As is tradition, I spend the last hours of the year reflecting upon the months before, what happened, and how it impacted my life through my photography.
As I look back at last year’s entry, it is clear that I was struggling. And if 2024 was difficult, 2025 was a whole other brutal reality. This year is also different in that lots of things that played a huge role in my life were not documented in any way through the camera lens in an immediate fashion as I was doing good just to survive.
On March 20th of this year, my world changed fundamentally. Like a tear opened up in my world when my wife and best friend of 32 years died unexpectedly. I have over 3 decades of photographs of her and she and I together, which remind me in a massive way of what has been lost not just to me, but to the other people and institutions that she was important to. The moments that ring in one’s brain at times like these… like arbitrary anniversaries such as 6 months after her death, or Hilari’s birthday, or Thanksgiving, Christmas, and now New Year’s. It was our New Year’s tradition that she went to sleep early, but I was supposed to wake her up just before Midnight and give her a New Year’s kiss. These are things that feel… big to me. And almost nine months after Hillary‘s death I’m still talking with her for her memories.
But there have been good things too. Like a move that we were planning on making to the University of Pittsburgh. Hilari was looking forward to seeing fireflies for the first time in her life, and living in a different city. She would have loved our new home. My first evening in the new house, I sat in the back and watched fireflies rise and fall throughout the evening in absolute tears for her. When I was filling out forms for HR here at the University Of Pittsburgh, part of the descriptors were marital status and they were pre-filled out saying widower, which made me completely and irrationally angry. That is a descriptor of me that I never imagined as possible. It never even entered my consciousness until that moment and I was trying desperately to fight through the intense feeling of fury that I knew was irrational, but yet…
Professionally, I have focus in a direction. Personally, I feel lost. Without direction. Without focus as this year I have been working outside of my physical and mental thresholds. I feel thin… worn down. Like a blanket or shirt whose fabric has become transparent from wear. I remember moving my great aunts house after she died with my mother, and collecting all the linens. My great aunt had all these old sheets that were worn thin and when you held them up, you could see through them. My mom wanted them and we had an argument where I was saying that not even Catholic Services would take these sheets, they were so worn. In retrospect, the thinness of those sheets is precisely how I feel… Thin, transparent, worn out from a year that started with the most horrible assault on American institutions and science funding which a year later is still resonating with me and so many others in science, academia, and government. Then Hilari’s death, and driving 3 times across America in two months moving a lab and house, meeting obligations to attend meetings and give talks in various places around the world, as well as an almost insufferable amount of bureaucracy at my new institution in Pittsburgh with arbitrary deadlines for various forms and paperwork all while trying to move a lab, deal with HR related issues for moving people, as well as the various grants.
That said, I do have many things to be grateful for including some folks at my old institution like Julee who took our beautiful cat Ellie which was another incredible stressor. A few months before Hilari died, Alice and Ellie decided that after 7 years together, they hated one another. We managed by keeping them in different parts of the house, but after Hilari died there was no way I could manage two cats who hated one another and give them appropriate love and attention. It broke my heart again to have to re-home one of them as they are our children. So, I am incredibly grateful to Julee for giving Ellie a loving home. I am also incredibly grateful to Sydney who put in massive labor to help move my lab from the Moran to the University of Pittsburgh in this new position where we can do science with truly competent people and support. I owe them both a world of gratitude.
So, yes. A new job in a great place. Indeed, the University of Pittsburgh is rapidly becoming one of the leading ophthalmology departments in the world, and I am so pleased that the lab ended up here. I am also immensely grateful that the whole lab group stayed together in the move which is rare indeed. Everyone in the lab group made the move from Salt Lake City, Utah to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania which is massive in terms of making sure the lab gets up and running as fast as possible. Becca also launched her own independent laboratory as part of this move which delights me to no end.
As to photography… This year’s best photos are limited compared to prior years. Only 7 photos made the cut for various reasons as outlined below in chronological order.
Camera: Apple iPhone 16 Pro
Exposure: 1/4878
Aperture: f/1.78
Focal Length: 24mm equivalent
ISO: 64
As the year began, I was talking with a number of institutions about moving my lab from the Moran Eye Center, where I’ve spent my entire career. I was flying to Louisville, Kentucky on a job talk trip where I took this photo of the countryside below out of the plane window. I loved the abstract nature of it rendered in high contrast by the snow and sent this image to Hilari, talking with her when I landed about the pros and cons of various places with which to live.
Camera: Leica Monochrom
Exposure: 1/500
Aperture: f/2
Focal Length: 50mm
ISO: 320
Susana da Silva was one of the first people that I met with at the University of Pittsburgh Ophthalmology department in January. We had a delightful conversation about the retinas in various species, and she set the tone of kindness that I was going to see again and again with all of the faculty here at the University of Pittsburgh. I loved the completely relaxed, informal nature of this photograph made as we were talking.
Camera: Apple iPhone 16 Pro Leica LUX app
Exposure: 1/1048
Aperture: f/2.8
Focal Length: 149mm equivalent
ISO: 50
This image made at our annual vision research conference (ARVO) was the ceiling of the Salt Palace Convention Center. It was the first public event I had to attend after Hilari died and I felt like I was walking around in a fog. I had just finished finalizing the terms of my move from the University of Utah to the University of Pittsburgh and walked out of that meeting room looking up at the complex geometry of the shadows above. The whole meeting is still a blur for me as I can barely remember any of the science, and even less of the conversations that I had with people during the meeting. Even though the meeting was in my then home town of Salt Lake City, and there was no travel involved, it felt as if I was in a fugue state wandering around aimlessly trying to focus. But I do remember looking up at this scene and thinking “that is beautiful”.
Camera: Leica Monochrom
Exposure: 1/250
Aperture: f/8
Focal Length: 50mm (+Leica Close Focus Lens)
ISO: 640
This trip to Finland was the first time that I actually felt conscious since Hilari died from a photographic perspective. Even though I tried to make photographs throughout the year, this was the first time that it felt like I had the room in my head to think about light and form. This image of a fern was made at a break in the meetings I was at where I could see and appreciate how the early autumn light in Finland was playing through the fern leaves, enough to inspire me to pull out the close focus adapter and make this image.
Camera: Leica M-P 240
Exposure: 1/250
Aperture: f/2.8
Focal Length: 35mm
ISO: 400
This image of Brittany Carr was made at another break in the meetings at Tvärminne where we were walking along the edge of the Baltic sea talking and I suddenly became aware of the quality of light that was around us. The sea was perfectly still and this image came out of it. Again, it felt like I was relaxing some after a year of stressors and the impossibly huge list of things to do was being knocked down by this time where I could see the light at the end of the tunnel with respect to the move from Salt Lake City to Pittsburgh. As part of that ability to let my brain relax, I was able to appreciate the quality of light that suffused the air around us while we walked.
Camera: Leica Monochrom
Exposure: 1/250
Aperture: f/1.4
Focal Length: 50mm
ISO: 6,400
This image was made after traveling from Tvärminne back to Helsinki. I had an evening and the next day to walk around Helsinki prior to flying back home to Pittsburgh and was trying to be present in the moment. This was one of those times when you are standing on a street corner and the light is right, the forms are right, and you have the luxury of standing for a few minutes and just waiting for something to happen, or someone to walk past. I don’t often get to do this, but when I have had that luxury like the time in Cuba with my friend Duncan when i made this image, the combination of light and form delivers. The sun had gone down, but the light on this particular corner while dim, felt good. And these 3 young women came walking past after school.
Camera: Leica M-P 240
Exposure: 1/180
Aperture: f/10
Focal Length: 35mm
ISO: 3,200
The last image that made the cut for me this year was this one, made on the Jamaica Station platform in November outside of NYC while waiting for the train into the city. I was standing in the precise spot where Hilari and I had our very last conversation in March, trying to keep it together and not cry while people walked and waited all around me. Trying to focus on the moment I looked up and this young woman on the platform opposite of me was clearly bemused by something on her phone, and the expression on her face combined with the light coming in from the West, and the colors on the platforms was just gorgeous.
First, let me begin by saying I have been hearing about you and your photography from M, a fan, for years and years. On science trips he would say, I’m going out with a private guide and Bryan Jones is coming with. Then I’d hear, you should see the cameras and lenses Bryan Jones uses. Not being into cameras, the comments would go in one ear and out the other. I never saw any of your work myself until this past Spring. Big mistake.
Me after seeing Cuba, portraits and other collections: Jesus Christ, I said to M, your friend, as I mostly refer to you as, is a fucking great photographer. I know equipment is important, and a Leica is not your average camera, but FFS, the subjects are good, the portraits are close and tight, the landscapes are interesting, the architecture is sharp. No bloody wonder M has talked about your work for years.
The ceiling of the Salt Palace- the colors, patterns, reflections captured are so interesting that shot makes me want to go and see it in person. Chances are it won’t look as good as your shot.
The girl smiling on a platform – the depth and colors, her expression/emotion, simplicity but interesting details, you can feel the emotion. Like you, we have all been to places where something has happened and have had to relieve an emotional experience we would sooner not have to revisit.
The flight over KY- really thought it was something it was not. Surprises are a pleasant bonus – the caramel in the chocolate you don’t know is there.
The three girls – the moodiness is smooth as velvet. Brings to mind, “Sober” by Tool, “waiting like the stalking butler,” to catch the right shot. The professional photographer who walked us around Venice said he does that and we all did it too.
The portraits are very good, the ability to take close shots without making your subject squirm is a learned skill. You have practiced this.
Thank you my friend.