My Favorite Photos of 2025 - Part 1

I started the year off in some pretty deep grief following the passing of my beloved mother-in-law.

Grief is like swimming out into the ocean to where you can no longer comfortably touch the bottom. The waves don't stop coming just because you don't feel safe, anymore. They're relentless.

Sometimes you're able to keep your head above the waves, sometimes they go right over you.

And sometimes you get a set of waves that not only go over your head, but their force makes you go topsy turvy underwater and sometimes they're no longer evenly spaced out and predictable but they come one right after the other and just when you feel like you can take a breath another one comes crashing into your face and you're pushed under and you can only hear that underwater muffled jet engine white noise roar and taste the salt water and feel it like acid in your throat and you try to cough it out but you're underwater and you can't find the ocean floor to push yourself up to try and break the surface to spit it out and take a breath you so desperately need so you use your arms and legs to push yourself in the direction you think is upwards and they feel useless against the force of the water surging all around you and then right when you finally break through the surface another wave comes but this time it pushes you back hard enough towards the shore that you're able to find your footing and now you can stand and finally breathe that deep kind of breath that reassures your conscience and your body that you're safe and everything's going to be ok even though for just a second or two your mind and body went into panic mode because the ocean was deafening and your vision was non-existent and every effort you made to swim and save yourself felt useless despite all your exertions.

Then you catch your breath, look out into the ocean and ask, "Is that the best you got?" And you jump right back in and let the water do its thing.

What other choice do you have?

Taking pictures is kind of like swimming in the sea of grief with a snorkeling mask and flippers.

Artistic endeavors have this life-saving (or at least life easing) quality about them. The act of swimming still requires effort, the water's still frigid, and you're still fat as all hell and wondering if a shark might mistake you for a seal, but the mask and flippers make it just a little easier to do. A little easier to breathe. A little easier to see. A little easier to navigate.

Just a little easier.

So that's my Artist's Statement for the year: art makes life easier.

Taking these pictures made life easier.

Here's 30 of my favorite photos from the first-half of 2025. They're my favorites because they take me back to what I was doing, who I was with, what I was feeling, and what I was experiencing when I took them; the memories I was creating and helping to create. And maybe there's a funny one or two hidden in there.

They just mean something to me.

They made life a little easier to swim in and through.