 Today we're looking back on 2021. This was my year in photography. Today I thought I'd look back on some of my favorite videos and photos for 2021. 2021 was supposed to be about large format photography. I was very excited. I had just got a new large format camera and I was excited for 2021. Ready to go out and shoot a bunch of 4x5 film. Well, it didn't quite go to plan. It's always good to push yourself and try to grow as a photographer. I've always had this desire to revisit large format photography. It's something I'd done many years ago and I felt like there was a lot of unanswered questions for me with that format. I just love the detail, the tonal values, the tonal range you get in a 4x5 negative and I just wanted to see where I could go with that. But looking back at my favorite videos and my favorite photos, I started to see a pattern. One of my favorite videos was chasing a dream where I went back to a high mountain lake, revisited it and hopes to get a certain photo and when I got there, the photo was wanting to get. It wasn't there, but what was there was some really nice conditions, fast changing, light, mist. The conditions are moving too quickly to try to set up a 4x5 camera right now. Initially, what I wanted to do was shoot 4x5 this morning but I'm going to go to plan B and I brought my digital camera just in case and this is the kind of situation where probably going to have to just go with digital right now. I made some images in about 30 minutes when the conditions were really good and I really liked what I came away with and that kind of planted the seed in my head. Hmm, is there something here? Should I still be trying to shoot 4x5? And I really, really wanted to shoot 4x5 but I was willing to just put that on and set the camera aside for that shoot. Then I noticed another one of my favorite videos. I tripped to the coast for the Oregon Dunes and once again, because the conditions were, the light was changing pretty quickly, it's just, oh man, the dunes are just beautiful. But in the short time I've been out here, I can already see that the light has changed so much. So I've got to work fairly quickly this morning to get, before the sun gets too high and then it just flattens out the dunes. So I decided to use my 35 millimeter digital camera so I can make the most of the time I had to shoot because it was basically just about an hour in the morning and hour, hour and a half in the evening. I packed my 4x5 gear, I also packed a digital kit to go with that and I hauled it across the sand dunes. I ended up just shooting everything with my digital camera and I really liked my photos. It was my favorite shoot of the year, my favorite photos. It felt natural to me. It felt like I was in a zone. It felt like, you know, I've been shooting this way for 30 years so it felt natural to me. It bothered me that I had carried this 4x5 camera in lenses and stuff and film and never used it. And the photos that I took, I really liked. In fact, my favorite photo of the year came from that shoot. Then we go into autumn and again, I started leaning pretty heavily on the digital camera because I wanted to shoot some color and black and white. So most of the photos I took were with my digital 35 millimeter camera. And once again, I felt like the images were pretty good. I felt like the images I was getting represented my vision and photography. So that really put me in a dilemma, a creative dilemma, probably one that many photographers face. The allure of that large negative with the beautiful tone of range and dripping with detail, that's what lured me to using a 4x5 camera. That's what lured me to large format photography. But at what cost? What have I traded away for that beautiful negative? Is it worth it? Do I trade being able to move quickly and set up shots quickly, being able to fine tune them and get the composition more perfected, finding just a little bit better angle that comes with being able to shoot more frames, being able to just make micro adjustments as I work? Do I trade less cost having settled on that one composition or maybe two if I'm lucky? Is that cost worth it? So I'm thinking for 2022, I think I want to focus more on the image and less on the process. That doesn't mean I'm going to abandon 4x5 photography. It just means that my priority is going to be using the gear I need for the image I want to make. And I think the reasons that the photos that worked out in 2021 worked out was because I was willing to use the right gear for the job, the right gear, the right camera for the images I was trying to make and for the way I wanted to work at the time. So that might mean I have to leave the 4x5 camera home and be more thoughtful when I do use it. Bring it out, have a shot already in mind. Instead of just randomly looking for photos or going to a location in hopes to find something with the 4x5 camera, go back to those locations once I have located something that I think will work well with the 4x5. So with the experiences I've had this year with the images I've really liked of being in 35 millimeter, it got me thinking well maybe I should be shooting 35 millimeter film. Maybe I should be doing that more so I can be more playful with my camera. So right now I'm working on a video that I'm testing out a roll of Delta 100 to see if the look of 35 millimeter film is different enough from what I get from a digital camera. And if there is enough difference there that might compel me to shoot a lot of my film in 35 millimeter. It would allow me to use the same lenses I use now with my digital camera. It would allow me to have a digital camera and a film camera in the same bag right next to each other. It would allow me to consolidate my gear into one system. So that'll be coming here in 2022. That's what we'll be working on. So I'm looking forward to some new adventures. New adventures in film. We're just maybe testing the waters in a different format. We'll see how it goes. I really appreciate all the comments and those who have subscribed to my channel through the year, through the years. It makes making these videos a lot of fun. If there are things you'd like to see, now you've got to keep mine. I have no money. But if there's things you'd like to see, my hopes is that my channel can be also more educational. I've started in 2021 another series called Deconstructing Photography where it's just basically everything photography. And this is where I can share a lot more of the technical aspects of photography and not just showing me taking pictures out in the field. I've done a few episodes so far and a couple of those have focused on photojournalism and I have one more that I'm working on in photojournalism and that should be coming here pretty soon as well. I'm trying to come up with more ideas, more ways to share photography information, and I'd like to both inspire and educate. I don't know how much inspiration you're going to get from me, but I'm going to do my best. I'm looking forward to the new possibilities for 2022. There are a lot of things that I'd like to try. It's always a learning experience for me, but I don't want to make this always about me. I want to be able to pass along useful information to the viewer. What is it in photography that you're having the most trouble with? And maybe we can address some of that on this channel. I want to leave you with my favorite image of the year. I don't suspect anybody would consider this my best image, but this is the one that speaks to me the most. This is the one where I envisioned something and it turned out just how I envisioned it. It's very simple. It just speaks to me. It's just light and shadow. So here's to a new year and our photography journeys. Thanks for coming along for the ride. But today we found a shot. We found something.