What makes my best of photos list? Is it the photos that moved me the most? The most beautiful photos? The ones I’d hang on a wall? The ones where I learned something? The ones New York editors laugh at? The ones where I learned something beyond photography? The images where the experience with the subject outshone my photography?

I don’t know the answer to that. I don’t know why certain photos stick in our heads and hearts and some are long forgotten by the photographer. Lately, I’m drawn to the photos that feel like stanzas in a long poem. So that’s what you’re getting today. Ask me my best of 2010 next week and it might be a different story, a different song, a different ode to the past 365 days.

From start to finish, 2010 has been an absolute whirlwind. Someone asked me on Twitter if this had been my best year yet, and that’s quite possibly the case. First, I traveled. Ireland, Sun City several times, rural Kansas, Wichita, rural Arizona, rural Georgia, rural South Carolina, rural Washington, Upstate New York, New York City, New Orleans twice, Charlotte, Austin, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Big Sur, Raleigh, Asheville, Charleston, Augusta, and everywhere else I’m forgetting.

I picked up some new clients this year: New Scientist, AARP Bulletin, Education Week, Shape, Scientific American, US News and World Report.

I bought my first house this year (which I never thought I’d do, let alone in my second year as a full-time self-employed photographer). I was awarded both Critical Mass and the 2011 Houston Center for Photography Fellowship for my Sun City: Life After Life essay on Sun City, Arizona’s 50th anniversary year.

I rode the last C-Tran bus in Clayton County, Georgia with the very passengers who depended on it to get to and from work every day. I witnessed a man dying, face covered in blood on the pavement in Sun City. I sat with a woman a few days before she turned 110 years old. I stood on the Cliffs of Moher, slept in a hundreds years old castle with some of my favorite people, and rode bikes across one of the Aran Islands in Ireland. I photographed singer Emily Saliers of the Indigo Girls, who I grew up listening to in elementary school. I spent Valentine’s Day morning in the hotel room of an Elvis impersonator as he put on make-up. I wandered the dirt roads of the center of the contiguous United States. I photographed my fourth Masters Golf Tournament from outside the gates this year. I fell in love with The Impossible Project’s instant analog film and went on a road trip from Seattle, WA to Big Sur, CA shooting nothing but instant film. I won a jackpot in Las Vegas–which isn’t saying much since I was playing the penny slots. I went on a bear hunt in rural South Carolina. I met grieving women and shared tears with them and photographed their strength. I rode in the back of an SUV with rap music blaring as hip hop artist Waka Flocka drove to the mall for new Nikes. I went to PhotoNOLA, my first photo review. I drafted my first self-published book on a photographic essay of mine. I had images appear in two group gallery shows (Make Do at 25 CPW, and a juried Houston Center for Photography show. I have three upcoming shows in 2011–one January 19 in NYC, one January 29 in Atlanta, and my first solo show May 6 in Houston! So mark your calendars if you’ll be nearby.)

Yet, none of this would have happened if I wasn’t a photographer. None of it.

It’s no wonder I work so much because my passion and my job are lines that are completely blurred.

Oddly enough, not one single image in this list of favorites are photos I shot while I was “working,” which wasn’t planned. That’s to say, no editor assigned me any of these shoots. That makes sense, though, because LUCEO is deeply rooted in personal work and that is always my top priority. I worked for a lot of clients this year, and a lot of them called thrilled with the work, but while those experiences on their jobs helped me grow as a photographer and helped me relate to people and learn, those aren’t the photos that linger most for me at this moment for this year.

The best of both worlds is when personal work becomes work for a client. I am so grateful to the AARP Bulletin and TIME Magazine for supporting my Sun City essay, which became my biggest labor of love for the year. Look for images from that work in both those amazing publications in 2011!

It’s been an insane year and it’s all so hard to measure.

I’ve learned a lot.

I feel my photographic style has evolved and matured (hey verticals, where ya been the past 5 years?).

I’m forever grateful to my co-members in LUCEO for guiding and inspiring me along this path of photographic passion. I’m grateful to anyone I come across that allows me to take a photo of them. I’m grateful that my dearest loved ones have patience for a person who works 12-hour-days six days a week. I’m grateful that complete strangers let me into the darkest and the most beautiful parts of their lives and share such truth and beauty with me.

(By the way, here’s my Best of 2009 for those curious.)

What makes my best of photos list? Is it the photos that moved me the most? The most beautiful photos? The ones I'd hang on a wall? The ones where I learned something? The ones New York editors laugh at? The ones where I learned something beyond photography? The images where the experience with ...