The Book: My 2024 In Photos

12/30/2024

For the last few years, my mom has gotten me a photo book of my work as a Christmas gift.

The first book was in 2022 - she downloaded a bunch of photos from my website, arranged them into a book, and surprised me with it. It was the most thoughtful and impressive gift I've ever received. Last year and this year, she told me to curate and arrange a book myself, focused on new photos from the preceding year. I've come to really love the exercise of putting it together. It's a great chance to reflect on my time and my work.

I was showing this year's book to my cousin and he suggested I put it online, which I think is a great idea and the perfect opportunity to tinker with my blog. So this is that: my attempt to adapt a coffee table book to the web. The book itself is sparse on captions but since this is a blog I'll be writing a little more.

Arizona trip 2023

Since the book is a Christmas gift, we prepare it in November and any photos I take in December make it into the next year's book. Last year I spent 2ish weeks in Arizona in December.

The Superstitions

I woke up on Christmas eve and discovered it was foggy?! in Phoenix?! so I hopped in the car and drove to Lost Dutchman State Park to see if The Superstition Mountains looked cool. And they did! The fog cleared by the time I got there but the clouds were still delightful.

These are all digital. I took a large format B&W shot that day but the timing and composition was worse than any of these.

The Desert around Tucson

Tucson is such a beautiful place - something about the desert out there is just special. I don't know if these photos really do it justice.

Boyce Thompson Arboretum

This is one of my favorite places to visit when I'm staying in Phoenix. I cannot recommend it enough. I usually get a lot of photos I love when I go there. This time, however, I mostly shot a roll of Lomo Purple, which I'm glad to have tried but I discovered I'm not a fan.

Biosphere 2

What a cool and unique looking place! Unfortunately while I was there the shutter on my Minolta started to malfunction and most of the photos I took didn't end up being taken at all. That said, the ones that did turn out are some of my favorites. I'm especially fond of the stairs.

Olympic National Park

I went to Olympic National Park with my sister in March, which ended up being a delightful time to visit.

The Hoh Rainforest

We hiked the Hall of Mosses. I wasn't expecting it to be snowy but I am so glad it was. Moss + snow is such a good look. Also on this hike my sister introduced me to fingerless gloves for making it easier to operate a camera in the cold.

Lake Crescent

At the end of our first day in Olympia, we went to Rialto Beach to try and catch a sunset. It ended up being cloudy, but waiting to drive to the hotel til after sunset meant that we ended up passing by Lake Crescent at peak blue hour. It was surreal. When I took the first picture in this row I thought it was going to be the best of the whole trip, but we ended up going back the next morning and it was even more beautiful.

Hurricane Ridge

Beautiful view, terrifying drive. Chains are required for a reason!

Tulip Festival

This was the second year I have been to the Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival in Oregon, but this year my roommate had the idea to get there before sunrise. It was an early morning but it was so, so worth it.

Springtime in Portland

Nothing quite compares to the feeling of walking around on the waterfront on the first sunny weekend of spring

Red winged blackbirds

I finally got an appropriate lens for birding this year. These are just some quick shots from around the neighborhood.

A waterfall and disco balls

The disco balls in the trees were actually decor at my sister's wedding in AZ. The waterfall is unrelated but I feel like these look good together.

Macro roses

I love hanging out in the International Rose Test Garden in Portland. I sometimes go there in the morning before work. Several times this year I brought with me my Hasselblad 500C and a macro tube.

Instax

The first time I brought the macro tube to the rose garden I shot exclusively on Instax. Both the macro tube and the Nons instax back were new to me, and I wasn't feeling confident with them (and indeed many of these are underexposed), but I do have a few bangers here. I ended up taking like 40 pictures over multiple visits. There's something very special about a life size flower reproduced completely analog on site. I mailed most of the originals to my friends.

Ektachrome

I was pondering the Instax's, thinking I liked the contrast and drama but wished they had more detail. I was hesitant to reach for Ektachrome - I had had a relatively bad experience the first time I used it, but I wanted contrast, so I gave it a shot and it ultimately delivered in a huge way. These are a real treat to look at in real life. Unfortunately these were taken on an overcast day and 100 ISO was a little too slow, so many of them have motion blur. Only the first 4 in this row made it into the book, the rest of the roll was too blurry for print. That said, bytes are cheap so I've included 3 of the rejects here as a lil treat

Kodak Gold

I also like these a lot. The first photo in this row is on the cover of the book.

Digital

I did bring a digital camera to the rose garden as well. Only the first two of these are in the book, but honestly I could've included more.

Ektachrome on 4x5

Finally, I after the success of the 120 Ektachrome macros, I decided to make some images with Ektachrome on 4x5. I went back to the rose garden with my Super Graphic and a 210mm lens.

Monochrome squares

These were some of the first photos I took when I got the Hasselblad. Taken at Henry Hagg Lake.

Ektachrome at Crystal Cove

In the book these are in a spread with the Henry Hagg Lake pics above. I think they make a nice visual complement.

Aurora Borealis

We got to see the Northern Lights in Portland this year! Getting pictures of the aurora was a bucket list item for me that I was planning on traveling to Alaska to check off, so I am quite pleased I was able to get some right in my backyard. These were taken in the Columbia Gorge area

New York City

I traveled to New York with some friends this year. I underestimated how heavy the Hasselblad would be to carry around and how tired I'd be, so I ended up not bringing it everywhere. These are The Met and The Oculus on digital.

New York Botanical Garden

It was pretty hot the day we went here but that didn't stop me from taking some bangers. I'm especially fond of this first one.

The Oregon Coast

Went on a road trip all the way down the coast with my roommate in July. We had a good time and I took a lot of photos, but these were the only ones that I ended up putting in the book.

Fall foliage

I was pretty busy this fall, so these were all taken within a mile-ish of my house.

Odds and ends

I kinda threw these photos in at the end of the book.

Back cover

Finally, this is the image on the back cover. It's a stacked time lapse of Earth's rotation under the stars I took near Bend in 2023. I included it in this year's book because it didn't make last year's book - my original attempt at stacking the images didn't look very good. I revisited it this year and finally got a result I'm happy with.

That's all! Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed it. If you have thoughts feel free to email me or hit me up on Bluesky.