In photography there is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality.
- Alfred Stieglitz

Five Mile Gulch. Nov. 19, 2024. Shot on the Mamiya RB67 Pro S with Ektar 100.

Howdy and happy new year lovely people! I know, it’s already late January and I’m still thinking about 2024 and favorite music and movies and photographs and that I learned one really important tool that I'm using all the time again which is to ask when I see a link to an article...

How will clicking on this link contribute toward me living the life I want to live today?

It's like a Turing test or a bullshit detector and it's working.

Favorite music of 2024

Amber of Memory album cover by Tommy Guerrero

Amazon Music (I know, I have feelings about this service too…) let me know that my favorite album of the year was Tommy Guerrero’s “Amber of Memory” which I do really love and it’s got an LA chill vibe and actual guitars all reverbed out neo-surf style and I also listened a lot to Hiroshi Yoshimura’s “Surround” and more recently “Green” and this fall and winter listening to any (mostly Harbinger region of Norway) Nils Økland project and Tim Hecker’s “Ravedeath, 1972” and others too and on repeat because it’s great music to write and work and edit photos to. So there’s that.

Favorite film of 2024

Yes, my favorite film of 2024 was “LA LA Land.” I know it didn’t come out in 2024 but last year was when I finally saw it and then saw it four more times so I’ve watched that film five times in the last year. The story is compelling of when and how we get in our own way towards living our lives but it’s the acting (I have a crush on Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone both and especially together) and really the music that pulls me through their story and Los Angeles too.

Among other artists

All things being as is now. Summer 2024. This photograph was made during a residency with the Alexa Rose Foundation and The Common Well Boise in Spring-Summer 2024.

2024 started with a trip for me to LA to check out a new camera store and visit some art museums (and eat some yummy plant-positive food) and that led to an artists’ residency at The Common Well Boise with the Alexa Rose Foundation and the Boise Open Studios event and we got over to Port Townsend, Washington which is a cool town of 11,000 who somehow support three bookstores, four bicycle shops, and about nine art galleries and they have trees over there and a lot of water and now I’m dreaming of riding a bicycle through the desert with a couple of cameras.

Anthony Bourdain prints

Speaking of clicking links…are you an Anthony Bourdain fan? My friend Dave (aka David Scott Holloway) is a photographer and worked with Bourdain during his “Parts Unknown” years. Before then we skated both public skateparks in Arkansas on long nights in college together. Holloway is a good dude and you may remember seeing his photo of an airplane sticking out of the Pentagon a few years ago. The point…Dave has a few prints of Bourdain for sale on his website but only through Jan. 30, 2025.

Favorite photo(s) I made in 2024

So, I have many that I’ve seen this year and want to write more about those but here are two that I made that I’m really proud of—one shot while riding a bicycle and another shot in an old military base on the Olympic Peninsula.

Self portrait on a bicycle early in the morning along a favorite wall

This one was made early in the morning and the scene was set up like a portrait under a street light in front of a wall where I often photograph bicycles. I thought it would be fun to try and ride through the scene and turn my headlight on and off during a long exposure which is the floating light in the center of the image.

It only takes a little light to see that this is not the end

It took me three weeks of writing every morning to find the title for this one and I hope the simplicity of the scene resonates with you as much as it does for me. I love how we’re surrounded in darkness yet facing an unseen source of light which is all natural light spilling into this massive block of concrete at the top of a bluff overlooking the Salish Sea.

And it is and going and more and soon…

If you enjoy this email, please send it along to a friend. Or an adversary.

These (are a few of my favorite) things - 2024 remix