Best of 2021 - Liz Degen Photography

Is a blog really a blog without some meaningful words? Maybe, maybe not. I’m not the best at reading, so if you’re like me and prefer to skip straight to the part with the pictures, click here. There is also a much longer version of these existential ruminations on my primary blog and design website. If you’re bored or if you’re my mom, you may read that here.

2021. The year that was supposed to save us from 2020 and let us finally move forward. When a baby seal appeared on a jetty a few blocks away from me in Long Beach on January 2nd, I thought it might be a sign that things were looking up. A few days later, I turned on the news and realized that wasn’t going to be the case. Between coping with the ongoing political divide, the frequent alarming events, and still trying to process the emotional traumas that 2020 left us with, it was all too much. A lot of awful things happened this year for the world and in my own personal life, in spite of the hope we all had for our collective salvation. Although when I began to look at the glass as half-full, (no camera-lens-pun intended) I remembered a lot of the wonderful things that happened and how much better they actually seemed because of everything 2020 took from us.

Gathering the takeaways from a full year that fast-forwarded by, in year 2 of a global pandemic, requires the perfect balance of perspective and focus. These camera puns, of course, were fully intended, inevitable, and perfectly applicable to both life and photography. I spent a few days browsing through all of my photos from 2021 and realized that life had been in color the whole time, even during months where everything felt monochromatic. (I would have said black and white, but I just love black and white photos too much to use it as a negative metaphor.) Each folder filled with raw photos and exported edited images was actually proof that life went on and the beauty of nature prevailed every day.

I’d like to thank all of my new and repeat clients, anyone who purchased prints from my print shop, and everyone who comments on the photos I share. Thank you for continuing to support this passion of mine, motivating me to keep going, and for and joining me on this unpredictable rollercoaster ride.