With the holidays upon us and 2020 - and an entire new decade - just around the corner, I thought it was a good time to look back on 2019. 

After leaving my "real office job", this was the first year of my new venture as a wildlife photographer.  A lot comes to mind, including valuable lessons learned.  I hope you enjoyed watching some of the new images I made this year and I hope you'll follow me into 2020!

My year started off in the great country of Mexico where I photographed the mountains west of Mexico City: home to the wonders of the great annual migration of the monarch butterflies.  Journeying along Mexico's West coast, I photographed the diverse wildlife along the East coast of the Sea of Cortez (also called the Gulf of California), specifically the birds that feast on sea life in tidal zones.

On my way North during the spring time, I photographed hummingbirds in Arizona's Madera canyon and desert bighorn sheep along Arizona's Coronado Trail.  New Mexico brought the natural wonders of the Bisti Wilderness (De-Na-Zin) and El Malpais. Onwards into Colorado where I explored some of the remote areas in the Southwest: Canyons of the Ancients, Yucca House and the Hanging Flume.

A late snowstorm saw me stranded in southern Wyoming before I could make my way into Jackson Hole, the Tetons and Yellowstone. The Spring babies were great (bears, elk, moose, bison, etc.) but when Summer arrived, Alaska called.  

Arriving in Southeastern Alaska via the Canadian Rockies, the rest of the summer was spent near a ghost town along the US-Canada border in Alaska where I never tired of watching and photographing grizzlies and other predators feast on the salmon runs.

With a heavy heart, I left Alaska in late September and headed back to the Tetons to photograph the fall rutting seasons of elk and moose.

An early snow storm and accompanying deep freeze pushed me southwards into Nevada where I photographed the wild burros (and may have enjoyed a hot spring or two).

As I type this, I'm sitting in Mexico's Baja California.  No concrete plans other than to explore and photograph this peninsula, its amazing nature and Cousteau's "aquarium of the world" for the next months into 2020.

2019 saw 6 articles published and 44 images sold commercially. Being able to post images to social media on a fairly regular basis (as my travel schedule allowed it) increased my exposure. Coming from an IT and Business Intelligence background, of course I was interested in the numbers. :-)

Facebook: astonishingly, my images reached an audience on Facebook alone of over 300,000 people this year on the social network, thanks to the power of sharing and re-sharing by Facebook users.  So far, I haven't spend a penny on social media ads, likes or followers so all growth and audience reach has been strictly organic. The number of followers on my Vango Photos business page on Facebook grew an astounding 454% in 2019: it just crossed the 3,000 mark!

Facebook seems to be more popular with the 30+ crowd: the majority of my Facebook followers is between 55 and 64.

Instagram: I finally got started paying attention to Instagram in April of this year. Pretty late to the table for a platform that has been used extensively by many younger photographers for almost a decade by now, so I've got some pretty intense catching up to do. Also here no money spent on sponsored posts, ads or buying followers, so I'm excited that my posts reached over 100,000 users and the number of followers on my Instagram account since April has grown 2,169%: it just crossed the 2,500 mark!

Unsurprisingly, Instagram is more popular with the younger generations as the majority of my Instagram followers is between 25 and 34.

In 2020, I hope to continue writing articles, selling images and prints, continue providing affordable online lessons on wildlife photography, publish the book I'm currently finishing up on my best tips for wildlife photography (stay tuned) and perhaps even lead a few photography tours (stay tuned).

Most of all, I hope to continue spending lots of time out in nature looking for (and finding!) wildlife and having fun in the process!

Here are some of your favorite images this year.  I deliberately didn't choose my own favorites for this review but relied on my Facebook and Instagram feeds to tell me which images you liked the most.  These images are all part of my online Galleries and are available to order as prints on canvas or aluminum, or as gallery wraps.

Which one is your favorite?

Click on the images to reveal the story behind them.

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Have a merry Christmas, a happy New Year and a very prosperous 2020!

- Jorn