’ changes, and it also looks more professional.
Threads: Seems quite pointless to me. It’s either people just sharing the same work they share on Instagram (I'm guilty) or people posting throw away comments for engagement baiting. Think I’ll probably close my account there.
The Year of the Zines
The self-published zines I’ve bought in 2025 (If I remember correctly)
I felt like 2025 was the year of the zine. Lots of us launched our debut zines this year and it was great to have real work in print and in hands. Especially my hands. I won’t go on about my zine, as I’ve made a couple of blog posts before (here and here) but a big thank you to all of you that bought Carnival.
Exposure
I'm not usually one to enter photography competitions but I did enter the Ricoh photography festival 2024 (which ran in 2025) and was lucky enough to have a photo selected as a winner. You can read about it here. My Carnival series also came in third at the EISA Maestro 2024 awards and from that I have a whole feature in a Hungarian photography magazine, “Foto”, so if you happen to be from Hungary, please do check it out in Jan/Feb!
Inspecting the print quality at “Still in Autumn” exhibition
Towards the end of the year I made an appearance on Rob Boyd’s podcast (YouTube | Spotify) and I also joined Mark Luke Grant’s “Still In” seasonal exhibition for the Autumn edition.
So overall, 2025 has been the year where I’ve had the most exposure, but conversely it’s also a year that I’ve shot the least.
Quantity is quality
The more you get into street photography, the more you realise that it’s ultimately all about time and being out there. It’s a numbers game. Looking back at the photos I took in 2025, there weren’t as many I liked compared to 2024. Partly it will be down to being more critical of my own work but partly it is down to just not shooting as much.
Pre-kick off antics with the Ashburton Army
So what’s changed? A one-year-old baby! It’s tough to find the time to get out and shoot, both in terms of frequency and duration. As a way of killing two birds with one stone, I’ve been focused on shooting the Arsenal project, but without being out of the flat for too long, this means about 1 hour before kickoff, so that’s a reduction of maybe 6/7 hours a week to around 1. I probably shouldn’t be too hard on myself given new responsibilities but hopefully as Nursery kicks in, routines can be a bit more manageable.
Projects
“Let’s talk about the book. You mentioned … that this book started as a completely different project. When a project shifts direction midway, how do you decide whether to embrace the change or stay committed to the original vision? I’ve gotten pretty good at this. One thing I try to do is not talk too much about a new project, so it doesn’t get too solidified. If I start telling people … about this new idea I have, it kind of becomes a real thing. But if I let it just live in my imagination, I feel more free to change it. Even if I’ve already started making work for it, I try to hold onto that flexibility and stay open. Then, when a shift happens, I try to be really in tune with it … I go into a project with a mission, but I try to stay open. If something catches my eye or draws me in, I feel compelled to go down that road and see where it leads.” (Alec Soth, link to interview)
The above quote was from an interview with Alec Soth on his recent book “Advice for young artists”. Now, I'm hardly what you could describe as a young artist, but some of that quote does strike a chord with me. I don’t really mind sharing projects I'm working on with others, for me that creates a bit of a “social contract” that can help with motivation but being able to deviate or change direction from the original idea is a good thing. We aren’t robots. We aren’t AI (but AI is us?).
Experimenting with some other techniques to rejuvenate the commuting project
London Events: Still ongoing, I think I need to take a moment to print and start to curate the work to see what themes or direction is coming from the images and see what / if there is something to build on. My Carnival work started off as part of this, maybe others could come? Maybe it isn’t one big project but the start of a few? Lots to ponder.
Arsenal: Similarly to the above, I think I need to get these printed so I can start to visually curate and figure out what direction I want this to go in. Identify themes and gaps. We are now halfway through the 2025/26 football season but this isn’t necessarily a one-season project. When it’s done it’s done! I'm also not aiming for a “Arsenal 2025/26 season” style documentary piece. [working title: “Good sensation” - changes every week though!]
Commute: Really struggling with this one. In December I’ve been experimenting with some different style of photographs, black and white with slower shutter speeds. I’ll see how this can evolve but it’s a tough one. That commuting time is also a rare chance for me to read some photography books.
North London: I’ve kind of parked this for now, other than any incidental shooting when I'm out and about. I don’t have much time to shoot these days so a few hours walk around North London consistently isn’t going to happen.
Lost Memories
My fave photo from 2025: Lost?
Three times this year I’ve lost photos, with the last occasion being the most painful. The first time was by accidentally wiping my memory card before syncing it fully. I wasn’t too disappointed as I'm pretty sure there wasn’t anything good on there. The second time was after Santacon. Similar story here, I thought I synced it all but hadn’t. The latest occasion was when I was trying to find maybe my favourite photo of the year but couldn’t find it in my Lightroom catalogue. Certainly a more disappointing thing to happen when shooting days are more limited; losing work hurts more when time itself feels scarce.
Why is there a gap between 19th May 2024 and 25 Aug 2025?
After realising my mistake post Santacon, I bought 1 year of Disk Drill and it worked a treat! No such luck with the third issue though sadly. I gave Disk Drill a go again but there is a big gap between May 2024 and late August 2025… the image I'm after was mid August 2025. I have no idea why there is a big black hole between those dates, I would have been using the camera consistently through the year so no idea what’s happened there. The only copy of it is from a WhatsApp I sent. This makes it about 2 megapixels. Potentially I can upscale it a bit with some new software out there but does anyone have any views on upscaling software?
Looking Ahead: 2026
After reflecting on 2025, there are some learnings that I'm taking into 2026:
Workflow and backups: I need to stop losing photos. Right now I'm 100% using Lightroom Cloud; none of my photos are stored locally. I’ll need to set up some local storage plus figure out how best to migrate from the cloud to the …land?
Printing and Reviewing: As mentioned above, a few projects need a bit more thought on how to progress, otherwise I’ll just keep taking the same photos in the same places. I’ll print out a selection of images for review and maybe get some early second opinions. “Stop shooting the same shit I shot last year” (Nipon, 2026)
Focus: Hopefully time will become a bit more flexible as we go through 2026 but I really need to maximise the time I'm out shooting.
Printing: The time has come to get some work up on a finally refurbished wall. Should be a fun learning curve! Where to print? IKEA frames? more fun and games on colour reproduction to come.
For me 2026 is about tightening up what I’m doing, both on the streets and backing up. What are your thoughts for 2026? What are you going to do differently?