2021 went by in the blink of an eye and I don’t feel like I have a whole lot to show for it other than my sixth consecutive year of the Photo of the Day. So, in an effort to boost my morale and prove to myself that I did, in fact, do things this year – here’s a recap.
The beginning of the year was slow. I shuffled about in Boulder, sat in I-70 traffic way too much to go skiing, and had to create some boundaries with Smokey, the neighborhood cat.
In March, I was a bit desperate for some semblance of my old life so I loaded up the van and drove out to Vegas, Moab, and Bluff, UT for some new adventures with old friends.
Celebrating Ingrid’s birthday.
On my drive home, I received the wildest text from my friend Tara Kerzhner. She threw me the biggest bone of my career and I am eternally grateful – an opportunity to shoot for the New York Times. Within 24 hours they killed the story that I was originally assigned to, but then put me on another assignment to shoot a mega snow storm that was supposed to hit Colorado the next day. Of course, it only snowed about 8 inches which was pretty un-news worthy, so the photos never ran. I finally got my break a week later when another editor called with the small assignment to photograph the elderly living it up now that they were vaccinated. It was published the next day and I felt like I had just hit a small, but very cool milestone.
A couple enjoy a night out at Boulder’s Frasca.
Little did I know how quickly I was going to surpass that milestone. The next afternoon, I received another call from my editor. An active mass shooting was happening five miles from my house and I was asked if I could get myself there immediately and document. Within 10 minutes I was holding my camera to my face as I watched victims from the shooting pour out of King Soopers. SWAT teams and police force swarmed the shopping complex for hours and I just stood on the other side of yellow tape with hundreds of other news outlets trying to capture the chaos. For three days, I photographed the aftermath and my photos were all over the homepage of the New York Times. It was a surreal experience for multiple reasons.
I have a lot of thoughts about that experience. Enough to write a whole other blog post, but I think I’ll refrain. All I’ll say is that it was perhaps the most traumatizing and most fulfilling work I’ve done to date. I’m not sure the migraine and ulcer I endured were worth seeing my photo on the A1 fold of the New York Times, but for the first time it felt like taking photos mattered.
In a bit of a blur, Daniel and I left for St. George, UT at the end of that stressful week. We had planned to live there for a month with our friends to enjoy some warmer weather and better climbing. We settled into life in the desert for a month and enjoyed quality time with quality friends.
A string of work lined up perfectly at the end of April. I took the van to Grand Junction, CO for another assignment with the New York Times, this time photographing how a university and its students tested for Covid and remained open during the spring of 2021. From there, I drove down to Indian Creek to photograph an assignment for Patagonia, which really ended up being a super fun week of climbing and hanging out with a great group of ladies. As soon as that wrapped, I beelined it for Black Canyon City, AZ where I would be waking up at 3:30am the next morning to begin shooting the Cocodona 250 mile trail race over the next five days.
The start of summer was relaxing and easy. We gardened, had dinner parties again, and enjoyed a very lush and green start to the season, which included many laps up the flatiron “triple lutz” as we call it.
Tara scrambles up The Spy on another lovely Triple Lutz outing.
I had a fun shoot photographing the photographer for LowePro with Tara in RMNP. My sister visited and we flew up to Reno, NV to visit my brother and sister-in-law for a weekend.
I finally got the chance to witness Western States 100 by photographing the race and athletes for HOKA. Such a fun and exhausting experience, which I hope to repeat in 2022. I just love photographing races.
Daniel and I took a short trip up to Lander, WY over 4th of July weekend to visit our friends and climb. We went to the Lander Rodeo with all our friends, which is a memory I won’t soon forget.
The 4th of July rodeo in Lander, WY.
In August, I finally pulled the trigger and bought a ticket back to Chamonix for a month. It had been nearly two years since I had last visited and thought UTMB week would be a fun reason to return. I ran a bunch, got stressed out of my mind crewing for two of the races, and was generally psyched on getting out and taking photos.
Sunset on Mont Blanc.
With a week left in my stay, I got a call from Daniel. Our very close friend Eddie had died in a car accident. I got on the next flight home.
To put it plainly, Eddie was one of the best humans I’ve ever had the pleasure to know and an invaluable friend to many. To see his friends, his partner, and his family hurt just like I did six years ago brought back a form of grief I haven’t felt in some time. The classic saying, “grief is non linear” obviously applies, but without the footnote explaining that grief can include many, I think it sometimes falls short of describing what it means to live with continued loss. It’s like a graph with lots and lots of grief lines, all intersecting at random points and rising and falling without any real explanation. This fundamental ambiguity of what it means to be human continues to confound me the older I get. That we can experience this deep loss over and over again, and yet our tolerance and acceptance remain the same. The brain somehow rewrites over the trauma - perhaps to protect us - yet when it happens again we feel shattered and none the more prepared.
Life carries on whether you’re ready to or not, and we spent the next month close to home and close to friends. Work came to a complete stop. The Monastery in Estes Park became our ritual every weekend, as did picking up the rotting apples in our front yard.
Daniel and I flew back to New Hampshire for a week of climbing in Rumney and a friend’s wedding in Maine.
Post climbing dip. Rumney, NH.
I photographed some events in the fall, but most of my momentum and drive from the summer seemed to dry up. No opportunities came knocking, and I didn’t exactly go looking for them either. The leaves started falling and so did my morale.
Luckily, we decided to shake things up and packed up the van for a month on the road. We went to Vegas for two weeks to climb and celebrate our friend’s wedding, and then up to Bend, OR to visit Daniel’s family for Thanksgiving. It was a well needed trip and a great time seeing friends and family.
Pepper the puppy and newest edition to the Jordan family.
The last month of 2021 took me for a ride when three awesome shoots flooded my inbox. But in classic fashion, they all got cut at the very last minute and quite honestly left me heavily disappointed. I questioned whether I still have the energy to hustle within such a competitive industry, and whether I even have the talent to back it up. Maintaining confidence in yourself is really hard to do when it feels like no one wants to hire you anymore.
Alas, there’s not much to do at the end of the year so I set aside my gloomy feelings, decorated a Christmas tree, and then headed south to Texas with Daniel to climb and ring in the new year with a few of Eddie’s friends in Hueco Tanks, TX.
Sparklers with sparkliest crew I know.
2021 felt like a weird year. I had a lot of big breaks with my photography, but oddly feel like I’m less successful in my career than in years past. Perhaps that’s because I don’t feel like I was creatively challenged. I miss learning new skills and trying new things. I kind of just miss being a student and being able to practice without the pressure to get it right. Hopefully something I’ll focus on more in the coming year.
Anyways, hope y’all liked the photos and were able to endure the words. Thanks for following along.