This has been an interesting year for Arielle and me. It was my busiest year to date. This year I had 73 days of shooting. About a third of them were for personal projects. My projects consisted of Vancouver Winter Olympics, 26 Blocks and a story on the rodeo queens of the Prescott Rodeo that will be published in the NSCU Alumni magazine in the spring.

Through out it all, I’ve had an amazing amount of support from Arielle. At times she’s my muse, most of the time she helps keeps me sane through the craziness.

Through a weird scheduling quirk, the Fiesta Bowl Parade happened twice this year, on January 2nd and December 31st. I thought it was an interesting way to book end the year.

This year I traveled more for business than any other year.

Vancouver was an amazing experience. I felt like I really pushed my vision to produce some of my best work.

It was a tough edit to get it down to only 4 images of the close to 10k images I made over 2 1/2 weeks.

Brad is an amazing guy and a great friend. He really helped me get a handle on my Vancouver work. I’m not someone that is very good at editing my own work, so I’m fortunate to have a friend like Brad.

I haven’t posted any photos from my summer Rodeo Project. The magazine that is publishing it was scheduled to publish the story in December, but it got bumped to the spring. I wanted to hold off showing work from it until it was published. Since it’s been bumped until spring, I thought I would show a couple photos that made it into my best of.

I’m very grateful I had the opportunity to participate in 26 Blocks. It’s a great project with a bunch of very talented writers and photographers.

This year was probably the year I’ve shot the least amount of sports since I got into photojournalism.

Both of these photos were shot on my iPhone. One of my goals for the coming year is to shoot more for myself. This is a great tool to help, since according to a famous photographer, “the best camera is the one you have on you.”

Election night was an interesting night. I hadn’t covered one since I was in Clovis.

One thing that I’ve learned: No matter where your journeys take you, bring a camera and always make images that you’re happy with.

Since I left the newspaper, I’ve shot more assignments and projects then I ever have. I’ve also spent more hours in my office in front of my computer than I ever have. I’m happy to say when an amazing sunset happens, I still make an image of it. I haven’t found two amazing sunsets that are the same.

I have a lot to look forward to in the coming year. No matter how busy I get I’ll always remind myself to have fun and shoot for myself. If I can do that every time I pick up my camera I will be successful beyond my wildest dreams.

This morning I left early to get some photos of workers taking down the fences. The fences that have kept me away from the venues since I’ve been here. Fences and lines seemed to be two themes for the games. I took photos of that, but they didn’t feel right. The tone of the city had changed. It wasn’t an Olympic city anymore. It was a city recovering from a huge two and a half week party. Some people went back to the lives they had before the Olympics. Others it was their job to help restore the city to it’s previous state. Tourists were leaving, very few were out on the streets. The mood I wanted to capture was one of loneliness. When the crowds were around, I never felt alone. I felt part of something greater than myself. While wandering the same places I’ve been many times in my time here, they were empty and cold. I felt alone.

My last full day in Vancouver. I’m filled with emotions as I reflect on this trip. I’ve been here long enough that this is my new normal. Phoenix seems like a lifetime ago. When I think about this trip, I feel opposite extremes at the same time. It seems like I just arrived, but I also feel like I’ve been here a very long time. I can’t express how much fun this has been. It’s also been one of the hardest assignments I’ve shot. I’ve questioned myself many times. It seemed kind of crazy to head up with about a month’s notice and no guarantees of work, but it also seemed like a no brainer. How could I not go?

Interacting with people from all walks of life has been a great joy on this trip. I feel like I missed many more photos than I captured. I’m confident in what I did capture. I’m glad I had today to reflect on the trip and gear down from Vancouver. I’m already gearing up for a busy couple months when I return to Phoenix. I’m excited about making prints and going through my work with Arielle and other photographer friends. I feel my work is done in Vancouver and I’m ready to leave. I’ll also miss the city. I’ll miss the amazing time I had hanging out with Seth, Vickie, Margo and Dale. All of them are very special people. I’m excited to return home to my wife, Arielle. I’m excited about the thought of coming back to visit.

The evening was a lot of fun and was able to met David LaBelle. I bought his book, The Great Picture Hunt, when I was first getting into photojournalism. It was very influential in getting me started along that path.


I hope I was able to help and encourage the students with my critiques. I know the many critiques I’ve had have helped me. Not a bad way to spend a Friday evening.

I feel I’ve done this in my current portfolio and the new one I’m working on, but there’s always something pulling at me to put photos in that will get me hired. Photos that I wouldn’t put in if I stuck to my vision.

According to the Planet Money Podcast, counting to a million would about 11.7 days, a billion would take about 33 years and a trillion would take more than 32,000 years.

I will turn 34 years old in September. I’m over a billion seconds old. After a few calculations, I figured a billion seconds is closer to 31.7 years. I figure that I turned 1,000,000,000 seconds old on May 20th, 2007 at around 10am. Where was I when I turned 1,000,000,000 seconds old?

Less than a month earlier, Arielle and I were married in North Carolina. I was working at the Clovis News Journal in Clovis, New Mexico. May 20th, 2007 was a Sunday, so I had the day off and I was helping out Arielle with a remote she was doing for her radio station. This photo was taken at about 12:48am, less than three hours from when I turned 1,000,000,000 seconds old. That’s well within a 0.1% margin of error. Where were you when you turned 1,000,0000,000 seconds old?