That’s it, it’s the 37th and last Blog of the year! I didn’t think I wrote so much this year. I even felt like I lacked imagination to find interesting topics to discuss in 2020. Note some will say that there was nothing interesting in what I wrote in 2020 .. For many years, I drew a lot of inspiration from social media. I had become this crazy guy. I can’t do this anymore because I left Facebook and Instagram a long time ago.
2020 will also have been my first year entirely dedicated to Reunion Island and more specifically to Saint-Denis, where I live. In any case, it was complicated to go elsewhere with the Covid-19 which entered in our lives at the beginning of the year. My little finger tells me that 2021 will look like 2020. The vaccines have arrived, but it will take many more months before some semblance of normality returns. Note, we were rather spared on Reunion Island. We were confined like everyone else last spring even if in the end, it was useless because there were hardly any cases on the island. It was after the Easter holidays that the virus settled in us thanks to the holidays with all tourists and the return of vacationers.
For several weeks the number of cases has been quite low, but we fear an explosion in the figures with the influx of tourists who have come to spend the holidays with us and flee the curfews and confinements that are in force in mainland France. We’ll see. 2021 is likely to get off to a flying start!
Photographically, I don’t know where I am at the end of this year 2020. I had ended 2019 with a bang with the impression that everything was easy for me in the street. I had been to big cities (Marseille, Paris, Toulouse, Bristol, Rome) and I had the impression of having passed a milestone in street photography. This year has been a hard comeback. It was rather laborious and I do not even put it down to the Covid-19, even if this year has been cut by two months with the confinement.
This year I have used the Ricoh GRD4 a lot. It was kind of like a homecoming. This is certainly not trivial and it is directly linked to the difficulties I encountered in the street. I needed to regain confidence in the streets and I knew that the GRD4 was the camera for me. I only used my Ricoh GR3 for 4 weeks. I don’t have a feeling with this new camera and I’m not in a good enough mood to spend more time with it in the street.
I also had the project to work on a photo book gathering a certain number of photos on Aix-en-Provence, but I put it on stand-by, not having yet found a printer who could make prints of the delivered. It will not be for 2021 … It is not very serious, I had embarked on this project during the confinement because I had nothing else to do. It is not a priority. I will rather get down to rediscovering the pleasure of taking pictures in the street quite simply.
What does 2021 have in store for us? I do not know. We are all anxious to close this chapter. While waiting to switch to this new year, I share with you my selection of 12 photos to illustrate 2020. I wish you a happy holiday season and I look forward to seeing you next year!
For the more motivated, you can watch the lenghty slideshow of some 70 photos taken in 2020 from which this selection is taken.
Wonderful end to a rotten year, thanks. Look forward to whatever you produce next year.
Rotten year? I don’t know. Weird for sure. Well from Réunion Island things were not as bad as elsewhere. We were not confined or have straight restrictions like other places around the world.
For sure wearing a mask every time I go outside is not pleasant but we get use to it.
What I miss the most is being able to travel freely.
Hope that better days will come in 2021,but I doubt…
You were living the Street Photographers dream in 2019. For a lot of 2020 it’s been a Street Photographers nightmare. Still, I’m impressed with 37 posts, that’s a good quantity (not too many) and all were interesting by the way. I managed 28 posts.
2021 holds promise, at least the second half should be better with the vaccine rolled out.
As always an impressive selection, the twelve here and the 70 on YouTube. Great stuff Jeff.
Happy New Year to you, Gwen and the boys…
It’s funny because I feel like that I have less things to say in my blogs. I just ramble about my state of mind, about my journey. I ‘ve talked a lot about street photography the past 4 years and may be I’ ve said enough.
2019 as you said was a hell of a year. Very little people have the opportunity to travel that much in one year. And I was able to do it. It was really a street photographer dream!
What makes me say again that big cities bring better opportunities for street photography. Don’t expect the same work from a major city and small ones where we live. But our work is as meaningful as others one from major cities. And that what counts.
I’m OK with what I achieved last year. It was hard on the streets but the result pleases me.