Traditions have never resonated strongly with me for some reason or another. However, I suppose summarizing yearly favorites has become one of the sorts. I regret a little I didn’t start it until 2007, perhaps a function more influenced by convenience. It is so much easier to scan through an archive in Lightroom than it is to sort through a file cabinet of slide pages.

I know we are inundated with “Best of” lists in today’s world, so this just adds to that quagmire of content. One great thing about doing your own list of photos is there isn’t a particular jealous-type photo that is going to rage-tweet why it wasn’t included. Photographs are remarkably obedient these days and fall in line or shut up if they are requested to do so. When your very existence is threatened by a keystroke, you tend to not get too lippy about discontent.

I’ve always considered photographs to be more than just moments, but conversations between the subject and the photographer. For me, they are usually conversations with nature. Like verbal ones, these conversations span a wide range of meaningfulness. From the mundane to the intimate to the existential. Sometimes they are just for those specific moments at the time of exposure in the field. In other instances, they can go on for years, either unfinished or become an evolving discussion. For those I haven’t visited in a while, we play catch up. Maybe we continue where we left off, maybe we go off in a brand new direction. Maybe I remember why I stopped talking to it in the first place!

Then once it is released into the wild, the conversation opens up to you, the viewer. You either listen in on the conversation that took place or start a new one of your own. So this end of the year review is a reflection back on some of those conversations that started or continued, during the passing year resulting in conclusion or abandonment.

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blue ice sheets (feb 2021)

Blue ice usually generates a bit of buzz around the Great Lakes region every winter, seemingly more so in the past few years as I wrote in the linked post. You may have heard of leaf peepers – well, we have ice-peepers. I suppose I am one of them now as this past year is the first time I ever specifically sought it out. The reason why I’ve largely avoided it is that most reports focus on ice around the Mackinac Bridge, a 4-hour drive for me. And ice is a very fickle thing on the shores of Michigan. The wind changes direction and suddenly the entire landscape changes. Ice in the morning may be gone in the afternoon or get covered in snow. So I took my chances on a much closer lake, Lake St. Clair, sandwiched between the Great Lakes of Huron and Erie. For all the years I’ve spent photographing ice on Lake St. Clair, Feb 2021 was the first year I ever witnessed blue ice. That morning was cloudy and grey, but just so happened to be pretty good for making abstracts.

If you are wondering what the conversation in this photo might be like – it was something like ;
me: “it’s really cold out here“
ice: “duh, that’s why we’re solid… but look, we’re blue“
me: “yeah, so are my fingers“
ice: “LOL, funny human, you crack us up“

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cold winter lake sunrise (feb 2021)

This image was part of my ice-peeping pursuits. Visiting 1 week after the above image, the conditions unsurprisingly changed quite a bit. Plus, overnight snow basically covered most of the ice to the point where only some blue edges were barely visible. BUT! Conditions were much more favorable for better light. Photographing here can be challenging at times, trying to be careful where you walk, the clock is ticking on the light changing, yet wanting to position yourself in a certain spot for the composition all compete with another. So challenging in fact, I might only get in one spot for the entire sunrise duration because it is too hard to move quickly to another. You then don’t want to f*&k it up by missing your DOF or some other setting on your camera with numb fingers.

The light doesn’t wait for you to get your shit together.

~ anonymous

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pastel morning ‘iceberg’ (feb 2021)

I made a couple of trips further north to Lake Huron last winter. Port Sanilac is a little way up Michigan’s Thumb Region with a marina protected by a breakwater structure/fishing pier. This normally walkable pier was covered in mounds of caked ice making for some treacherous walking. However, with ice crampons, it made it less so. There was some evidence of blue ice buildup here, but most of it was covered with recent snowfall. I’ve never actually seen a large ‘iceberg’ that looked like it could just float off overnight … until this morning. I liked the pastel morning light and the contrast of the rugged shore with the tranquil horizon. A rather ambiguous landscape that could just as well be an aerial of cloud cover looking out an airplane window.

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mother redwood (april 2021)

This year was known as a heavy mast year for cone and acorn-producing trees in Michigan. This is a naturally-occurring response to stressful seasons for trees when they ‘rebound.’ It was extremely noticeable around oak trees in autumn, but our dawn redwood trees dropped their cones in April in massive quantities. It was like walking around on a bed of marbles at times. While I don’t know if heavy mast years impact this particular species, we had abundant correlation if anything. This little scene took on a bit of an R-rated anthropomorphized metaphor of this tree giving birth to the cones.

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tiny volcanoes (april 2021)

We have a variety of conifer cones in our backyard, but I encountered a brand new one likely brought in by an enterprising squirrel. This unique find was the size of my fist and I never did fully ID what type of tree it was from, maybe a stone pine (Pinus pinea). Maybe another product of the heavy mast year from a tree nearby, but certainly not one on our property.

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woodland visitor (july 2021)

White-tailed deer sightings aren’t too unusual from my backyard, less so since we had a high fence installed. However, our dogs usually get extremely vocal if they see them. That typically ruins any photo ops. This time, I saw the deer before the dogs did. This required some stealthy, Navy SEAL class, psychological warfare. Pretend to not see deer, promise treats for going inside, actually get fur demon 1 and fur demon 2 to quietly fall for it, pay the bounty, and sneak out again with a suitable camera/lens combo approaching the primary target at the back perimeter while conducting hand-to-hand combat with a mosquito horde. Frankly, I’m amazed I pulled any of it off.

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dunescape sunrise (sep 2021)

The mosquito horde mentioned at the end of the last image greatly influenced my desire to be out much last summer. Holy hell it was horrible, seemingly everywhere nearby. It’s been a while since we’ve had such a seemingly endless swarm. As such, I passed some time rummaging around my archives looking for undeveloped exposures dreaming of a polar vortex to hit us. Wait, scratch that, the Arctic hit 100°F this year. I came across this one, experimenting with some color grading in its development, probably dreaming of a barren, cooler than the Arctic, mosquito-free place to be in – besides my mostly mosquito-free office.

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hell’s canyon tree rings (aug 2021)

An exposure from my Stonescapes series, and one I made 6 years ago, but had this particular composition sitting in my archives. As I wrote previously about this fascinating piece of petrified wood from a very specific area, it ranks up there with one of the most unique and beautiful fossil patterns I’ve ever explored. Tree rings tell us ancient stories, stories of times before human language, and this tree I believe has quite a lot to share.

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great lakes rocks (sept 2021)

This was a previously developed image that I engaged in a new conversation with, not unlike transporting yourself into the past to talk to yourself from 15 years ago. One could spend days on end looking at compositions of Great Lakes beach rocks. There is so much variation that finding a composition that seems to be in some sort of visual harmony can be difficult. A conversation that takes place in a loud, crowded space or a rambling one can be just as uncomfortable. It is the classic finding order in chaos task, and often needs some type of focal anchor (like a moderator) to avoid visual confusion. But I do believe you can have a complex pattern without such go-to anchors. It isn’t easy to describe, you just kind of know when it feels right. A lot of elements seemingly play their part, no particular one more important than the other.

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leaf creature no. 2 (Oct 2021)

I admit to feeling a bit down about photography this year for a variety of reasons, and it certainly comes in waves. There are a lot of negative headwinds one can get influenced by within the realm of photography or society in general. I’ll get slightly motivated by something, but it fades as I travel down the crest. A lot of subjects from previous years simply didn’t excite me enough to put in the effort anymore. I recognize this is partly just part of the natural ebb and flow of creative cycles but each year does feel harder.

I’ve done the typical “try new subject matter”, “a new lens”, etc to try to energize – even those were fleeting. So a big part of this leaf creature project was just to get out and play, to do something different. And some introspective hindsight might suggest it was part desperate effort to test if my heart is in this anymore. And for a while, it worked. I had fun creating a series of images I feel are personally and uniquely mine. I don’t need likes, recognition, success, or anything more with them than that.

However, I do feel that particular conversation has concluded for now, partly influenced by the fact most of these poor souls are now mulch. However, even when I was doing the 20th leaf creature, I was already feeling I was finishing up what I set to do. Will I do them again next season? I am not sure, I’ll certainly look. The bigger question will be was it enough spark to keep a flame burning?

What I do know is that nature is always presenting many more conversations and questions than I know how to answer or engage with. As such, I’ll never stop exploring and wondering, with or without a camera.

Thank you for spending some time here, listening to these visual conversations of the past year … especially those that have followed along for so many, many years. I hope your own 2022 brings new and interesting discoveries.