Seems like just yesterday when I wrote my my Favorite Photos of 2020 post. Where did the year go?

Anyone want to guess how 2021 went for me?

About the same as 2020 but with interesting exceptions.

First, I’ll talk creatively.

I had another down year.

Creativity and Imagination Takes Time

We are doing online school with my kid this year, which means much of my creative time is wrapped up in school. My wife and I are splitting the time to do it, and as an example of how hard that is and because she tracks her hours whereas I just work all the time, we know that she has lost about a full month of hours in 2021 due to online schooling. She often starts work before I’m out of bed to go photograph sunrise and she works until late at night. It’s a lot of work to homeschool your kid! Parents should consider sending their kids to school as a sort of modern-day luxury for freeing up time as well as all the benefits for the kid and the necessity of doing so.

The amount of work going into online schooling has been subtracted from the amount of time that I exercise and photograph (I gained 15 pounds after the school year started). I’m not complaining too much though because I’ve gotten to spend far more time with my kid than I ever thought I would, and I’ve seen him learn and grow throughout the year. Plus, he loves online school.

But it does affect my work.

The Yearly Photography Statistics

Each year I look back at the numbers. Here are the numbers of 2021.

• Number of 3-star and above images in 2021: 294 (due to time constraints I haven’t looked through all my images. This will likely go up by a couple dozen.)
• Number of 3-star and above images in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020: 478, 417, 353, 507, 523, 437, 316
• Number of 5-star images: 1
• Number of images that I kept: 16,755 (This will likely go down by 5,000 to 9,000 images. I have not had the time to do a proper culling of images).
• Number of total images in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020: 16,711, 18,461, 18,296, 13,318, 13,448
• Worst month: January with 343 (compared to 295 images in 2020 and 1038 so far in 2022)

The Business Rebound?

Many amateur photographers who want to become pros underestimate the importance of running the business. You need to set goals, hit goal, hit stretch goals. You have to account for all expenses and keep those expenses adjusted based on sales and sales goals. Want that new lens? Want that new camera? Can’t have it unless you had it in the budget or you’ll blow your profit, which is how you pay yourself. There are bills to pay, including insurance. You have to get the proper trainings to operate on public lands and you have to fill out permits, submit paperwork, resubmit paperwork, etc… It seems endless, because the business side of photography is endless. When you’re an amateur, you can just end your photography at anytime and pick it back up on a whim when you want to. With a business, you can’t. Even when you quit a business, there’s still the business of quitting and all the paperwork that involves.

The good news for me was my business mostly rebounded from a disastrous 2020, and despite students using credits they had from covid, I still had one of my better years. The reason was that I added extra workshops, got a few out-of-the-blue big image sales, such as a book cover, and I taught a bunch of online classes, webinars and had online video sales. I think I worked harder in 2021 than in any year since I closed my sea kayak guiding business. I got to the point that I ended up turning down work, because I couldn’t fit more work into my schedule in the timeframe that they wanted the work done.

My big goal in 2021 was to work as hard as possible to get all the workshop credits from 2020 used and then make back all the money that I lost in 2020. I came close to those goals. It’s weird, because a lot of those credits that I had to get used were from deposits paid in 2019. It was a big goal to have and to come as close as I did to hitting that goal feels good.

My Favorite Images of 2021

Without any further ado, here is an explanation of my selection criteria. Actually, you should go read my selection criteria in the newsletter that I started in 2021.

January

I really like this shot from January, because it is probably the best shot that I’ve taken of this old fish house. I’m not hip on the flare, but not much to do about it now.

February

This is a shot of my current favorite style and the conditions came together perfectly in this image. The wave and its speed echo the softness of the ice and snow on the foreground rocks, touches of the sunset extend into the little slot canyon.

March

March gave perfect conditions at The Tombolo, a favorite place to shoot. With water levels closer to normal more rocks and structure came back which I think adds interest to the foreground there. The speed of the water and the colors of the sky all brought this image together for me.

April

This shot turned out great and just draws me in, so it ended up as a favorite for April.

May

In May, I did a 160-mile trip from Grand Marais to the Boundary Waters to Lutsen Resort by canoe. It followed a historic route from 1879. I’ll be doing a presentation on it at virtual Canoecopia in March of this year. I took this shot on the trip. I’ve paddled past this spot multiple times, but never took the time to stop before. It was also right after a massive thunderstorm and the water was running!

You can see the trailer for my Canoecopia presentation here

June

In July, I was testing out a new filter with my h-alpha modified camera and made this image. It’s so dreamy. What’s not to love?

July

During the early parts of the pandemic when we were locked down, I found joy in photographing insects in our front yard. My favorite where these skipper butterflies. They don’t stay around the whole summer, so when they returned I made sure to spend some time with them. While I doubt they are the same butterflies, they seemed more used to me and that was fun.

August

I’ve photographed these rocks many times, but I think I finally nailed the composition in this photo. The colors are so subtle and it’s a fun shot.

September

In September, I was able to return to the Black Hills to teach my Badlands and Black Hills Photography Workshop. I had to cancel it in 2020. It was great to be back in the Black Hills at one of my favorite viewpoints with workshop participants that I’ve become friends with over the years. The conditions we got were great.

October

As a family, we try and get at least one fall Boundary Waters trip in. Our trip in October 2021 was cold, snowy, windy and kinda brutal as far as weather, but the last sunrise of the trip! This was one of the many photos I took that morning. It was amazing.

November

The family and I hiked into a waterfall hoping that it would be half-frozen and half-open. It was completely frozen. I was about to leave without getting a good shot when I opened my mind to see what was around me and saw this shot.

December

In December, I taught a Death Valley Photography Workshop, which was a workshop that was postponed due to COVID. Instead of flying, I drove. The workshop was all but one returning student and the new participant was a great person to have on the workshop, and it was a blast! This was the last morning of the workshop. It had rained the day before and the wind and rain had cleaned the sand dunes of footprints. After a short hike in, we found this area which had great shots in every direction, but this dune is the one that caught my attention.