My Favorite Frames of 2024
The images that you've seen (& not yet seen) that are my favorites from the year.
Introduction
First things first, welcome to Between Frames! In the past month, I’ve had a 55% increase in subscribers. WOW! Thanks for subscribing, it means the world to me!
Each year, I comb through all of my photo galleries and compile one big contact sheet full of my favorite images of the year. I think it’s a fun practice that allows me to examine and healthily critique my work from the year.
Slowly, patterns begin to emerge from the sea of images. I’ll see colors that I tended to edit toward, compositions that look alike, and scenes that repeat themselves.
This year, I started with roughly 22,000 images that I took and edited. I narrowed that down to 720 images. Then I culled down again and again, with the first round taking me to 171. After seven more rounds, I ended with 13 selects.
The 13 images I ended on are mostly ones that I’ve shared before. They’re the ones that I wanted everyone to see. This process revealed that I (originally) chose a lot of my favorite images because of what I knew people liked. After this less-than-fun realization, I went back and changed my selects to include images that had more power beyond the fact that they were “crowd pleasers.”
Here’s some of my favorite images from 2024 (with a few words here and there).
A Few Quick Notes!
I’ve compiled the 171 images from my first round of culling in a Google Drive gallery that you can view here.
I’d recommend viewing this on Substack where you can click into the “sub-galleries” and see images larger, plus this newsletter gets cut off on email.
Some images I took in 2024
Zion will always be a second home to me, especially in the winter. There’s nothing like the peace you experience standing next to the Virgin River with no one around you. A short drive away, you’ll find Autocamp Zion, a modern slice of heaven in the high desert of Utah. We’ll be back to Zion & Autocamp soon (there’s something real special in the works that I can’t wait to share).
Remember how I was a full-time photographer within the past year? I barely do lol.
I miss it sometimes, especially when it came to making images like these, but it also burned me out. It took more creativity out of me than could be replenished.
In culling my favorite images, I realized that the collection of images that I have from walks in our LYH neighborhood is quite massive. Massive to the point that I can (& probably will) compile a book of these images.1
Also, in culling through my LYH images, I realized that patterns kept repeating themselves in my galleries.
I talked to a friend a few months ago about this. He referenced Joel Meyerowitz’ famous book, Cape Light, and how many of the photos are of the same few scenes. By photographing the same thing again and again, with varying light, composition, and tones, Meyerowitz told a really compelling story. As I start to focus on long(er) term projects, I want to be mindful to not pass over an image because “I already have one like it.”
Speaking of long term projects, I also spent some time documenting my hometown/home county of Scotland County, NC this year. These first two images are from that trip…
Despite it being the most exhausted I’ve ever been2, Commencement was a weekend full of so so much joy and excitement. It was the end of an era for me, plus I feel like I made some really special images. Here are some more images.
Over our last few days in Lynchburg, I took portraits of all of my/our friends. I ended up with ~85 people that I was able to photograph, but here’s a little sample of some of my favorite images from this project. To all our LYH friends, we love and miss you! Thank you for all you’ve done for us in 2024, 2023, and all the years prior.
I could fill this entire newsletter with photos from France. I’ve actually done that once before. To prevent too much repetition, I’ve attempted to only include the new photos.
Speaking of newsletters about one particular geographical area, I’m working on a special version about our six month stint of living in NJ/NYC. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s getting closer to being done. Go ahead and subscribe now so that you can make sure you receive it once I finish it!
Segueing off of that, here are a few frames from that stint of living in the Northeast.
In late-July & early-August, we spent back-to-back weekends in Ocean City, NJ and Cape Cod, two popular Northeastern beach towns/areas. Both trips were to visit friends and both trips featured some really really nice weather, including some beautiful sunrises & sunsets.
These frames from OCNJ were some of my favorites of the trip. Throughout the entire time we were there, I felt like my compositions were slowly becoming more and more dialed in, from focusing on specific details to leading the viewer’s eye with parts of the scene. It definitely was a good “warm up” for the following weekend on the Cape.
I’ll never get over the color of the sea grass as it’s bathed in warm light. These three images feel like a warm breeze over your skin as the sun is setting off on the horizon.
I’ve photographed Cape Cod a decent amount now, often re-visiting the places that I’ve been to before, continuing the process of documenting the passage of time, like I referenced earlier. In that, I created these images…
I really feel like I created some of my best work of the year over these two weekends. It’s the work that I felt most creative when producing. It also happened to be some of the most meditative photography outings that I’ve been on this year. It was just my camera and me, and that felt so so right.
Okay, that’s genuinely all of the “larger batches” of images from the year. I’ll finish up with some loose images that were favorites, but without a larger trip/story that they were a part of.
Conclusion
That’s all, folks. Thank you for making it this far and for being a supporter of the work that I make. I am genuinely inspired by you choosing to subscribe to see my art. Thank you!
I’ll see you in the next one! Peace & blessings!
-C
*As a reminder, you can see many more of my favorite images in this Google Drive gallery.
Will I sell copies of that book? Doubtful. But it’ll exist one day.
I don’t recommend having the busiest work week at the same time you: leave your job, pack all your belongings in a storage unit, and go on a two week trip to Europe with a 38 hour travel “day”
Love the portrait shots at commencement. I mean honestly all of them are great! What lens are you adapting on the GFX? Just curious as I got a GFX too and always curious what people are adapting to it. (Let’s be honest most people are adapting because GF lenses are crazy expensive. Unless you are rocking GF lenses because then that is sweet. Like the lenses are expensive but also VERY nice.)
The 2 boats in dry dock and the cabin with laundry on the line 👌