Year in Review: people

2011 is freshly over, so in the spirit of Scott Strazzante, i have decided to throw together a few blog posts in which i review 2011 and the photography that it held.

This is where i conclude the series. These are all reasonably straightforward portraits--the faces of the portraited carry the pictures, and the pictures will tend to be more descriptive of the person than the location.

Amber McKinney is stopped at a stoplight. A random stranger glanced up at my camera during CU's 420 chaos. Kirsten Lackey graduated and played with balloons. Nick came to Boulder and hiked in the snow with me. i took pictures of myself on Mount Sanitas, which i hiked up one evening on a whim because i was bored. Tao Lin stopped frisbeeing for long enough to smile. John Stewart was illuminated by light from my window. Sam Day displayed his armpit hair. Colin Stringer multitasked. Brent Hodge glowed. Colin Stringer got excited. Brent Hodge got thoughtful. Colin Stringer laughed. Robert Niederriter hiked at Chatauqua. Eliana Brown went camping at Lake Arcadia. Ayelen and Tytus Brown played in the flowers. i grew a stachecicle on Mount Sanitas. Nick Williams got cold in the foothills, and i only provided him with lukewarm chocolate rather than hot chocolate. Tye Brown was thoughtful, a month before destroying his living room. Brent Hodge ate a light bulb. Stephen Buerger took up shepherdry in the dark corners of the Andes. Kyle Williams and Sally Schupack liked spending time with me so much that they decided to marry each other as an excuse to make me fly back to Oklahoma in a few months. Nick went for a hike with the other beers, and then left this cap in Oklahoma. Then he chopped up wood in a very thoughtful manner.

That is everything that happened in 2011.



















































2011 was a really great year for me photographically. i took over 13,000 pictures, which is more than i had ever taken in a year before. Also, the pictures that i took were well-distributed over the course of the year--i took at least 1,000 every month after March (except for October, in which i took only 800). i experimented with some new ideas (panoramas, more backlit portraits, and more night photography, for example), and a i spent $150 a new lens that i love.

i think that 2012 has the potential to be even better. i am significantly more comfortable in Boulder than i have been yet. Pending a few grants, i will be spending two months in rural Uganda. i will be shooting a wedding, and possibly two. Hopefully i'm additionally able to do some nice hiking, and possibly at least a backpacking trip or two.

Year in Review: people in places

2011 is freshly over, so in the spirit of Scott Strazzante, i have decided to throw together a few blog posts in which i review 2011 and the photography that it held.

i have now come to the portrait portion of the series. While taking planned/posed portraits is not my preferred style of photography, i have started taking more and more impromptu portraits, and rather enjoy taking them when i do.

Some of the impromptu portraits that i take are fundamentally portraits--the frame is predominantly filled by a face, and the immediate environment is of marginal significance, if identifiable at all. Perhaps my favorites, though, are those pictures that represent a balance between portrait and landscape. That is what this post consists of.

At the very beginning of 2011, i hiked in a blizzard with Amber McKinney. Curt Sharp made a quick trip up to Boulder while visiting a seminary in Denver. i had a few hours between classes during which we charged most of the way up Bear Peak. We turned around a short distance from the summit because i had to get back to Phonological Theory. i was late, of course. Amber McKinney spent many dark hours in my living room. Steve Duman, unawares, was captured looking like an academic (which he is) in his office. Art DeBruyn presented the Lord's supper to Crestview Church. i threatened to fight a tree on Mount Sanitas. Nick and i got caught in a small June snowstorm in the Indian Peaks Wilderness. My father, my sister, my mother (not pictured), and my sister's dog Paxton summited Bear Peak with me. A crowd of strangers and i watched fireworks from Red Rocks just west of Boulder on the fourth of July (i threw my telephoto lens off a cliff in a rit of fealous jage). i tubed down Boulder Creek with Cody Piersall, Kirsten Lackey, and John Stewart. i hiked up Pawnee Peak with (a soon to explode) Cody Piersall. i climbed Kelso Ridge on Torreys Peak with Casey High and Kris Doubleday. i lurked in the flowers at George Miksch Sutton Wilderness Park with Brent Hodge (and Colin Stringer and Caleb Montgomery). i played in the forest with Ayelen Brown. i went hiking with Maggie Leslie and Amber McKinney a short distance up Boulder Canyon. i went hiking with the other beers on my aunt's land--spotting my brother as he walked through a field of tall grass and my mother and sister playing on a hay bale. i saw Pippen Padfoot sniff Colin Stringer's corpse's finger. i watched a total stranger walk into the trees above NCAR. i lounged in the living room with my brother at 1:30am on Christmas Eve. And i took beer family pictures in a nice backlit field.