This year’s crop of favorite pictures is a pretty eclectic mix compared to past years of my career. Normally, the list is filled with pictures from newspaper assignments; this year’s list contains just three. In fact, very little assignment work is represented here, unless you count self-assignments, which I gave myself a lot of this year. This was my first full year as a freelance photographer, so the assignment work was varied, the personal work was frequent, and the wedding work will appear on another website. I’m looking forward to 2013, which will see a whole new portfolio for me and hopefully another diverse mix of favorite photos to reflect on at the end of the year.

In October I had the pleasure of serving as a support crew member for a two-man relay team competing in the Furnace Creek 508, a 508-mile bike race that goes through the Mojave Desert and Death Valley. It was my first time in such a role, and the experience taught me a lot about cycling and endurance. We left at 9:30 a.m. on a Saturday morning and finished around 10:30 p.m. on Sunday night; I got about two hours sleep in the passenger seat and was exhausted, so I can only imagine how tired the riders must have been. Still, despite the suffering and grinding and constant pedaling in the heat and wind and hills, the race seemed fun. And for the people who manage to finish it, quite an achievement.

Somewhere around the middle of the race, late at night in Death Valley, watching Ken pedal fast through the flats while enjoying relatively pleasant temperatures, I saw a shooting star and quietly vowed to someday complete this race myself. I’ve got a lot of practicing to do before then — first I’m just going to try to make it 200 miles.

Below are some of the photos I shot on the trip, and at the bottom of this post is a time lapse video I made with photos from a GoPro camera that I attached to the inside of the van’s window.

From the first moment I rolled out onto the streets of San Jose with thousands of other people riding in San Jose Bike Party, I knew it was something I was going to love. The once-monthly themed rides aim to “build community through bicycling,” and are a lot of fun. That was more than two years ago, and I’ve been on many of the rides since.

I also knew I wanted to photograph the phenomenon, but it’s hard to get a frame that captures all of Bike Party — once it starts, riders can spread out for blocks, or miles. Besides, the most interesting thing about Bike Party is the people who ride in it, many of them real characters. So I decided to set up a makeshift photo studio at one of the regroup areas and shoot everyone I could.

With the help of Daniel Garcia and Flora Moreno de Thompson of Content Magazine, we photographed folks at San Jose Bike Party’s Rocky Horror Ride in September. Flora wrangled riders and got contact info, Daniel provided the white backdrop and held up the lighting. What started as a personal project for me turned into an assignment for an article on Bike Party that Flora wrote for issue 4.4 of Content, which is available now.

I’ve uploaded all the photos to my online archive, so if you’re one of the folks I photographed, you can download a low-resolution photo for free, or buy a print. Use the “Buy Image” link to access both. Check them out here: San Jose Bike Party Photo Studio.

Let’s face it: Huge crowds of drunk people can be irritating, unless you are also a drunk person. Bay to Breakers, the annual foot race in San Francisco, is mainly a huge crowd of drunk people. And I was not about to irritated.

Which is why, on a Sunday morning at 7 a.m., I was at a party in San Francisco drinking vodka and orange juice with a large group of people dressed as Olympic athletes. We headed to the race along with several hundred people dressed as rainbows and scores of people dressed as leprechauns. By the time we hit the race route, the people who came to the 2012 Bay to Breakers to actually compete in the race had long since finished, and the course was populated by people in all manner of costumes (or none at all) and at all levels of drunkenness.

I came mainly to shoot photos, and as it turned out, drinking vodka beforehand was the best decision I could’ve made. Bay to Breakers is a participatory event. As a participant, I was able to get close to everybody, move easily through the crowd, have the same kind of experience everybody else was having. I passed numerous photographers who were standing on the curb, picking off shots as people walked by. They looked disconnected, awkward.

Of course, if I was actually on assignment for this shoot it would’ve been a sober morning. And I did see some newspaper photogs working the crowd, dutifully gathering names, reporting the event. But I came to shoot for myself, to do some street photography. And to see it all as a participant.

It is a rare and amazing thing to be able to stand in a clearing in the redwoods in Big Sur, look up and see the stars burning bright above me, then look forward and see musicians who I believe to be among the greatest of my generation performing on an outdoor stage, projections flickering on a screen behind them, light bouncing into the trees surrounding them. The Godspeed You! Black Emperor show on April 15 at Fernwood campground in Big Sur was flawless, moving and beautiful. These photos don’t come close to capturing what it was like to be there, but do suggest a bit of what it looked like.

Costumes were handed out before the show. The drummer wore a hat covered in blue lights. The audience was pulled in close and became part of the show. We were taught the words and sang along. During a rare serious moment, we all took a knee. Soon after, a parachute was presented and we all gathered under it, a purple room erected inside of the dirty bar hosting the show. Seventeen minutes after if began, the whole mess ended with a mass sing-a-long: “We’re alive! We’re in love! We’ve got hope, just because!” The two guys who were The Terror Pigeon Dance Revolt! that night had to make way for two more bands during a five-band set on a Sunday night at The Jury Room in Santa Cruz, California. My friends and I decompressed in the parking lot, wishing we could drop everything and follow them on tour.

When done right, a great rock show can leave you feeling better about the world and your place in it. The Terror Pigeon Dance Revolt! did it right.

Here again is my annual attempt to sum up 12 months of visual output into a set of favorite images. This group of pictures looks far different than my typical favorite photos from past years, just as this year was far different for me as a photographer. I left my staff job at a newspaper, trading it in for a life as a freelance photographer. Only a half dozen of these 34 favorite photos were produced on assignment for a newspaper. A dozen are from weddings, the rest are images I made for myself. I’m encouraged by this transition, and I look forward to a creative and prosperous 2012. And I wish you all the same.

Point Reyes had long been on the must-see list for Amber & me, but it was always just a little too far for an easy day trip, and not quite far enough to justify staying overnight.

In November we stopped hesitating and made the trip to the iconic lighthouse at the Point Reyes National Seashore. It was beautiful, sunny, windy. Here are a few snapshots from the trip.

I was visiting family in Maryland in late August, 2011 when Hurricane Irene started making her way on a path towards the east coast that predictions said could be one of the most destructive in recent history. The entire east coast was bracing for it — New York City ordered evacuations and shut down its mass transit system, flights and trains were canceled, hundreds of thousands of people fled the coast.

At the marina in Galesville, Maryland, where my parents lived on their sailboat, the approaching storm turned the sky a deep orange at sunset, adding a bit of drama and mystery to the hurried preparations that were underway.

I made my flight back to California, the storm’s path turned to a less-destructive offshore route, the marina was largely undamaged. But I’ve never before seen a sky look like this.

I was hired recently to do some band photography for San Jose rockers Town Crier. They’ve got a new self-produced EP coming out soon and needed some band portraits to go along with it. During an initial meeting over beers at our local pub Trials, we decided to go with a simple, dramatic one-light approach (having meetings that involve beer is one of the definite benefits of doing music photography). We also made time for some quick headshots and a scene in one of the band members’ personal bar.