12 Photography-Centric New Year's Resolutions

New Year’s resolutions: We all know them as thoughts about positive changes that we wish to enact in the new year, and we are also aware that many do not survive through the end of the professional football season. Diets and exercise all seem like grand ideas with which to spring into the new calendar year, but, often, the road to summer swimsuit bodies is paved with the best of intentions. In the spirit of the season, let me share with you my (too personal?) photography-centric New Year’s resolutions. Maybe my personal goals/confessional will inspire your own. And by all means, feel free to inspire me with your own resolutions in the Comments section below the prose.

Photographs © Todd Vorenkamp

1. Procrastinate Later

A dear friend who used to work at B&H had a sign above her desk that said, “Procrastinate NOW Later.” The sign is in my cubicle today. In Eureka, CA, a Mexican restaurant had neon beer signs in four narrow recessed windows on the back wall. From the roadside, each windowsill glowed in a different shade of neon. In Charlestown, RI, an old gas station felt like a charming patch of light on a dark stretch of Route 1 as I passed to and from my favorite nearby park where I would shoot astrophotography. What do both of these places have in common? Both establishments closed down before I could take the photograph(s) that I had so vividly seen in my mind’s eye. I have no excuse for not getting the images; I just kept putting it off until, finally, it was impossible to take the photos I had seen. It is time to end that type of procrastination. When I see a photo, I will capture it!