A 2011 Montage: 12 Photos Per Month

2011 Montage

For the 4th time now I’ve taken enough photographs to put together a montage covering the 12 months since the last New Year. Arranged chronologically, each row of the above image represents a month of 2011 using photos taken with my camera or my phone*. The previous ones are here: 2008, 2009, 2010.

This has become a tradition. I sit down, usually on New Years Day, and take a few hours sorting through iPhoto, dropping pictures into folders and sticking them together in Photoshop. The end result, while likely dull to anyone but myself and maybe a few of my friends is, to me, quite a special little thing. That 4400 x 3300 (full size) rectangle contains the 28th year of my life. I can’t change that. Not now, not ever.

For some months, the pickings were mighty thin. Maybe I didn’t do much, maybe I didn’t carry a camera. For others, there were so many photos that I had to be completely ruthless with my editing. It’s a hard balance weighing up how much I like a particular image with how much it represents a time or an event. I also try to include a good mixture of ‘important things’ (eg. a holiday / an exhibition) and ‘silly things’ (goofing off around the house / stuff we’ve eaten).

On the whole, 2011 has been a funny one. Small in some ways - I didn’t leave Scotland, I didn’t exhibit much, I put on a little weight. Big in others - I worked on some of my most important jobs (many of which I can’t talk about yet), I spent my first full year living with Alex and we passed the ‘6 months until our wedding’ milestone. I saw less of my friends and less of my parents than at any other time of my life. I made some ‘career’ decisions that I really regret and others that I’m really proud of. At some points I was very happy, at others I was very sad.

Mostly when I look back, one thought comes to mind: I wish I’d had more time. More time to draw. More time hanging out with Alex. More time alone. More time doing nothing. More time with friends and family. More time working for people I like, less time working for people I hate.

I may do a few more end of year / start of year posts over the next few days, I may not. I know they’re not that interesting to read, but they can be fun to write. Please stay tuned for more rubbish from me throughout 2012. I think it’s gonna be crazy. Thanks for reading my blog. I love you x

* owning a new, fancy phone has presented a problem this year - square photographs! Thanks to the likes of Instagram and Hipstamatic, I’ve actually taken more square pictures than rectangular ones. This has meant that, to keep things consistent, many of my best photos didn’t make the cut. I’m considering making a second, 12 x 12 square montage to fix this.

Goodbye 2010

Hello! Happy new year! After a small festive break away from bloggington, I'm hoping to get back in the swing of things and to take my humble wee website 2-tha-nxt-lvl (see, already started). If all goes according to plan I'll be posting more interesting things, more often, starting NOW. I also hope to get a little better at actually writing stuff too - as you might (may?) have noticed, I'm a bit clunky.

The photo montage above is the third instalment of the chronological 12 photos / 12 months thing I do every year (2008 is here / 2009 is here). A trilogy! Not bad going. As always, it's not strictly 12 pictures to a month, mainly because of a few camera issues that meant I had to shuffle stuff around. The photos aren't great either but they're not really supposed to be - just silly wee snapshots from my silly wee year.

2010 was great. Quite a quiet one, but that's ok. It wasn't bad work-wise, pretty good home-wise. No complaints. How about you? I hope you had a good one. I'm really excited about 2011 now though. It's all creaking into motion and, fingers crossed, it'll be THE BEST YEAR THERE'S EVER BEEN.

Hello 2010, you're looking well x

Farewell 2009

Today, Monday 11th of January, is my first 'real' day of the year. After the whole Christmas thing, the whole New Year thing and a little holiday in Arran, this has been the first chance I’ve had in ages to get myself some juice and have a sit down.

Now, is it too late to reflect back on 2009? Are all the lists done? Does everyone know who made the best film and who sang the best song? How skinny should my jeans be? Oh, I don’t know! Damn. I imagine all that stuff is long in the recycle bin but hey, like I said, my year starts today. If there’s a dead horse lying around, I’d sure as hell like to give it a kick too.

Last year was fun. Lots happened, lots didn’t happen. I got to go places, meet people, see things, eat, drink, draw, laugh and muck about. I got engaged! I went on about 50 bloody holidays! It snowed! Over the next week or so I intend to post a few top 10 lists and things but on the whole, 2009 gets a thumbs up from me. Yeah, I know the world got itself in a bit of a state but jeez, lighten up. In the grand scheme of things; I went to Oban.

That image above is a chronological montage of my year, like the one I posted last January. It doesn’t cover everything, because I left my camera at home too often, but it’s a good enough place to start. I hope everyone else had a good one. There’s 480 unread blogs in my reader that I need to catch up with. Maybe they’ll let me know what’s up.