So I’m going to clear the backlog! To do so I’m going to schedule one blog post per day. This means that in the coming months I’m going to publish content here than ever before.

But I don’t want the blog to get boring, and consist of nothing but travel photography. Some people do a 365 project, where they take one photo and share it every day, in an effort to take more photos and get better at photography. I have very little problem getting motivated to take more photos! If anything, this project will end up with me sharing way too many photos. Any long-time subscriber will know my photo blog posts usually consist of 10 to 30 images from the same location, and are mostly for my own benefit, for me to remember the things I did and saw on that trip. Who am I kidding? There’s often way more than 30 photos.

My plan is to do a travel photo blog post every other day. On the other days I’ll share something else, be it a juggling video, an essay, a review, some creative writing, a tutorial, a meta-blog post like this one about the blog. I’ll also make an effort to share some more music. I’m constantly writing and practicing music, probably as much as I practice juggling, and spend more time and effort on it than photography and writing. Why not put it out there?

So the challenge is there! A daily blog post of creative output. Or at least one photo blog every other day.

Of course, I’m going to Africa in March and April for five weeks, and will have to schedule 37 days of blog posts in advance. As it happens, with the travel-photos-every-other-day idea I already have half the blog posts planned. When I get back from Africa I’ll have another huge load of photos and stories to share, but might turn down the fire hose in terms of number of photos per day. Will I have the self control to only share five photos per day and not 20?

So I thought I’d just collect some photos from a load of random places I visited from September to December last year. I hope someone enjoys them. I know I do.

Edinburgh

Self portrait on Royal Mile.

Scottish Parliament building.

Parkour.

Edinburgh Castle.

Sunset over Edinburgh.

Dresden

Tourists in Dresden.

Juliane in Dresdan.

Getting ready to dance with Matt Harding.

Instructions on how to dance.

Choreographed bad dancing.

Meeting Matt Harding.

Venice

On the Nieuw Amsterdam in Venice.

St. Mark’s Square.

Corfu

A temple and a family.

The Nieuw Amsterdam docked in Corfu.

Fountain rainbow.

Messina

The robotic clock in Messina, Sicily.

A huge croud for one of the most disappointing automaton display I’ve ever seen.

Turns out there’s nothing else to do in city on a Sunday.

Melbourne

Melbourne skyline.

Art. Ish.

Now this is art!

Also, as Juliane is a classical singer, she had a gig in a church performing a Christmas concert as part of Duo Musici, her collaboration with Benni the classical guitarist.

Christmas 2011

Wrapping presents on Christmas Eve.

Getting ready for dinner.

Cook your own food!

“The Angel of the Lord came down, and Glory shone around.” Or, on the other hand, playing with streetlights and lens flair.

Fire hazard Christmas decorations.

Christmas concert by Due Musici.

Singing with the organ.

Christmas concert by Due Musici.

Due Musici.

Some of these photos were taken by Juliane, with my old Canon 500D.

Passout 2011-2012

Juliane in Wolfenbuettel.

Shaggy dogs.

Luke and Juliane in Wolfenbuettel.

In the Schloss.

Resting in bed at Passout.

Fußball!

Testing camera and lighting for portrait session.

Drinks ready for midnight.

Dinner entertainment.

Decorations.

Spaghetti game.

Pinata club bash.

Pinata hat aftermath.

Pinata juggling challenge.

Big group shot.

Group shot.

Getting ready to go outside for midnight.

More drinks ready for new midnight.

Almost time…

Happy new year!

Firework dispay!

High tech pirotechnics.

Happy new year.

Hand-holding-untangling game.

The game lasted a long time.

Italians preparing drinks.

And, being a total geek about space travel, and science fiction, visiting Cape Canaveral and seeing the NASA hardware up close is a life-long goal. I had a lot of fun, despite the jet lag, and learned a lot. Actually, I didn’t learn a whole lot of new stuff, but being there put everything I already knew into context in a way that reading and watching and listening about it can never match.

Kennedy Space Center

First feature: 3D IMAX movie about building the ISS. I love these goggles.

Next: a bus tour around the launch pads and Vehicle Assembly Building.

Fuel for rockets.

The launch pad for all the Apollo missions and half the Shuttle missions.

An old model of a Shuttle Orbiter, moved to make room for a real Orbiter in the Kennedy Space Center visitor center.

Alligators!

Saturn V rocket.

This thing is waaaaay bigger than I ever imagined.

Big. Very big.

Self portrait at the Saturn V.

Space bus!

Apollo 8 rentry capsule.

Introduction to the space race.

The real Apollo space launch command center, now transplanted to the Saturn V visitor center.

Our guide, Armand.

Saturn I computer controls.

A controlled bush burn got out of control, so we had to take the long route back to the visitor center.

Another tour guide, Tom.

Shuttle Launch Simulator. This is pretty much a box that shakes you about a lot, but in a very clever way. This is an iPhone photo as you aren’t allowed to take large objects like bags or cameras inside.

Rocket garden.

Saturn V engine. Just one engine had more power than all three Shuttle engines. And the Saturn V had FIVE of them.

Rocket garden.

The Murcury capsule and the Moon.

The Moon and the Murcury capsule.

Visitor center entrance with bush fire smoke behind.

So Juliane and I hired a car for a week, and caught up with everything we wanted and needed. It’s fun to return to places I used to live, over 20 years ago. Ah… memories…

To get ready for our 5 week trip around Africa, I carried my 60D camera and Juliane carried my old 500D camera. We can swap lenses and other gear, and take photos of each other, and help each other out. As it happens, 15 of the 64 photos below were taken by Juliane, though I selected and edited them. Can you tell which ones?

UK trip – January 2012

Waiting in the airport.

Old mill in Nidderdale.

How Steen Gorge.

Statue at How Steen Gorge.

Walking down How Steen Gorge.

Bridge crossing.

Tom Tailor’s Cavern.

A barn I slept in many times as a child. That sounds strange, but I had a strange childhood.

Flooded playground in Pately Bridge.

Durham Cathedral.

Harry Potter was ‘ere.

On the roof of Durham Cathedral.

Durham Cathedral.

The Angel of the North.

Group photo at the Angel of the North.

It’s made of metal.

The Pennine Way in Teesdale.

Taking photos of waterfalls.

Taking photos of the sun.

Don’t rock the bridge!

Sheep in the sun.

I went to school here in 1989 to 1991.

It’s a very small school with only 20 pupils in two classes.

Forest of Teesdale School.

I lived here in 1989 and 1990.

Sheep!

I lived here in 1989 and 1990.

More sheep!

High Force.

Filming for the International Juggler video.

At High Force.

Danger!

Walking in the sun in Teesdale.

I lived in this house in Middleton-in-Teesdale from 1991 to 1997.

This is funny only to Germans who remember a Loriot sketch.

Or, as it happens, mis-remember a Loriot sketch.

The Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle.

I worked at this school in 1998 and 1999.

The setting of a clip from my Rocky video act.

Barnard Castle in Barnard Castle.

In Barnard Castle, a historic market town.

Barnard Castle in Barnard Castle.

When sorting through the gear in my parent’s attic, I found some juggling trophies. This is the IJA People’s Coice Award from 2004, won by me.

RIT 2005 games prizes. I’m not quite sure why I flew these trophies home.

Rae family in the car.

Uncle and niece.

Invisible nephew.

Waiting in the hospital.

Family gathering in the hospital (iPhone photo).

While in the hospital I checked my height. Turns out I’m 185cm tall. Or 6′ 1″, in old money.

Quick photo with my sister.

I ended the trip with a cruise to Barcelona and Athens.

Flying home.

The best thing about being a juggler is that the main activity of a juggler is learning how to do things. And because a juggler is learning a lot, the best way to get better at juggling is to learn how to learn better. Which is why, when I do learn things that have nothing to do with juggling, I try to apply the lessons and ideas and techniques to the new thing.

One way I learn new tricks, or come up with new tricks, is to keep one element fixed, and find as many new ways to approach that element as possible. By the end I’ll not only be able to do the original trick better, but have many new variations, some of which will be better than the original.

So last year I decided to do something similar with my photography. I walk through Victoria Park (Viktoriapark) in Berlin quite often, as it is close to my home. In the summer I juggle there with other local jugglers just as often. In the center of the park is an unassuming statue without any name or identifying features, though I’m guessing it’s someone like Goethe or Schiller. The identity isn’t important.

What is important: take a different photo each time I walked through or juggled in the park.

All but the first photo were taken in March, April and May in 2011. I tried loads of different ideas, different angles, time of day, weather, closeups, long distance shots, including other subjects in the frames, and much more. I used it to learn how to use my strobe in different ways too. I finally stopped due to the statue being enclosed in the bushes so much I couldn’t get a clear shot except for one angle. Maybe I should have taken that as a new restriction, but instead I moved on to other photography projects.

The project was a success, in many ways. I did improve at photography, but it also came in super handy when taking photos of real people. Instead of just taking a boring portrait, I have a whole load of more dynamic shots in mind, that I know work, because I tried them out on an inanimate object.

A side-benefit is a fun little 31-photo record of a single statue over the course of a few months, with the addition of new graffiti, how people treat the statue, and more. I’m thinking of printing out some of these images for a series to hang on my wall.

EDIT: I guessed at the statue’s subject matter, Goethe or Schiller, but the googling expertise of my girlfriend discovered it is another Romantic poet/playwright/writer called Heinrich von Kleist. Coincidentally, 2011 was the 200th anniversary of his death, a double suicide, on the banks of a lake just outside of Berlin.

Also from this page: “Marmor-Original im Hof der Leibnitz-Oberschule; Schleiermacherstraße 23. Es wurde 1990 durch den Aluminium-Abguss im Viktoriapark ersetzt.” So it’s good to know nobody is spraying paint into the eyes of the original.

Statue at night

The statue stands way higher than me, so this shot turned out to be way trickier than I imagined.

Statue

Watching the sun go down.

Statue and flower.

Off-camera flash fun!

Statue.

Statue

After easter holiday.

At night.

Statue

Well, last year I didn’t post my “list of plans and goals for 2011” to the blog, and I don’t think I referred to it here during the year. One reason was that my new year’s resolution (if you can call it that) was something like “Set fewer goals for the year!”

I didn’t want to be beholden to what January 2011 Luke wanted to spend time on when October 2011 Luke had changed his mind about it. On a weekly basis I have a larger creative output than almost anyone I know, so I have nothing to prove to myself or anyone else that I’m wasting my time, or that I’m a failure if I succeeded at only “35.05 out of a possible 50 plans and goals.” And yes, that was my success rate in 2010.

So in 2011 I intentionally didn’t work towards to plans and goals on my list. If I had time free, I’d look over the list, and see if it inspired me, but otherwise I just worked on what I wanted.

And, as it happened, some of the things I most proud of accomplishing weren’t on the list at all. For example:

• The list said “Perform live set of my own music” inspired by spending time in New York with some awesome live performers.
• I started performing at small music open stages in Berlin, and discovered that people really enjoyed my performing. They liked the fun songs, and how I chatted between, but hardly anyone commented about the pop songs and love songs that I’m so proud of.
• I discarded other music plans and concentrated on writing more quirky and clever comedy songs, that I perform with just me at the piano.
• This led to me performing more at comedy shows than music-only shows, and my comedy songs got a great reaction.
• I now have 10-12 “comedy” numbers that I could, if the opportunity arose, put together into an hour-long show.

In January last year I never imagined I’d have the skills and material to do a whole new hour-long show. This is on top of the two hours of juggling material I have, AND on top of the (maybe) two hours of other music I could perform, and all of it original material.

I think that’s pretty cool. Right?

Who knows, maybe this year I’ll actually do a full-length solo music show, rather than just performing sets in longer shows.

All that aside, here are a few things from my list of plans and goals for 2011 that have been fun to track.

Travel

• Visit another 20 new countries.

Partial win! I don’t have much control of this one, as I don’t make most of my travel plans. As it happened I visited 18 new countries in 2011.

I also made sure I got a video of me juggling in every country I visited in 2011 (win), even those I only passed through without leaving the airport.

Juggling

• Berlin and EJC and at least two other conventions (to be confirmed), one in a new country.

Win! Berlin and the EJC, plus the French Convention, Brianza Convention in Italy, Portland in the USA, and Passout in Germany at the end of the year. I’d never been to a convention in Italy before, so that was cool.

• Win Fight Night Combat (against JJ for bonus)

Win! I won in Berlin, but JJ didn’t take part. I lost badly at the EJC. No bonus.

• Run open stages and other events at EJC (with zero stress)

Win! 8 open stages over 8 nights. There was stress in the organization as a whole, but I deflected it all by being more professional and confident than others, and hopefully the stress didn’t leak out too far into the venue I had to control.

• Track and break some personal records.

Win! I broke a few. The most “impressive” record was 5 club backcrosses. I worked on it many hours in the spring, up to an hour day for many days, and smashed my old record. It now stands at 50 catches, though my 5 year plan back in 2001 was to get 100 catches. I’m okay with never reaching that goal, even after 10 years.

• Practice more (log hours per day).

Win? I’m not sure if I did practice more or less than previous years, because this is the first year I’ve tracked how much I juggle. I think I’ll release the nerdy numbers as a separate blog post.

Other juggling and performing goals included working on new material (win), building new props (win), developing routines which don’t need more equipment than I already carry (win), finishing the construction of “The Room” set (progress, but nowhere near finished), writing the show “Powercut” (fail), and working with other jugglers and artist on material for the above shows (win).

Writing

I had some writing goals, but this was tricky. Half way through 2010 I decided to keep a diary, and writing about 1,000 words per day for my private diary took up so much of the energy that would normally be spent writing fiction. I did manage to make progress on various novels. I even completed one novella and recently published it on my website.

Photography

I intentionally left this even more vague than others. Photography is something I’m still getting better at on a monthly basis, and until that stops, I don’t think I need to think about setting myself other goals.

My only goals were to learn more about small strobe photography (win), to learn more about self-portrait photography (win), and to set up a photo studio in my juggling studio at home (partial win).

Conclusion

By the numbers:

• I had 31 plans and goals for 2011.
• I succeeded at 15.9 of them.
• I failed at 11.1 (the decimal is from visiting 18 and not 20 new countries).
• At the end of the year I was still actively working on 4 projects (for example, an audio recording of one of my science fiction stories).

The numbers are nowhere close to last year’s success rate, but last year I put down loads of things that I knew I would succeed at anyway. Things like “continue to record the SFBRP podcast”, and even without trying I put out 32 episodes of science fiction reviews. And a lot of them were really simple too, like “buy a new camera bag”. How much effort does that take? Nothing compared to writing a whole novel!

And, as I said before, I decided to be happy to go on flights of fancy with my plans and goals and dreams.

I’m super happy with 2011, and how much I achieved in terms of life accomplishments and creative output. I even found an awesome girlfriend, and she is going to be included in many of my plans and goals for 2012.

But that will be a whole other blog post.

New for 2012: I’m turning off comments on my blog. Since early 2009, when I started this blog, there have only been about 10 comments really worth my time reading and approving. And for each of those, I responded individually by email, or created a new blog post. All the others were fine, but not worth wading through the spam.

So from now on, I’ll just leave my email address at the bottom of each post. If you have something to tell me, please email me. I’ve done this since 2008 on my SFBRP podcast, and have developed really strong relationships via email with my listeners. I’d love to replicate that here. Just so you know, I reply to every email:

luke@juggler.net

Thanks to everyone at Passout 2011-2012 for taking part!

I have no permissions from any of these jugglers, so while I’m sure they wouldn’t mind you printing out a calendar, don’t try to make money with these images or anything like that. I released all these photos on my blog under a creative commons 3.0 license, which means no commercial use without my permission. And to get my permission, email me here: luke@juggler.net

Here is the zip file of all the high resolution jpgs, or click each image to see the individual high resolution versions.

Find the names of all the jugglers below.

The jugglers are:

January: Tina Lange. Wes Peden and Jay Gilligan.

February: Alexander Koblikov. Spiral.

March: Jacob Sharpe. Asaf Poiboy More.

April: Duo De Fracto. Marco Paoletti. Patrik Elmnert.

May: Francesca Mari. Nikolas (Juggledeaf).

June: Declan Mee. Guy Kaplan.

July: Namer Golan. Aileen Lawlor and Noel Yee.

August: Alexander Kulakov. Kyle Johnson.

September: Owen Reynolds and Inaki Sastre of the Gandini Juggling Project. Stefan and Cristiana in Tangram.

October: Matthias Romir. Yuta Asano.

November: Piryokapi. Valerie Sealey

December: Svetlana Zueva. Luis Sartori Do Vale. Joris de Jong.