Year in review – 2016

When this year started I had a few ideas what I’d like to do, but I can’t recall anything other than “I want to do more” as a goal.
I did know and had started to plan for my trip to Ukraine, but up until I actually got there in February I did have this “what on earth have I got myself into“-feeling, which was soon replaced with “oh, man this is awesome“-feeling. Can read more about my trip here. I must admit that I’ve been a terrible student afterwards, but I do aim try to learn more as I feel an absolute pure joy when I manage to read a word here and there online, names of followers or descriptions on Instagram, Flickr and random images and text I spot online.

One very clear goal I had for 2016 was to make a printed book from my first 3 years of doing portraits and my work with some amazing models in and from Latvia.
What I didn’t foresee was that this actually turned into becoming my thing. I am currently working on my 10th book this year. Most of these book are so far ebooks only, but I hope to make them available as print as well.

While I was away in Riga this November the local bi-yearly cabaret did their shows. This year I really missed a great opportunity and honour: they did a skit where I, as a photographer, was parodied. Was told that it was filmed, so would like to see that.

My published work 2016

Most of these have been translated into German

2016 was a year I worked a lot with photography, but I shot far less than I’ve have done in years. There were two reasons for this, first reasons was the terrible weather we had this summer. The second reason for my seemingly lower activity was that I was editing… a lot. My hardcover book, Naked Latvia, took a lot of work, and when that was done I started on next book project and then next book project… oh. and just in case anyone wonders what is a low number of shots for a year: 14 000.

2017

I really enjoy publishing books and I have plans on continuing doing so in 2017. I want to travel at least as much as I did in 2016, hope to get a chance to travel more, not less. First off is a trip to Gran Canaria with my wife and my muse: Sinba. This will be a combination of vacation and work. After this there are some additional travel plans, but tickets haven’t been bought yet and no date set. I do hope that 2017 will come with a few nice surprises just like 2016 did for me.