Two bits of news ...

It doesn't seem all that long since I told you that we were expecting Finley, but now I have the pleasure of telling you that we're expecting another one (which we're reliably informed is a girl) on April 16th of next year. Our house will probably be extremely hectic for many years to come :-)

Oh, and if you come across any good deals on second-hand 8-seater MPV's or small minibuses, please let me know, as our 7-seater car is about to be made redundant. I did offer to stay at home and let Libby take the kids everywhere, but it wasn't a popular suggestion ;-)

And that's the first bit of news.

The second bit – and this is the work issue I mentioned recently – is that I'll be leaving my current job (as a lecturer in Higher Education) in the New Year to run chromasia on a more full-time basis. As many of you know we set up chromasia as a company around 18 months ago, but it's something we've done in conjunction with my other job.

Recently, the University I work for has been going through a restructuring process which has involved a voluntary severance offer. I applied, and was accepted; and in many ways I'll be sad to go, not least because I've worked with much the same group of people for the last 11 years, and I'll miss them. But it's also a really exciting opportunity. I'll finally have the time to write the online tutorials we've been promising for what seems like forever, we can now schedule some more face-to-face ones to run next year, I'll be able to do more commissions, and I'll have much more time to take photographs to post here. Lately, the blog side of things has been suffering a bit, so it will be really good to get back up to speed on posting stuff that I'm proud of rather than archive raiding for stuff that will suffice.

Anyway, I think that's about it for today ... new lives all round :-)

Oh, and no, this isn't a photograph, but given the circumstances I hope you'll let me off ;-)

Update: as I write this there are 81 comments on this entry – thank you – and I will reply to the various points you've raised; but not tonight. Yesterday was a very long day, and I now feel as though we've been clawing our way along an extremely dark and tortuous tunnel for far too long. Now, having emerged into the sunlight, I'm going to rest awhile. So tonight it's Chinese food, a good bottle of wine, a film, and a deep sigh of relief. Back soon.

And thanks again.

From top left to bottom right, here are all the images from the last twelve months.

For those of you who have been around since this time last year, you'll know that chromasia's birthday is February 5th, 2004 – this was the day that I registered chromasia at photoblogs.org and decided to post an image a day. Like last year, I didn't quite manage 365 images (I was eleven short this year), but it's still something I aspire too. Maybe – touch wood – I'll manage this in chromasia's third year :-)

Anyway, all I really want to say today is thank you: to all of you, for your continued support and thoughtful and helpful comments; to my wife and family, without whom this simply wouldn't be possible; and to everyone else who's contributed during the last twelve months.

Thanks :-)

I didn't have anything much to put up tonight so, given that this week's Photo Friday challenge is Best of 2005, I thought I'd take the opportunity to repost a few of my favourites. I did try to pick one, but it wasn't possible: it was hard enough to whittle it down to four! Anyway, in the end I decided on don't look up #2, space, SG-Blackpool and those eyes again. There were many others I could have chosen, but these are the ones that I'm most attached to, in one way or another. They're also mostly the ones that you suggested yesterday, so thanks for helping me decide.

On another matter: I'd like to thank you all for visiting chromasia over the last twelve months. As always, you've provided great feedback and support, have been understanding when there have been technical problems with the site or I haven't been able to post for other reasons, and have continued to make this project worthwhile. Without you, I'd still take photographs, but I'm sure that the experience wouldn't be anywhere near as rewarding. So thank you, and I hope that you all have a great 2006.

On a personal note: 2005 has been a really hectic year. Finley was born back in August, work has been hectic, we've had numerous projects on the go in terms of sorting out our house, I visited China and so on. And while 2005 was enjoyable, it was bordering on being a little too hectic for my taste, so I'm hoping that 2006 will be a little more relaxed :-)

And finally, after months of trying to sort out the problems with chromasia's server, I've managed to migrate everything to the new server. As I write this the DNS changes haven't propagated so chromasia.com still points to the old server, but this should all sort itself out in a few days. Anyway, chromasia is now hosted/sponsored by Richard Jones who runs pixyBlog. Over the next twelve months or so Richard is going to be developing various online services for photographers and photo libraries, including a hosted photoblog solution and, all being well, I'll be piloting some of these for him in the months ahead. Anyway, many thanks to Richard for providing a home for chromasia.

I'd also like to thank a few other people while I'm here: my wife and kids, for putting up with me constantly disappearing to either take photographs or post-process them, and thanks too to John (Washington) for keeping me company while wandering around Blackpool and the surrounding coast.

So I guess that's about it for this year. Once again, thanks for all your support over the last twelve months, and I hope that you have a great new year :-)

Although there are entries on chromasia that date as far back as July 2003 I always consider its 'official' birthday to be February 5th, as it was on this day last year that I i) decided to post an image a day, and ii) registered chromasia at photoblogs.org. And back then I guess there were three things that I wanted to achieve; to post an image a day, to become a better photographer, and to join in with the ever-expanding photoblogging community.

I didn't quite manage to post an image a day, but I did get close. Since this time last year 364 images have been posted on chromasia, of which eight were guest entries (on today's entry the guest entries are the ones I've used for the number 1 in the bottom right of the image). Hopefully, especially since I can now 'future post' with MT v3, I'll manage 365 over the next twelve months ... fingers crossed.

In terms of becoming a better photographer: I think I still have quite a way to go, but I do think I'm noticeably better than I was 12 months ago.

As for joining in with the photoblogging community: I guess it's this aspect of chromasia has been the most rewarding. Over 6000 comments have been left in the last year, and the vast majority have encouraged me to continue, critiqued my work as necessary, and given me the impetus to keep going. I've also met numerous people from around the world who have made my photographic journey a considerably richer experience, and I now consider many of these as my friends. But I guess that those people are only a fraction of the people who visit chromasia: I have around 50000 unique visitors each month from around 74 different countries (based on data for 2004) – all of which never ceases to amaze me.

So thank you to all of you; as always it's very much appreciated.

I also need to thank Brandon Stone and everybody else who has contributed to photoblogs.org, as without it I suspect that chromasia wouldn't be anywhere near as popular or as well frequented. And I'd also like to thank Sam for the inspiration for the format for today's entry. I know other people have done this too but it was Sam's ddoi year 1 collage that I came across first.

And last but not least, I also need to say a H U G E thank-you to my wife as I know that she's one of the very few women in this world who would put up with me spending so much time and effort here. Thank you.

And there are many more people I could thank and should mention, that I know or have met during this last year, but hopefully you already know that I'm grateful.

And I suppose I could go on with this entry indefinitely, but I won't. All that remains for me to say is that I hope you enjoy year two :-)