My 2024 in review
An analysis of failure, to conclude that it wasn't.
2024.
Photography wise, 2024 did not feel like my year.
And I wonder why. Feels wise.. it feels I missed out on opportunities. On shoots I planned for and really wanted, but ultimately I either had to cancel because life became too busy, or otherwise simply did not happen. It feels I did the same thing over and over again, without growing, without learning. It feels like I stalled. Lost.
That won't do. This requires a pivot.
So, here's my 3 step pivot:
Step 1: revisit what you are proud of, and show that to yourself.
Step 2: plan new creative opportunities towards the future.
Step 3: plan time for those opportunities.
I'm writing this running style, so not changing the above 3 step plan, but just seeing where it leads me.
Spoiler: it leads to conclusions I did not know when I starting writing this. This is cool!
Step 1: let us revisit 2024!
First, I recognize that I remember 2024 as being.. sad, but is it really? Time to recall a bit more, and show (myself) what I crafted. opens archive, selects, selects more.. And.. turns out.. I am now way less unhappy than I thought I would be.
I did.. a lot!
Specificially:
- I did way more individual shoots than I expected. System says 42 to be exact. This includes quite a few bucket list items -- I mean: chainmail bikini warriors on horses! falling in reverse! shooting in South Korea! Many more! I'll include an annotated time-sorted outtake at the bottom of this article.
- I finished my longer running "Roped in Blacklight" series. And I am proud of it! This series was something I wanted for years - as it combines techniques not seen often (blacklight sin city style and shibari) but also allows me to show something about being empowered not helpless with rope. Come to think of it. Yes the series might be done, but it's not really. I want to continue with this.
- I covered several festivals. Castlefest, Cadansa and Spellenspektakel to name a few. Each of these is a weekend long shoot-fest of move-fast and edit-quickly, which I have come to love! I've learned lots this year in terms of efficient event coverage.
- I taught several photography workshops. Mostly private tuitions, but also two for cameranu.nl and one for LARP zomerfestival.
- even though I formally stopped doing weddings, I still captured two special ones! Thank you!
- and wow, did not even know that it was that many LARPs I SFX'ed for this year! Cabaret, Omen, Vortex Adventures, Booyah (3x), Emphebion and LARP Zomerfestival. During all these I kept revising my SFX toolset to be more and more compact, efficient, fast. Dump lights and sounds in the field, connect wirelessly, control, create moodscapes of sound and light. Love doing that!
- on top of that I participated in Daemon and The Circle, both international LARP games, and Frontier (2x). For Frontier I built a huge prop specific for the game, lots of arduino, lots of raspberry, lots of programming. Timesink. Fun!
- and oh, I also also managed to squeeze in a 10 day visit to South Korea, which, obviously, also became a photoshoot.
This is a lot.
So, let's introspect - why did it feel like I did not do enough?
Realisations:
First. I did too much. Not just photography wise, but the combination of work (which is fun but intense), all the festivals, all the LARPS and just everything added up to me feeling like I did not give photography enough of my time. It's not true. I did. Statistics says you do. So what then?
Simply put. Instagram. I am.. done with it. Modern social media feels like a crapfest of autogenerated content, with only limited interaction of people I trust and love. I miss the days of smaller networks that weren't about A-B tested micromanaged dopamine-intake optimization. Social media, in its current form is addictive, and meaningless. There's no reward-loop towards posting, and posting itself feels heavy.. do I use the right hashtags? Am I following the correct trends? What do I need to do to be seen in this avalanche of content? A bit of a ramble, but I think you catch my drift. Summary: part of why I shoot is to have my shots seen. This part feels lost. This might very well be why I believed I did not do enough.
So first: Ork, you did enough. Plenty of! It's not about doing more. It is about doing less. Do less to be able to do create more meaningful moments.
And while at it, forget about the social media race. You don't need to win that one. Post what you like where you like it. So, at this point in time this is my own website. Reach: zero, but posting there feels rewarding! And if there's others that can and want to help me figure out better ways beyond that, please do reach out! I'd love your insights!
Step 2: planning new opportunities, so.. here's a model call!
I am looking for new opportunities. For things that I haven't done yet. For styles I want to explore. So.. if you are reading all this, and you're interested, head on to my fully automated Brainstorm-o-matic!
Step 3: .. however
To actually ensure that I get time for the things I love, I need to be selective. So I can't accept everything. Please don't feel bad if I am being picky, or say no.
And now for some pictures!
Here's a random selection of photos taken from each shoot, througout the year. Many of these haven't even been published yet. Some of them have dedicated subpages on my site. Click and find out! Enjoy!
Thank you for reading, love you all!
--Ork
Christina Critter had the honor of kicking off my 2024 shooting year with her fantasy elf! Good start, fun to play with lights again, and let's see what the year brings!
We obviously also had to go bit darker with this bound succubus! With Christina Critter.
Cyberpunk with Mew. One of my very first planned shoots of 2024, and one I was really looking forward to. I am a sucker for dystopian cyberpunk-ish light! Combine with latex? Let's craft!
Scaled Demon with Kiet Katharsis. Ooof the light, this just.. worked! Especially the greens, which I usually avoid in photos, but here it reflected beautifully on the scaled catsuit.
Snow? Yes snow! 2 hours of it! (that's the total for the *entire* year..) We raced to woods, and just were able to catch it before everyting melted again. Here is some shiny armor in the woods near Hilversum. With Nympha Ophis
Shiny silver, with hair everywhere! Very random last minute shoot with Nympha Ophis. Ultimately, the year started the way I expected, with many fun random shoots. And maybe that's also part of what I miss, because ultimately a lot less of this randomness happened than 'normal'.
Morticia Adams cosplay with Vokunzul. Finally, the weather is good enough to go outside again, so, let's! I loved how this shoot worked out. Twan (the horse) really performed stellar here, and the moody early-year atmosphere of the woods enhanced the feel I wanted to get for this image.
Call of Duty.. eh.. cosplay. Spiced version. Because! With Deems and Duvvdee.
Alannaria got a new beautiful backpiece, which required shooting. So we set up a mini photo workshop. I shot a few images myself as well, here's a result!
Not all photos need a story. So here's random stuff just for fun! With Anouk
Knightcore, with good friend Christina Critter! I am re-learning to not to forget to also add some natural light to colorful images, as that seems to greatly enhances the colors. I'll refrain from filling this comment field with rambles about new-found light ideas though! :)
And while we are at it, why not add some sexyness dom vibes as well! With Christina Critter.
Theme: white. Outcome of photo: dark and weird! This is normal. Our original plan: let's just meet up and do coffee. What we do instead: shoot. Also normal. With Lenedoes
At the same day we did one of the shoots for my Roped in Blacklight series. With lilyabsoltica
Dance of the Lilies, with lilyabsoltica. I love how this turned out. Working with these flowers was more tricky than I thought, but I am amazingly happy with our results!
Cyberpunk with Levia. Or: me playing with rolls of plastic to see what I can do to wrap the studio! Those kinds of experiments are always fun, and even though experiments mean I don't always get the picture I aim for, this did yield quite a few good ones!
Some sexy Sith Lord vibes! With Medusa
Metal lingerie with Inez. Loved the moody atmosphere we created for this shoot!
Shiny cyberpunk aesthetics? Let's go! Captured quite a few during this shoot, see link for more. With Satiella!
Spitspoes, with Satiella! Because.. why not!
Part of my Roped in Blacklight series, with Deems! I still am in awe of the trust people give me when I ask them to pose for this series. Thank you!
Deems, doing awesome Twi'lek boudoir! Because.. why not?
South Korea! I spent 10 days there, traveling from Seoul to Busan and staying a while in the middle of nowhere too.
Rainy street, Busan, South Korea.
Satiella during one of my cameranu.nl workshops, which was about telling stories with smoke and light. I loved seeing the participants really grow in just a few hours, and was amazed by what some crafted at the end!
Another shot taken at Omen, as, next to the SFX, I also captured quite a few photos there!
Omen, a fantasy LARP in the Netherlands. Omen is situated in a medieval style tent-village, and for this event they allowed me to transform it into a living nightmare with light, sound and smoke. Lots of whispers everywhere. Lots of creepy atmosphere.
Floral ropes, with Gabyghastly. I loved what we crafted here that day!
Captured during Booyah, a fantasy LARP in The Netherlands. For Booyah I did 3 runs of Blackbox SFX. Small space, lots of light and sound, lots of emotions!
Wasteland Boudoir with good friend Alannaria. Very much impromptu, but the results were too much yay not to show.
Cyberpunk at the Duke of Tokyo - again! Because I loved doing this in 2023. The location is amazing, and there's plenty of opportunity for beautiful shots.
Queen Marika, an Elden Ring cosplay by Satiella. I always love working together with her. Crazy creatives on speed crafting 3 shoots per day easily, and still have time for tea!
Xal'atath, a World of Warcraft cosplay by Satiella.
Chani, a Dune cosplay by Stellarcosplay. One of the few times I got to pull out 3D editing and craft a bit of background. I really enjoy those skills, but am not using them enough as they are very much timesinks by themselves. And time.. not spice, that's the real scarce resource.
Casca, by Stellarcosplay. I mean.. I believe this year I must admit that I do enjoy shooting warriors in steel on horses.
Castlefest 2024. That means 4 days of running, capturing bands, moments and acts everywhere. Meeting all friends. Racing back to edit. Posting. Running again. I.. love this!
Falling in Reverse, with Alannaria! Another bucketlist shoot for me, and fun to craft!
Portrait of a wastelander, with Alannaria. These shots were extras. This was done on the same day as the suspension, and was more of a light test. However, the results became so good that I could not resist finishing them. Note that finishing them mostly consisted of just exporting the photos. This series required no edits. The light was just perfect!
Mordax the Restless, by wasted_mordax. So, right after capturing the portrait of a wastelander, I obviously wanted more.. and crafted this! Same light style. Same edit style. This was a Good day!
Cyberpunk latex with Gabyghastly and Tove Rain Clothing. I do love cyberpunk style shoots, can you tell? I am soo not done with crafting images like this!
Fern cosplay, by Satiella. A simple photo, but I do love how the composition works with the water.
Marcille Donato, a cosplay by Satiella. I loved creating this set! Walking through woods with good friends is a good start of any day by default, but now I also got to experiment with a few new angles and color styles!
Cyber Alien with Elena and Freya. I love it when good friends randomly bounce in my inbox saying they have this idea and found this awesome model! This is the result of just that!
Chainmail. Bikini. Warriors. On. Horses.
Bucketlist shoot for a while. Don't know why, but I wanted this one. We had to postpone a few times, and ultimately ended up on a date that was so far into the last part of the year that I worried a lot that it would not be perfect. It was. It was warm, there was dew, there was perfect light. Everything I needed to make this set work. Lots of pictures inside this one!
I tried to only show one picture per shoot in this summary. However, it's my summary. Here's a second one!
And while at it, why not capture those autumn vibes with some shiny sword action! With Lenedoes
Cabaret, a LARP musical set in 1933 Berlin. Oh wow, I did not know I had so many friends that sang that well! For this, I managed the stage lighting and ensured every act got lit correctly, and helped manage the overal mood and atmosphere.
Deems at my second cameranu.nl workshop of this year. Okay, we're going to teach how to craft a story with light and smoke. Here's a Mandalorian. What do you craft?
It's me! Together with my cat familiar played by Linda. This was at Daemon, a LARP set in the setting of "His Dark Materials" by Philip Pullman, envisioned into an amazing LARP by Katrine Wind and organized by Harry Harrold in an amazing manor somewhere in the UK.
Photo not taken by me, but with my camera as I happened doing the headshots for everyone else.
Warrior Horses shoot with Stellar and Satiella. One of the last outdoor shoots of the year, just before the long dark started. I simply love this pose here, the ArrrFantasy leather outfit really works wonders!
Strappy madness with Shannon. I love working with her, though I believe we've never ever had a shoot that ended up with what we planned for. That's a good thing!
The Cadansa 2024 balfolk festival! Here I mostly automate myself, read I put down a photohbooth, but I also capture a lof of the atmosphere.
For this LARP I was asked to help tell parts of a more complex story using SFX. So, for this example, I did this via placing sfx along a long path through woods. Adding sounds, lights, smoke and NPCs everywhere depicting various stages of a storyline. Players got to have a nice walk through the woods, experiencing the story. Very much Droomvlucht meets de Grote Schijn. But then.. smaller. Fun to craft though!
One of the last shoots of 2024, with Flora. Our go-to theme is often about how we are being observed/perceived by society and how that influences who we are, and how we act.
And as a final shoot for 2024, I captured a Mandalorian. Because.