The end of the year is a time for reflection on the year past.

Looking forward and looking behind is healthy if kept in balance. This year has been a bad sequel to 2020. Photographically my creativity suffered the most through the buzz of death from the powers that be. I was stressed out way more than I’d like to admit and my ability to cope with being stressed out this much needs work. During this stressful venture I photographed enough of the city to feel like I checked a box and I never meant to make my photography career feel like I had to birth a sort of ghostly copy of myself to mime the movements of taking photos. On the other hand I have been taking a hybrid break with going out and taking new photos in order to make time for polishing the work I’ve already taken and trying to sell it.

Speaking of – from a purely statistical standpoint, focusing on selling my photo prints a little more and taking time from actual ventures was good. Photo print sales grew by 300% this year. In layman’s terms, I simply sold 3 prints in comparison to 0 last year. But I haven’t looked at life in that way since I was 17.

19,663 and about 425 GB of memories taken over this grand year. Last year I took about 7k more than that, mostly real estate photos. This year’s real estate photography gigs were a lot slower. Though I’m sure the first chunk of this year’s will be an endless amount of empty rooms.

I wonder how being in and capturing and viewing thousands of empty rooms essentially has changed my perception. I think that my experiences in photography, like the political world has gone to extremes. I recall being in empty rooms, pools, clubhouses without a sign of any humans. and the next time I’m behind the camera I’m in a room of hundreds at a concert with a lot more energy moving around. I decided to name this year’s show To The New Era because my experiences in Austin were minted. My life as an austinite went from idea to final draft and intend to make a sequel to it in 2022.

I used my friend Carlo’s desktop to process the photos this year because my laptop has developed a minor PCie error where it trips a failsafe to save the cpu from melting except it doesn’t go anywhere close to that high of a temperature.

This year took about 18 hours to process all 19k photos and that is about half the time it took last year. Though last year I did take about 7k more than this year and that’s ok to me. I push myself to beat personal bests year over year and I did that in other ways outside of my photography. For one example I was able to surpass the total views I got over the entire year in 2020 and that felt really good! For photography though I have more control over the theme or plan I put my mind to over each year and 2021 was a year focused on selling photos I’ve already taken which was successful namely because I chased after the goal of selling just one print and managed to sell about 5. The consequences of shifting my focus to sales also took away a lot of carefully balanced perception on my art and thus I went out and took photos far less than usual.

My top tier work from 2021:

2022!

The year of even numbers 2 zero 2 2. each number adds up to even more… even numbers also I am turning 28 which is a multiple of 2. Let’s hope the road ahead is also level or evenly spread out. I’d like my challenges to allow a day or two off in between thank you!

Anyways

Here is Corey’s Big Picture Show 2021!

To the new era

I watched this video as scheduled on December 25th 2021 with my mentor of over 19 years and his wife, Ann. They described it as “getting sucked in” and expressed their admiration for how much I’ve done over the year. The video to me show with great efficiency just how much I’ve gotten into over the year and I’ve discovered a pattern in my life. After every big exciting gathering or concert I capture I always roam back into isolation and photograph nature again. This pattern is repeated throughout the video. To me that just means I am a nature lover, a macro lover, and I really miss my hometown. Back in Duluth, MN deer run free and forests and lakes are accurately named so. See back in Duluth while visiting I got to refill my cup of real nature. The largest fresh water lake in the world was my backyard for 25 years and my idea of nature is notably high. So inbetween the city life greatest hits of skyscrapers and concerts I always remember my roots and conditioning of finding my center in nature. In the new year I’ll be taking trips specifically to capture more of what is undeniably the cure to any rut I find myself in.

To the new year! Happy New Year!!!