What a wild year 2021 has been. We entered the second full year of the pandemic and we’re still living in this perpendicular (enter any p-word here). Vaccines were made available to the public at the beginning of this year and places started to re-open in April. As many people got vaccinated, cases started to decrease and things looked optimistic in the summer. When everyone thought that we would return to a sense of “normalcy”, a new variant comes along and messes everything up. It looks like this will be the pattern for years to come. At the beginning of winter, a lot of places began imposing restrictions again due to the recent surge of the Omicron variant. Flights were getting canceled and cases are back up to where they were last year during this time. Although our future may seem uncertain, it’s nice to reflect on this past year on our accomplishments, the struggles, and the in-between moments that made us smile.

So how’s 2021 been for me? This year I was able to do 9 collab portrait shoots (up from 5 last year) which is still pretty low considering that I did a lot before the pandemic. After things started reopening in April, I was hoping to do more collab shoots. But like every freelance photographer this year, I became very busy with client work. Starting with some of the bad this year, at the beginning of 2021, I had my first wedding cancellation. I was sad because this couple was very chill and it was my friend’s cousin’s wedding. They signed the contract and put in their 50% deposit. I wanted to confirm if the wedding was still happening at the agreed date, but because of the bleak outlook of covid, they decided to cancel it. I had to refund them the 50% deposit per my contract since it was months away from the old date that they mentioned. Another bad is that a co-worker gave some negative feedback on the photos that I took through his gig. It shattered my confidence for a few days. Besides working in the corporate world, I’ve never gotten negative feedback when it came to my work, so this took me by surprise. And lastly, I had a covid scare recently. Luckily, the interaction was outdoors and I was wearing a mask. I got tested to make sure, and it came out negative.

Now some highlights of 2021! I started organizing my life in Notion at the beginning of this year. Notion is an all-in-one workspace for notetaking, project management, and data management. It has a ton of features such as kanban boards, task lists, wikis, databases, and more to keep everything organized. I use Notion to track my daily habits, movies and shows, photo sessions I’ve done throughout the year, books that I have read, hikes that I've done, and more. I have a to-do list, creative content page, and travel planner in my Notion as well.

One of my goals at the beginning of this year was to create short-form video content for photography and tech as well as doing voiceovers for some of them. I’m happy to say that I created over 85 short-form videos this year. I’m also at a point where I can batch create these videos and streamline the process to get them out faster. Check out my Instagram Reels for my photography content and my TikTok for tech and home content!

I also wrote 26 blog posts this year which is the most I’ve written than any other year. I created a new Instagram page specifically for my graduation portraits. I photographed the most grad portraits and weddings than any other year. I took the leap into two hobbies that I’ve been wanting to dive into for a while: mechanical keyboards and designer art toys. To read more about this experience check out my Quarantine Life blog post. I chased the autumn colors on the east coast for the second year in a row. I collaborated with my friend Grace on our first NFTs. You can purchase our NFTs HERE (#15, #16, #18).

One of my IG reels hit 10.7 million views. My goal was to have at least one reel go viral this year. I’ve never would have imagined that it would blow up like this. I was happy when it reached 1 million views but 10.7 million?! It’s still surreal to me that my reel has this many views. That leads me to my next highlight: I reached my milestone of 10k followers on Instagram. I didn’t think that I would reach this milestone this year but thanks to my viral reel, not only did I reach 10k but I surpassed it and now I’m at 23.8k. Reaching 10k was my goal when I shifted my main account to a photography account. It’s taken me almost 6 years to reach this milestone (thanks IG algorithm, you won’t be missed).

And lastly, I made more money than any other year in my photography career so far. My goal is to keep up this momentum and increase my revenue every year. Thank you to all my clients that chose me as their official photographer for their grad portraits, events, engagements, or weddings. Thank you for believing in me and trusting in my vision as I worked with you this year. 2021 has been a memorable year for me.

Here are my top 5 favorite photos that I’ve taken this year.

Note: These photos are not based on Instagram statistics; instead these are ranked based on personal preference. Although I loved every photoshoot I did this year, these are the ones that I would like to highlight. It was very difficult for me to choose which five photos I would include in this post as there were so many good ones to choose from.

#5 Riding Through Autumn

A shot one year in the making. One of the most iconic shots of New Hampshire in the fall is capturing the Conway Scenic Railroad train passing by with the autumn colors in the background. In 2020, we did the same hike but we arrived at the trail a little late so we had to hike up the steep hill very fast to make it to the vantage point. I wasn’t able to make it up to the vantage point because I was tired from hiking too fast. Before the last leg of the hike, I heard the train coming. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to take my camera out from my backpack to snap a photo. I was very disappointed that I didn't get the shot. But this year, we arrived at the trail early. We had about an hour and a half to spare before the train came. You have no idea how happy I was once I was able to get the shot of the train. The autumn colors looked a little better than last year too. A shot deserving to be in my top 5 this year!

#4 Landed on Mars

I’ve been wanting to visit this exact spot for years. I first came across this location on Instagram through photographers in Utah. After doing some research, I found the general area on Maps but I didn’t have the pinpointed location. I took a chance and me and my friend Sandy full sent it during our Utah trip. After taking an L for a sunrise location, I was determined more than ever to find this spot. We had to go on a long dirt road and we reached the general area on maps so we kept going. I had a feeling that we were going in the wrong direction so I zoomed in on Maps and saw the name of the road for which this location is named after. We immediately turned around and headed in that direction towards that road and we eventually made it. I was so happy that we found the spot! Can we also appreciate Sandy for wearing that beautiful red dress in 40-degree weather?

#3 Moonrise Over LA

After seeing so many amazing photos of the moon over the years, I wanted to capture a moonrise over the Los Angeles skyline. The moon rises at this specific angle once a year in December. I went to Kenneth Hahn Park with my friend Derek and we happened to run into our other photographer friends Alex and Ivan. We arrived at the vantage point a little bit before sunset. At first, it didn’t look too good because of all the smog from the rush hour traffic. We waited for a bit as the moon rose during blue hour. After waiting for a few minutes, a faint layer of fog appeared throughout the city. Then we saw the moon peak itself from behind the San Gabriel Mountains. This was my first time capturing a moonrise and I was stoked on how this came out.

#2 Lit in Death Valley

Do you ever look back at the photo you just took on your camera and go “Wow!”? That’s exactly how I felt after I took this shot. Derek, Kristine, and I scouted out this location during the day. We couldn’t find the exact spot at first, but after driving on the dirt road and climbing up to a vantage point, we found the exact spot. We wanted to capture this scene during sunset and it was 11 am when we scouted the location. Being crazy photographers, we decided to drive to Vegas from Death Valley and eat lunch to kill some time and then drive back to Death Valley to shoot sunset photos. I guarantee you, a normal person would not do this. We arrived at the spot in time for golden hour and took photos. We decided to stay a little bit longer to shoot light trails as the full moon rose perfectly behind us to light up the mountain peaks that were in front of us. Shoutout to Kristine for driving the car along this curvy dirt road!

#1 Firefall

“It is good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters in the end.” - Ernest Hemingway

This quote pretty much sums up my journey to capturing Firefall. My photographer friends and I went to Yosemite in February 2020 to capture this phenomenon, but we were greeted with a FireWALL instead. Although we had clear skies, the 2020 winter season did not receive enough rainfall for there to be any water flowing from Horsetail Falls. We were all bummed at the time and we decided to try again in 2021. Due to covid and the rising popularity of the annual Firefall event, Yosemite started implementing a reservation system to limit traffic in the area. I saw some of my photographer friends travel to Yosemite to capture Firefall this year with success. The rain and snowy weather brought a ton of water to Horsetail Falls for it to be flowing once again. The only problem was I had to get a reservation before Firefall ends. The viewing period is usually from early February up until February 25 or 26. I woke up early on the morning of the 21st and managed to secure reservations for me and my friend Nathan for our entry to the park on the 24th. On the morning of the 24th, we drove past Horsetail Falls to see if there was any water but it was very hard to tell. We were hoping that we would see Firefall when golden hour comes along. We hiked up to a lesser-known spot thanks to our photographer friend Terry who was kind enough to give us the coordinates. As the golden light came in from the side, we could see it light up Horsetail Falls and we were screaming with joy! The journey took more than a year for me and Nathan, but through perseverance, we were finally able to capture Firefall. The second time is the charm!

Here are my Best Nine for 2021 according to Instagram statistics:

My Top 5 Viral Videos of the Year:

1. Autumn to Winter Tutorial Part 5 - 10.7 million views

2. My Top 5 Best Purchases of 2020 - 304.4K views

3. Autumn To Winter - 146K views

4. My Top 5 Favorite Kickstarter Products That I Backed This Past Year - 92.6K views

5. My Favorite Moments of 2021 - 86.4K views

For those curious, here are my top 10 favorite songs of 2021 (ranked):

1. Jaron - Only For A Moment

2. Bilmuri - LARGETHROBBINGPOSITIVEMINDSET (ft. Trella)

3. Volumes - Bend

4. half·alive - Hot Tea

5. Edgar Sandoval Jr - NEVER GON DIE

6. bitbird - i need u (community mega collab)

7. Lower Definition - Grief Eater

8. Austin James - Levitating Shelter

9. Chayr - thesonder

10. Cortes - Around

Here are some of my favorite restaurants and cafes that I tried for the first time this year:

• Shabuya

• Ramen Nagi

• Aroma Craft Coffee

• Surf side Burger Bar (one of the best burgers & fries I’ve ever had)

• PPPop

• Thirsty Cow

• Dave’s Hot Chicken

• All That Shabu

• Jiang Nan Spring

• Tokyo Fried Chicken

• Dirtdog

• Wilaiwan Kitchen (one of the best Thai places in Vermont. Only open 2 hours a day)

• bbq.chicken

• Sushien

• Chubby Cattle

• Sunrise Cafe

• Cheba Hut

• Arches Thai

• Aikan Sushi

Here are my top 10 shows and anime I’ve watched in 2021 (ranked):

1. Dark

2. Attack on Titan S4

3. Black Clover S4

4. Squid Game

5. Kingdom

6. Alice in Borderland

7. Dark Side of the Ring S3

8. The Haunting of Hill House

9. SSSS.Gridman

10. Fena: Pirate Princess

I hope you enjoyed reading my year in review and my top 5 photos of this year! I had so much fun putting this together. I didn’t do two things that I set out to do this year which were to revamp my website and upload a blog post about my desk setup. I can tell you for certain that the desk setup is coming this year! So keep a lookout on a blog post about that. I have a lot more content coming down the pipeline from new blog posts about my client sessions to short-form video content on my socials. Thank you for reading this far, you’re a real one! I wish you and your family a happy and safe New Year! See you guys in 2022!

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