Micael Widell Newsletter #9
Captain's log
2020 is over. I made a video to summarize my year in photography and on YouTube. It was a good year for me. A happy and fulfilling year. Despite having a "normal job" for 3 days a week, and a two year old son, and despite moving apartments during the year, I still managed to get quite a lot of photography and YouTube work done.
The major downside with 2019 for me, which prevented it from being a fantastic year, was that I was sick a lot. Everyone who has had a small child starting preschool can attest to the same – you get hit by many different viruses and end up sick a lot in the first year. So hopefully my immune system is super powerful after all this.
In 2020, my goal and hope is to be able to do more of what I loved doing in 2019: More photography. More YouTube work. A big part in that is to be able to support myself doing this. Up until now, I have made some modest money from YouTube ads and affiliate links - around $650 per month. I has been enough to buy equipment to review and to use for making videos, but obviously not to live on.
I have started getting sponsors for my videos now towards the end of 2019, which is great. Because if I get enough sponsor deals, I could truly turn my photography into something that pays my rent, my food, and all my other expenses, which in turn means I could focus completely on it. At the same time it would be a bit scary to make my hobby into my main income. What if I lose interest?
How was your 2019? What is your hope for 2020?
Martin Neuhof
Check out his Instagram. Lovely portraits in a lovely style.
One year of shooting exactly one film photo per day
I found this article and idea very interesting: Use a film camera, take one photo a day for a year (or a week, or month) – and do not develop the film until the year has passed. This idea leverages one aspect of film photography that I really love – the prolonged anticipation before you get to look at your photos.
Diego Mendez
Diego Mendez has some truly stunning macro photos on his Instagram page.
Big Fat List of Photography Documentaries
I found this treasure trove. It is a long list of documentaries about photography and about photographers. I find such documentaries very inspiring, as you know from my previous newsletters. The article is old, and many of the links to YouTube and Vimeo are dead. But if you search for the documentary names on YouTube or Vimeo, you can often find them reuploaded.
What is your favorite photography documentary? I think my favorite so far is Bill Cunningham New York, because it is so moving.
My New Website
I threw up a new portfolio website with my very best macro work. Go check it out :)
Something new I tried
I decided to give myself a nice christmas gift: The Mavic Mini drone. It is the first drone I have felt has good enough image quality and low enough price to be worth for me to buy. The 2.7k footage can easily be upscaled to 4k and it still looks very nice. The drone was so much fun to fly, and it was very easy to learn. In less than 30 minutes of flying, I felt pretty comfortable. I made this video showcasing some of my flying that I did in the first few days after starting to use it.
Unfortanately, there must have been some kind of production error in my particular copy of the drone, because only 3-4 days after unboxing it, one day my beloved drone just decided to fly away sideways at full speed, without me pushing anything.It crashed into a tree a couple of blocks away. It was completely trashed. I am happy no living thing or property got hurt. I e-mailed DJI and it looks like they will replace/repair it for me under warranty. Let's see.
Alan Schaller
Alan Schaller is extremely talented at finding high contrast scenes that make for beautiful black and white photos, using his Leica Monochrome camera. Usually I am not that into street photography, but I love Alan's style.
My Published Videos since the last newsletter
- Mitakon 85mm 1-5x Macro Lens Review (and compared with Laowa 25mm 2.5-5x)
- After My Review: Mitakon 85mm 1-5x Macro Lens Gets Redesigned
- 3 Cheapest Ways to do Macro Photography
- How much money did I make on YouTube in 2019?
Goodbye for now
Thank you for reading this far, and see you in a month! Feel free to follow me on YouTube, Instagram and 500px in the meantime. And also feel free to tell your friends about this newsletter, and to reply to it if you have feedback or comments :)
/Micael