Top Ten of the Teens: 2011

I’m often asked “when I got into photography” and there’s no good answer to that question. Of course, to a large degree, I’d been into it at a young age—at least high school, if not earlier—but that’s not a satisfying answer since I certainly wasn’t shooting back then. So if not then, when? Was it when I started buying my first non-kit lenses in Korea and went into Seoul to practice street photography? Was it in Iraq when I treated my battalion’s deployment as the opportunity to self-embed even though I hardly picked up a camera for years afterwards? What about 2006 when I first started shooting regularly, especially since it was at this point that I started my long-running Chicago documentary project?

To me, none of those are really the right answers—to the extent there is a right answer, it is May, 2011.

The photo below is the second frame I ever made in Paris—on my first trip to France. The story of that trip is a tale in its own right, but as for this frame, it was rare moment—at that point in my photographic development—where I saw the moment (the “decisive moment” if I can quote Cartier-Bresson, which, since we’re talking about Paris, I think I can)—did not hesitate, and got the shot. As it happened, I got a LOT of shots on this trip—some of the best photos I’d taken until that point and still some of the best photos I’ve ever taken of Paris. And out of that trip, something snapped. I realized that I hadn’t been taking photography seriously, that I wasn’t really doing it intentionally and I wasn’t really trying to grow at it. After May 2011, that started to change. It was definitely two steps forward, one back, that sort of thing (HDR would remain a thing for a few more years). But from this point forward, things began to change.

And this still remains one of the best street candids I’ve shot in my life.

The Boulevard Saint-Germain, 6eme arrondissement, Paris. May 26, 2011.

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Top Ten of the Teens: 2010

Something I haven’t ever really done is go through my archives in a systemic way and really take in what I’ve shot. With this being the end of the year, I was considering going back and looking for my top shots of the year but since it’s also the end of the decade, I thought it might be worthwhile to go back and look at my top shots from the last ten years. But rather than just look at the top ten overall—which would skew heavily to the last two years or so—I’m going with the top photo from each year.

Picking the best one from each year is obviously hard, especially given that I had a couple of pretty lean years in this span. Also, I had to resist the temptation to pick an “important” (but merely “very good”) photo over what was my best frame of that year. And so, with that, let’s begin.

2010 was virtually the stone age when it comes to me and photography. I’d long since been to Iraq and I’d been shooting regularly for about three years at this point but I still wasn’t really practicing photography intentionally. Largely my photography at this point was urban landscape focused (though at least my Chicago stuff was somewhat focused on endangered buildings and areas) and I was still developing a style and really learning how to see. I was also still heavily into HDR and the less said about that the better.

With all of the above, my best frame of the year was something of a lucky shot. But it does show use of negative space and rigid composition that I think my later stuff would demonstrate. And if nothing else, at least it’s not HDR.

Dupont Circle, Washington D.C. Aug. 2, 2010.


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A little late with this one since it happened right before Thanksgiving but I got my second basketball game of the year—and while I shot plenty of games while I was with The Daily Iowan, the quality of my gear has improved significantly since then and so have my photos. As an aside, I do believe the photographer is more important than the gear—but there does comes times (and sports is one of them) where the gear really does matter.

One note and a lesson relearned: at one point during the game, an Iowa player landed awkwardly and went down to the court. A voice in my head said “gee, better get some shots of that” although at the time it wasn’t clear what was wrong. Later in the second half, the same guy was on the bench with his knee iced (me: “huh, guess he really did get hurt.”) and during a timeout, I fired off a few more frames. Turned out, he’d suffered a torn MCL and was done for the year. And in an otherwise unimportant early season basketball game, what was storyline (and dom photos?). Yup.

The Political Beat, bis.

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Got a short notice political assignment this last weekend—and while I would have jumped at the opportunity regardless, the chance to cross another candidate off of my bingo card was certainly something I wasn’t going to pass up.

Back on the Politics Beat

I hadn’t shot any politics in well over a month, so when I had a chance to shoot an Elizabeth Warren rally, I jumped at the opportunity (and, let’s be honest: to scratch her name of my “politicians to photograph” bingo card). I refrain from anything close to politics on here, but I will say that the light at the venue was great which made for a very easy night of shooting (and a lot of good photos).

I get asked frequently what my favorite sport to shoot is—spoiler: it’s football—but when you’ve got light like I did at this rally, it’s hard to see how politics isn’t high up on the list.

Back on the protest beat

I wasn’t originally planning on shooting the Iowa City Climate Strike. I’ve shot environmental protests before and if you’ve shot one, you’ve kind of shot them all. And besides, with this being election season in Iowa, any protest is going to turn into another political rally of some sort. But when I heard that Greta Thunberg was coming, well, it kind of forced my hand—whatever my views on using a child with aspergers to push a political point, she’s a public figure of some notoriety and she was going to be speaking a mile away from me. So I grabbed my gear and headed out.

It's no prize-winning hog, but it'll have to do

I am not a native Iowan. Nevertheless, I have a great appreciation for the Iowa State Fair and what it means for the people of this state. I’d assumed the Fair was nothing (“nothing”) but food and giant hog competitions but that was good enough for me, and so I visited it after my first year of law school. And while it WAS all of that, I also found out that there were other competitions—including photography.

And with that, my quest to get a Blue Ribbon at the Iowa State Fair was on.

I entered a slate of photos my second year in Iowa and while I had a couple of them get selected for showing, I didn’t pull in any ribbons. My third year of law school would be my last try (I didn’t want to enter if I wasn’t living in Iowa) and I was hoping something would stick.

I was planning to undergo routine surgery in December of ‘18 and so, for the recovery, our photo coach at The Daily Iowan, Danny Wilcox-Frazier, had given me some photographers to study while I recovered, one of whom was Todd Hido. Hido’s landscapes immediately drew me in, especially his use of flash to illuminate falling snow, a technique I’d never seen before. I decided that, as soon as I’d recovered and there was some snow in Iowa, I’d go out and try the technique myself.

I wouldn’t have to wait long—four weeks after surgery, I was back to normal and a blizzard dumped several inches of snow on Iowa City. I wandered around with a flash and a tripod and managed to get this:

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I was certainly happy with it, and immediately thought it would be good Fair-bait. That turned out to be the case—I submitted it (along with three other photos) to the Fair and found out that I’d won an award for one of them. But the Fair didn’t tell you what had won what—to find out, you’d have to go to the Fair. And so, I trekked out to Des Moines (let’s be honest, I was going to go anyway) and made a beeline to the photography salon. At which point, I was greeted with this:

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It’s no prize-winning hog, mind you, but it’ll have to do.

The Politics Beat

Strangely, while I’ve been in Iowa for (going on) four years, I haven’t shot nearly as much politics as I’d have thought when I started working as a photojournalist. Oh sure, I shot some mid-term stuff in 2018 and I’ve actually shot quite a bit of the 2020 Democratic field but it’s mostly been smaller candidates or bigger candidates at smaller venues—I hadn’t actually shot a good ol’ fashioned campaign rally. Until yesterday, that is. Bernie Sanders brought his talents to The University of Iowa and I got the call: