A Year in Photos

Photography, fiction, and personal essays form my three primary creative outlets. For this blog's first 18 months, I used it primarily for photography. As I've returned to creative writing, I'll use this blog for fiction, too. Sometimes, when reality needs to be discussed more than truth, I write personal essays.

This blog will continue to showcase as many above-average photos as I can muster. Hopefully my written work will be as good or better than the visual. Whichever drew you here -- photographs or fiction, I hope you enjoy both.

Tuesday, December 31, 2013

2013 Top 20 -- Photo 1

Compared to last year, this year's work definitely tailed off a bit. Understandably as this year I was significantly busier with work and YouTube video commitments, so I didn't have as much time to shoot. Next year, I hope, will see improvement from 2013.

2014 will see some changes to the blog's format. I have some posts planned out but need to carve some time to write them. Hopefully the blog will grow in 2014. And now for some 2013 metrics:


2012 blog views (through December 11): 10,801 -- up from 4,305 in 2012


And my best photo of the year is ... government property. Yup. I can't share it. And on that anticlimactic bombshell, see you in 2014. Wait. It already is 2014.




But wait! Standing in for the best photo of the year is this one:


Somehow I forgot to include this photo in my top 20. Actually, I'm really comfortable with this being the best photo of my 2013 photographic year.

Sunday, December 29, 2013

2013 Top 20 -- Photo 3

Thursday, December 12, 2013

2013 Top 20 -- Photo 20

That's right -- It's time for the year-end photo countdown. This year's photos are much different from last year's. Objectively, I am not as happy this year, though I think that in some areas I had really good work. In general, I'm still very proud of these 20 photos, and choosing a top 20 was another hard task this year. So, without delay, here is photo 20:



Found Photos Friday: 1960s Americana 12

It was interesting, in scanning these slides and watching the 8mm movies, to see the same people but to have their lives compressed so much. In one box the same people ages from children to teenagers to parents themselves. I also felt, so many times, like I could actually know these people's names. Not because I'd ever met them, but because these photos did such a good job at revealing their lives that I thought at any moment that everyone's names would just pop out of a slide. And some people's names did -- on name tags, for instance. But who these Chicagoans-turned-Californians are remains a mystery and I'm okay with that.















Found Photos Friday will return in 2014 with more found photos!

Thursday, December 5, 2013

Found Photos Friday: 1960s Americana 11

After this, there will be one more post from these slides. This week, I'll share five slides I liked but didn't have a chance to work into the previous narratives.