Top Photos of 2023

“Those of us who survived, are now through the 4th year of this pandemic.”

That quote is a modification of the introduction to the Top Photos for 2021 post. The death toll rate has subsided some over 2023, but we still accumulated a total of ~1.6 million Americans dead from COVID, and ~7 million deaths worldwide from this pandemic.

Things do seem to be normalizing more, even if wastewater rates are currently skyrocketing in a number of states in America. It is harder to get information however, because some states have simply stopped reporting data. People have decided that it is time to move on I suppose, regardless of the toll.  I just wish things had not been politicized and perhaps we could have contained the COVID-19 pandemic like we did the SARS epidemic of 2002-2003 (770 deaths), and the MERS pandemic (~850 deaths)…

Whew… looking back on the year and I thought 2022 was tough. At this time last year, I said that 2022 was the roughest year of my adult life, but 2023 was a doozy and has 2022 all beat in terms of being difficult. What an all encompassing, demanding year with incredible amounts of frustration from the institution where I work. I truly believe that if we were to try and create retinal connectomics now, it would not be possible to do what we’ve done in the past at the Moran Eye Center/University of Utah in this climate.  We have been successful in funding the work, but the challenges from the environment  have been increasing in difficulty over the past few years.

Despite all that, the lab has continued to be outrageously productive and we have contributed a number of primary publications to the literature as well as collaborative works with other labs.  We’ve presented work at conferences including Megan, a grad student in the lab presenting at her first international conference, had lab members present at ARVO,  have done virtual presentations. I gave talks at the University of Rochester, a Gordon Conference (where I caught a case of COVID), had lab folks present at ARVO, attended SciFoo for the first time since the onset of the pandemic, gave a talk at NIH, Crystal gave a talk at the European Retina Conference, and attended the RD meeting in Córdoba, Spain to round out the year.  I am incredibly grateful to the people in the lab who help make all of the work we do possible.  Jia-Hui, Jamie, Crystal, Becca, Matt and Megan, I am so grateful to you all.  I am also incredibly grateful to Gabe Newell who has made a generous donation to the lab to help us along a new path towards making our connectomics data available to the entire world.  I will forever be grateful to him for that.

Larger issues in the world have me incredibly worried and concerned.  Politics in my home state, Utah are trending increasingly far-right.  Housing in the state has become absolutely unobtainable by too many making recruitment at all levels very difficult.  We are continuing to add people to Utah while at the same time cutting taxes which makes no sense.  Infrastructure and social services are breaking as a result of it, and all the things that made living in this state, great… are going by the wayside.  The canyons are overcrowded, and water is going to become a huge issue in the next year I fear with a real ecological disaster in the Great Salt Lake.  On a global scale, the violence in Israel and Gaza is mind-numbingly wrong.  Atrocities are being committed by people who should know better and civilians are being caught in the middle, enduring unbelievable crimes.  The climate continues to be altered and temperature is increasing at even greater rates.  Disinformation is at an all time high in many fields including politics where AI has weaponized disinformation at a scale that would have been hard to believe not too long ago.

All this has resulted in incredible amounts of stress.  I have noticed that in periods of my life when I have been more stressed, I become more profane.  At least in my head I am incredibly profane.  I may not actually vocalize it, but I hear myself think and verbalize it too often.  So, my New Year’s Resolution is to become less profane. And that means less stress.  I don’t know yet how that will look, but I hope that it is reflected in more photographic creativity.

All that stress took a toll I think on my creativity.  I am reasonably happy with my top 9 images for this year, but I can feel my creative juices atrophying some.  Every creative process is variable, and people have strong and weak periods.  My hope is to concentrate a little more on photography this year and think more about what I know about light and how to play with it.

2024 is shaping up to be a busy year with lots of potential opportunities for photography.  Trips to Alabama (It’ll be my first time there), back to Berlin at least once, perhaps twice, trips to New York City, Tallahassee, Washington D.C., Baltimore, Seattle, Southbridge, and Buenos Aires among other places are in the offing.  It will all be work unfortunately, but as always, I’ll be bringing a camera with me to see what there is to see.

 

Camera: Leica M9
Exposure: 1/350
Aperture: f/8
Focal Length: 50mm
ISO: 160

The first image of the year came on January 2nd during a walk in the park.  I had very high hopes for a strong year of creativity and it started out strong.

 

Camera: Leica M-P 240
Exposure: 1/250
Aperture: f/1.4
Focal Length: 35mm
ISO: 1,600

A couple weeks later I traveled to the University of Rochester to deliver the Boynton Lecture, and got this image while waiting for a connection in Detroit.  Again, finding a place that looks promising and sitting and waiting for something to happen almost always pays off handsomely.

 

Camera: Leica Monochrom
Exposure: 1/3000
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 50mm
ISO: 320

In February, I grabbed this image of my footprint in the sand off Gold Coast, Australia for the ISER meeting.  After getting into the hotel, I changed and ran down to the beach before the evening sessions began to try and stay awake.  As I ran down the beach, I stopped and looked at where I’d been.  This was the result.

 

Camera: Leica Monochrom
Exposure: 1/45
Aperture: f/1.7
Focal Length: 50mm
ISO: 12,500

Made this shot of some of the lab members who presented their work at ARVO in New Orleans.  Undergrads Selena and Taylor presented work along with postdocs Rebecca and Crystal.  This image was made after walking back to the hotel from dinner late at night.  The spot reminded me of an album cover, and the lab indulged me in a photograph to document the moment.

 

Camera: Leica M9
Exposure: 1/250
Aperture: f/2
Focal Length: 50mm
ISO: 160

I shot this quick, informal portrait of a colleague during a financial planning meeting when Sydney and I were going over balance sheets.  Sydney is one of the administrative colleagues that I am so grateful for, helping us to manage the financial aspects of running a laboratory.  She has proven invaluable to me and I suspect the entire department.  This image was one of my favorites because the lighting is spectacular.  I had an entire wall of windows facing West behind me, with a lovely background on the wall behind Sydney complementing her eye color.  When I looked up from the spreadsheets, I looked at the scene, and asked if she would indulge me getting the camera out for an informal portrait.

 

Camera: Apple iPhone 14 Pro
Exposure: 1/121
Aperture: f/1.78
Focal Length: 6.86mm (24mm equivalent)
ISO: 200

This image just makes me laugh every time I see it. After hearing a rumpus upstairs, I walked up the stairway to come face to face with these two knuckleheads staring back at me from unlikely poses as if to say, “What? Nothing is going on here…”.

 

Camera: Apple iPhone 14 Pro
Exposure: 1/2053
Aperture: f/2.8
Focal Length: 9mm
ISO: 32

I flew out to the Bay Area for the first SciFoo meeting in several years because of the COVID pandemic.  As we left from Salt Lake City International Airport, I could see left out of the plane, down at the evaporation ponds at the South end of the rapidly drying up Great Salt Lake.  We have lots of worries about this ecosystem completely collapsing because of ecological mismanagement and a prolonged drought that is complicating things.

 

Camera: Leica Monochrom
Exposure: 1/250
Aperture: f/2
Focal Length: 50mm
ISO: 6,400

Was walking around downtown Milwaukee after giving a talk at the Medical College of Wisconsin, and came across this mirror in a back alley.  Other things were incredibly stressful during that trip, and I managed to find a glorious ice cream shop about an hour after this photo was made.  A double scoop of the Irish creme, and  whiskey ice creams on a warm summer night was much appreciated.

 

Camera: Leica Monochrom
Exposure: 1/250
Aperture: f/1.7
Focal Length: 50mm
ISO: 800

This photo of Maarten Kamermans was made at a session of the European Retina Meeting in Tübingen, Germany.  We were standing over by a huge window with a large hall behind Maarten making for a lovely light fall off zone.  It was an overcast day, and the soft, diffused light made this a portrait that I’m incredibly happy with.