Next month I will be celebrating my fortieth anniversary of working as a photographer. For almost every one of the thirty-nine Augusts that I have been in the business I have either been very quiet or have had to fill my time with photography work that doesn’t necessarily involve taking pictures. The bar chart above shows how much I have worked in the month over the years since I have been back in the world of freelancing. The table clearly shows a few anomalies and the main points of those are:

• 2012: Working on the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games as part of the photo management team
• 2014: The first year where I made some of my income working as a photo-editor on sports projects
• 2017: Laid up after some serious back surgery – so no work of any kind
• 2020: Despite the covid lockdowns I did do some editing and some consultancy
• 2021: The delayed Tokyo Paralympic Games
• 2022: Lambeth Conference
• 2024: Paris Paralympic Games

Some good years and plenty of flat and relatively uninteresting years have passed and August has become a month of trying not to worry about keeping busy whilst enjoying some time off – which is a lot easier when you live pretty near the beach. Of course it isn’t just August; the latter half of July and the first week in September are often much the same.

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