Happy New Year! As always, I spend the quiet period over the holiday break doing a bit of reflection on the year past, and preparation for the year coming. 2022 has been a bit chaotic for me, with ever-extending deadlines for my doctorate due to ongoing COVID-19 complications, and other hiccups. A PhD is never a smooth ride, though. I’ve become a lot more adaptable as a result.

I will hand in my thesis some time around February 2023 (so yes, I am very busy at the moment). I’m also transitioning into a new life of balancing biologist work with photographer work, which I’ve been doing more of over the past year. The job I did for Nikon at the start of 2022 was a real highlight of last year, and it helped me develop how I shoot on assignment in a completely different way. I loved it! Putting some of our unique native birds on the world stage was also pretty neat. I’m really looking forward to doing more photography work soon.

Other highlights from 2022 were of course the Wildlife Masterclasses in Otago that I’ve been teaching with Shaun Barnett for New Zealand Photography workshops, and that Dad and I will teach together from next year. Otago is a place I love to go for wildlife photography, so to spend time down there with a group of people all focused and passionate on developing their wildlife photography skills is a joy.

I had a brief ‘holiday’ in the middle of the year after the BirdsNZ conference, returning to Kaikōura for the first time in at least five years, and also exploring Hinewai reserve above Akaroa. Dad and I saw our first Antarctic Fulmar in Aotearoa (having previously seen them in the Drake Passage), and got our first images of kotoreke – Marsh crake at Wairewa – Lake Forsyth.

Despite being in the writing phase of my PhD now, I’ve still done a lot of seabird fieldwork this year. The last stint that was actually for my doctorate was a 5-week period on Tawhiti Rahi in the Poor Knights islands, doing the final GPS tracking of rako Buller’s shearwaters for our 4-year, COVID-interrupted project. I’ve also kept busy with the seabird monitoring at Tāwharanui, and doing health assessments of ōi Grey-faced petrel populations all over the north.

I’ve stepped back a lot from an online presence this year in some ways. PhD work has left little time for regular blogging, and to be honest I have struggled with processing images. I find joy in being outside and making photographs, but I spend too much time in front of the computer for other work to want to process and post images after the fact. I’m hoping it will start to bring me joy again when I have less screen time in my life (when my doctorate is written). There are a lot of stories waiting to be told here.

Have a happy and safe New Year!