Today is a special day.

First up, it’s the 4 year birthday of this photoblog. 4 years ago today I started posting images here, and after a month of daily posting I cut back to Monday thru Friday of posting a new image, so just 5 per week instead of 7. That has continued throughout. Through busy schedules, illness, travel and various other distractions, I have somehow managed to post an image without fail during the whole of that period.

I think that’s pretty awesome.

I’ve learnt a lot in the past 4 years, and improved greatly. I’ve met some amazing people, and made some great friends. I’ve also changed as a person. From someone who never used to like to travel, I’ve started to do a lot more of that. 4 years ago when I started this blog I had visited 5 foreign countries; by the time I finish the trip I’m currently on that total will be 34 countries…and that’s due to photography.

However, it’s now at an end. As the title of this post suggests, I will not…indeed I can not…continue to do the same. I’m not sure I’m learning anything through posting daily. I’m no longer finding that I am enjoying it in the same way as I used to either. Sure, I love being out there and taking photos, I love processing them, and I love to share them – however I can do all of that without having to post daily. There were too many times last year when I felt I had to post just for the sake of posting, and my heart wasn’t in those particular images. There’s one thing for creating something and sharing it because you want to, but it’s another thing when you are just going through the motions and creating something because you feel you have to. Quality suffers as a result.

I also want to free up more time to do other things. Work takes up a large portion of my life, and much of my ‘spare’ time in the past year has been travelling. In between those and trying to maintain some sort of social life I had tried to fit in photography and daily posting of images. That doesn’t leave time for much else, and there are lots of projects I wish to work on. If I can free up the hours I spend on processing and apply these elsewhere, I think that would be a great thing.

It’s not the end completely. I will still be posting images, they just won’t be daily anymore. Chances are, if you follow me on the social network sites instead of the blog itself, then you may not notice any difference as I don’t post all of my images on sites other than my blog. However, I can’t guarantee when I’m posting. It won’t be daily, it may not even be weekly or monthly. I guess it just depends on how I feel, what I’m up to, where I go, and those kinds of things.

In one way it will be sad to stop. Part of me thinks ‘give it another year’ as 5 years seems like a better number to end on. However, as I’m typing this I’m feeling pretty pleased by it.

For the next 10 days I’m going to be spending time in Singapore, Malaysia, Cambodia and Thailand – so the chances are these will be the next images you see from me once I’ve returned.

See you soon.