Where the heck will I go?
Happy New Year! After a splendid holiday break in Memphis, TN and Chicago, IL it is finally time to talk about my plans for 2025!
Magical floating lanterns at a light show in Chicagoland (2025)
This is my year of DISCOVERY; a year where I intend to try new things, explore new places, and generally get out of some patterns I have fallen into over the last couple of years. Those patterns include, namely, quite a few repeat backpacking and camping trips. While I love exploring the Four Pass Loop near Aspen for instance, it is time for me to give it and other trips like it a break. That being said, I’m not going to full-on commit to zero repeats this year. If I do repeat an adventure, it will be very selectively and I will be making every effort to do it in an exciting different way.
This year I’m breaking down my plans by season and it is, by far, shaping up to be the most planned I’ve been coming into a new year. To list off just a few plans and ideas, in the Winter I plan to be skiing and snowshoeing every weekend while mixing in photography (new to me as I usually just enjoy the ride and leave my camera at home). There will be some ski action photos coming VERY soon so keep an eye out for those! In the Spring, I will be embarking on a couple of photography missions to southern Colorado to see some seasonally reoccurring things like the Sandhill Crane migration and Medano Creek surging from snow melt. In the Summer, my plans include MANY new backpacking trips including one to the San Juans which should be beyond epic for views and photos. And, finally, the Fall will contain some leaf peeping in the mountains via backpacking (can’t say where yet 😜). I also plan to mix in off-roading, a somewhat new to me way of exploring the outdoors and high places of Colorado!
Throughout all of these trips I plan to switch my photography style up. Historically I’ve shot a lot of “fine art style” photos, and I plan to continue shooting them since I absolutely LOVE the deliberate nature of composing them. But I’m also going to be shooting more documentary style photos (see my Colorado Trail Segment 8 Blog to get an idea of what I mean) and maybe a few videos (*gasp, *hiss, *cringe). This I think is my true calling with this website and STORYTELLING hobby - showing others what my friends and I get up to in the outdoors.
One last thing to mention, if you follow me on Instagram you’ve no doubt seen by now that I’ve taken on a fairly large project for 2025 called 365 Sunlight. In this project, it is my goal to capture a photo of sunlight every single day for a whole year. These photos will not always be of landscapes as my main objective is to simply find interesting light each day, wherever I may be. So far this has meant I’ve shot an abandoned soccer field at sunrise, a foggy sky through a chain link fence, some nice morning light on the golf course by my apartment, and a wildly colorful sunset. Not exactly all within my usual style, but it sure is fun to explore creatively! These photos will likely be added to a gallery within my portfolio at a later date (aka once I accumulate more shots).
So, are you ready for a wild year? Hold onto your butts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride!
