Best Photography of the Year: 2021
It’s heading towards the end of December and 2021, so it is time to show off what I think is my best (or perhaps favorite) images of the year. If you want to see this, or my collections of Best of Year selections going back to 2007, you can find them here.
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…
