I typically do a “End of the Year” rundown (as well as a Best Of Weddings Contest) every year. For thirteen years I’ve celebrated highs and lows and revisited my favorite shots.

But 2020 ain’t like any other year. Is it?

2020 has been a rotten egg filled garbage bag covered in baby poo within a dumpster that has been lit aflame and sent rolling down a hill dotted with pot holes.

In a word, it SUCKED.

For everyone.

I don’t know anyone who has had the “best year ever”. I don’t know anyone, outside of influencers spewing toxic positivity, who have thought this year was anything but a continuous onslaught of crap. Lessons learned? Oh sure. We all learned things. But, dude……I could have done without 12 months of “meaningful lessons” peppered on top of a crap sandwich that was a pandemic.

We all just survived the best we could.

I survived about 15 lbs heavier.
I survived with a renewed appreciation for teachers because HOLY. CRAP. do they not get paid enough to deal with all of this **gestures wildly**
I survived realizing that yes….you can come to the end of TV and the internet.
I survived discovering that when the going gets tough….some people are simply not willing to even do the bare minimum for others. Which, I kind of already knew but was disappointing nonetheless.

But through it all, the important part of everything was survival. Survival of our family unit, survival of our health and our loved ones, and survival of my business. I am not so naïve to believe that everyone was so lucky. We personally know people who passed from COVID. We personally know people whose businesses did not survive the shut down. I personally know people whose marriages were irreparably broken, crumbling under the immense stress of everything that was 2020.

The political strife also took its toll….on family connections and friendships. For better or for worse. I guess it remains to be seen.

2020 was a year unlike any other (I hope) ……but through ALL of it….I kept working. Best I could. I photographed seniors….I learned to work masked and distanced…..and helped brides and grooms plan wildly different weddings from what they originally had in mind. I stepped in for other photographers when they couldn’t work.

We just plugged along. Surviving.

How do you celebrate a disaster? By simply being relieved that you survived semi-in-tact. Sometimes, that’s all that matters. No big lessons. No great achievements. Just….survival.

So here’s the End of the Year Rundown….2020 Edition. Historic in it’s “sucktitude” (that’s a word. I say so.) and full of stories we’ll tell forever.