January
Not one of my better months.
The production total was zero; mainly down to the weather (the wrong
kind of bad weather; a serious snowfall might have actually resulted in some
photography). I was unable to attend the
Severn Valley Railway’s Winter Gala this year due to family commitments, and a
proposed replacement activity didn’t get done either; annoying the first
weekend of the month had the best weather.
On balance, though, it is perhaps not a massive
setback. January is probably the hardest
month for my photography as the weather is generally bad, the days are shorter,
and a lot of the places I use are closed.
In the two previous, I’ve only set the production target for the month
at 5 images, so I’m not massively behind at this point, and still have two
months to make the quarterly target of 65 (mind you, the last time my
February+March total managed this was in 2018, so this is not exactly a done
deal).
As mentioned on the home page, I discovered during the month
that there was an issue with the contact forms on all my sites, and I suspect
that the issue went back well into 2025.
It most likely stems from increased security measures on my hosting
service which I didn’t realise had affected the contact forms, and it was only
pure chance that I was checking to see if another recent change was causing
issues, that I found the problem (I don’t get many enquiries, and the so the
lack of usage didn’t register to me, and there was no way anyone could tell me
of this). After quite a bit of
head-scratching, I found the settings in my web design software that allowed me
to deal with these changes, which rather annoyingly were in a section that I
don’t normally use (rather than putting them with the contact form settings,
which seems more logical to me). All the
forms should now be working again, and I plan to implement a regular check of
them going forward.
As stated, any information sent to me has been lost (and I
know of at least one loss from this site last year, as during my investigation,
I located the error logs for the site), so any enquiries will need to be
re-submitted. I apologise for this;
unlike the last time I had contact form issues where an external service was
withdrawn without me being informed, this is more on me than my providers.
There was some good news: the month’s sales in January were
the best monthly ones I’ve had since 2021.
These were entirely down to Redbubble, and it’s looking like my decision
to set up a sales platform there was a good one; most of the 2025 sales were
through them.
February
I have a bit of catching up to do, and hopefully the weather
will improve enough for me to do this. I
would like to do at least one National Trust property during the month, and I
have a couple of ideas on some candidates for this.
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