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.

Year in Review: things that are outside

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.

2011 included two noteworthy developments in my photography: a slight re-emergence of landscape photography as a genre that i devoted effort to, and the development of the panorama as a thing that i do.

When i began taking pictures, landscapes were the only thing that interested me. i tried to tell myself that i was a photographer for over two years before i started voluntarily taking pictures of people, and to this day i remain fairly uncomfortable taking non-impromptu portraits. It's nice to be taking the pictures that first made me like photography again.

Admittedly, living in Boulder helps one take landscape pictures occasionally. i live a walking distance from mountain trails, and i can easily be around treeline in an hour from my apartment.

i once felt that it's much easier to take a very good landscape picture than a very good portrait or action picture--that ship, however, has clearly sailed. i find that the standards by which i measure good landscapes continue to rise, and i'm rarely well-pleased with landscapes that i have taken. i am satisfied with five or six of the photos in this update, however, and that is a nice feeling to have.

i saw some ominous graffiti in the Paseo district of Oklahoma City--its timely omen is the only reason that i have included it in this post. i pulled my tripod into my apartment's parking lot in the middle of an April night and took a picture of clouds drifting past the moon. John Stewart and i trudged eight miles (round trip) through knee-deep snow to Long Lake to take pictures of the sunrise (we arrived about ten minutes late. oops.). In my most successful landscaping endeavour, i backpacked to Willow Lake in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, and was able to take some reasonably nice pictures of the stream feeding the lake and of the lake itself. i spent two or three days a week in the Indian Peaks Wilderness for much of the summer, arriving as early as 5am for morning light. i returned yet again to the George Miksch Sutton Wilderness Park in Norman, Oklahoma, and took yet another sunset picture from the same venerable tree i have known for four years. i spent more time hiking and jogging in Boulder Canyon in October and November than i had in the previous 14 months of living in Boulder. i bought a splendid 40 year old telephoto lens, and used it to take a 12 photo panorama of trees in the Indian Peaks Wilderness during the first snow of the year. i pretended that i didn't need to read for class one Wednesday, and instead hiked up Mount Sanitas in a blizzard. i took a 20 photo panorama of a peculiar tree near the National Center for Atmospheric Research--a tree of which i still haven't taken a picture i'm particularly proud of, but perhaps this is my best shot yet.

Year in Review: people doing things

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.

In this edition, i have chosen to arbitrarily lump a few pictures together in which people are doing things, more or less.

i'm going to have another round of pictures (or several) in which people are doing things. i have managed to convince myself that those pictures are more about either the people or the landscape, whereas these pictures are more about the action (or perhaps the event--while i'm making ad hoc categories, i might as well go all out...)

It was a good year, i suppose. i watched thousands of people smoke pot (and i watched thousands of people watch thousands of people smoke pot) at 4:20 on April 20. i slacklined with Colin Stringer. i played bocce with Colin Stringer. i slacklined with John Stewart. i rode horses with my seesturr. i saw my car patiently waiting for me whenever i got back from a hike, eager to take me home to shower (even when a tree limb 8-10 inches in diameter plummeted from the sky, landing within a foot of my car--not on the depicted day). i climbed Kelso Ridge on Torreys Peak with Kris Doubleday (and Casey High, who isn't in this set). i watched No Limits and The Gypsies tensely watch the season finale of Expedition Impossible (tense even though they were themselves the contestants, and new who won). i watched both teams celebrate wildly when The Gypsies won and No Limits took second (or, if they were Taylor Filasky, i watched them smile jubilantly amid the raucous celebration). i made hot chocolate on a cold and windy night with Nick Williams and Alec Buchner. And i cut up trees with the other beer men.

Year in Review: what i should have hated

2011 ended yesterday(ish), 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.

2011 was a pleasant enough year, if somewhat less dramatic than 2010 was. 2011 was the first year since 2000 in which i did not leave the country (which, thankfully, does not appear will be the case again in 2012). None of my earthly possessions were consumed by inconvenient fires, and i didn't move anywhere new. i did, however, find a project that will likely end up being my dissertation topic. That's nice.

i'll have the next couple of posts in the Year in Review series grouped by photographic genre (although i haven't decided exactly what the genres will be. i don't have the slightest idea how Scott pares his selections down so far... there is paring yet to be done of my own photos...)

This first set of pictures consists of pictures that i probably shouldn't like as much as i do, but which i have a strange affinity for.

i saw a car on a twilight evening. Lichen on a rock. My shoe and Colin's feet on a rainy day. Allie illuminated by the dome light of the car she was in. A reflection on the hood of my dad's car. Clinton White standing in a swampy meadow. A stranger silhouetted. A single dandelion stem, past its prime. A messy forest landscape on Bear Peak. Brush in central Oklahoma. People laughing on a dark night.

They all feel like pictures that i shouldn't like very much, but i'm afraid that i like them very much.