Best of the Year: 2021

2020 was the year Covid struck and everything changed. 2021 was the year Laurie and I finally made the move to Washington and settled into our new home and life outside of California. 2021 was a year where photography often wasn’t the focus, partly because the virus hasn’t left and partly because of the move, and I literally did not turn on a camera between the beginning of May and mid-August. A lot of what I did photograph was as part of other activities, whether out birding or enjoying watching the feeder outside my office (until the bear ate the feeder and I had to take it down for a while).

So 2021 wasn’t a prolific year, but I did end up with more new images than in 2020. I generally rate my images 3, 4, or 5 stars (keepers, above average, and portfolio quality), and I was a bit surprised when I went to do my first culling for this best of selection to find I had rated one — a single image — four stars. Now, typically, with the exception of really exceptional images, I rate most stuff three stars to start, and then go back later when I can compare, say, a quarter’s worth of images against each other to start rating things up, but I think this block of keeper images sums up the year well; it was a solid year, but I don’t know that many images really stood out as great. I do a final year end rating of all images for the year, and I ended up with 21 images I rated 4 stars and 128 images 3 stars, for a total of 149 new images for the year. For the first time, not one image made the portfolio quality cut — but I’m satisfied with what I did produce, and I think 2021 sets me up for new opportunities with the camera I’m really looking forward to, and which will push me in new directions.

So 2021 was a much better year than 2020 on many levels, and 2021 was a solid photography year, if not a stunning one. I’ll declare this a win and start planning for next year…