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Singular Moments—A Gallery of the Year’s Most Moving Images

The complete 38-page photo gallery from this year's print photo annual


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The following is the full photo gallery from this year’s Photo Annual, which came out in print last month. To get print, sign up to be a Beta Pass or Outside+ member. Membership details HERE.

Shoot what’s familiar. Shoot what’s close to you. Didn’t a famous photographer say that once? That’s great advice, but it also kind of sucks. Home can feel routine. A bit boring at times. It can be hard not to fantasize about shooting somewhere new and unfamiliar rather than just picking up the camera and exploring what’s right in front of you. That seems too easy, right? But when the world shut down almost two years ago, photographers were forced to do just that. Shoot what you know, or don’t shoot at all, because we’re not going anywhere.

It’s hard for me to say that this was a bad thing, photographically speaking. The obstacles of the last year-and-a-half were met with a creativity and passion for making images that was nothing short of inspiring. It was like all the noise and distraction of what if was stripped away and photographers could just focus on what mattered. The substance of the image.

That sense of solitary self-reflection is very apparent in this issue’s 38-page photo gallery. Rather than looking through images submitted for this year’s annual that were shot in new and unfamiliar places, I was looking largely at a view of our photographers’ respective home turfs—their images revealed the places and people that made them the visual storytellers that they are today. Home, for now, is no longer something to escape but rather something to explore and embrace.

And maybe that’s a good thing. I’m struck, not by how different this year’s gallery is with all the challenges we’ve faced, but how inspired it feels. All the years these photographers have spent developing their own unique visual voices on the road have met this moment to tell truly authentic stories about the places they call home. Images that may not have been made if anything was possible, or any destination on a map was a potential place to shoot. That has a way of shifting the perspective of what feels ordinary or routine.

There’s a quiet comfort in that. Regardless of where you call home, these moments are happening. We just need to be forced to look.

Pete Miller. Winton, New Zealand. Photo: Callum Wood
Hannah Bergemann. Bellingham, Washington. Photo: Paris Gore
Eliot Jackson – San Diego, California (Photo: Ian Collins)
Dane Scott. Revelstoke, British Columbia. (Photo: Bruno Long)
Finn Hopper, Whatcom County, WA. January 8, 2021. (Photo: Eric Mickelson)
Brandon Semenuk. Richfield, Utah. Photo: Ian Collins
Brandon Semenuk. (Photo: Cameron Strand)
Alex Volokhov. Revelstoke, British Columbia. (Photo: Lindsay Donovan)
Kamloops, British Columbia. Photo: Dylan Sherrard
Whanganui, New Zealand. (Photo: Sven Martin)
Paparoa National Park, New Zealand. (Photo: Sven Martin)
Kurt Sorge. Grohman Creek, British Columbia. Photo: John Gibson
Ben Hildred. Queenstown, New Zealand. (Photo: Callum Wood)
Chris Winter, Ray Warner. Ilulissat, Greenland. (Photo: Ben Haggar)
Stan Rey and Jacob Murray. Whistler, British Columbia. Photo: Sterling Lorence
Kate Courtney. Downieville, California. (Photo: Emily Tidwell)
Reed Boggs. Virgin, Utah. Photo: Jeff Cricco
Caleb Holonko. North Vancouver, British Columbia. (Photo: Margus Riga)
Steve Storey. Whistler, British Columbia. (Photo: Justa Jeskova)
Yorkshire, England. (Photo: Sam Needham)
Ollie Jones. Kamloops British Columbia. Photo: Mark Mackay
Joel Tunbridge. Queenstown, New Zealand. (Photo: Callum Wood)
Tom Pidcock. Leogang. Austria. Photo: Sven Martin
Leogang. Austria. (Photo: Sven Martin)
Barcelona, Spain. (Photo: Ale Di Lullo)
Canazei, Italy. Photo: Ale Di Lullo
Alai Range, Kyrgyzstan. (Photo: Dan Milner)
Torres del Paine, Chile. (Photo: Dan Milner)
Logan Peat and Justin Wyper. Sunshine Coast, British Columbia. Photo: Toby Cowley
Brandon Semenuk. Sunshine Coast, British Columbia. (Photo: Toby Cowley)
Evan Young. Sunshine Coast, British Columbia. (Photo: Toby Cowley)
Louis Jeandel. La Thuile, Italy. Photo: Sven Martin
Tahnee Seagrave. Innsbruck, Austria (Photo: Sven Martin)
Reece Richards. Queenstown, New Zealand. (Photo: Callum Wood)
Deep Cove, British Columbia. (Photo: Margus Riga)
St. Gréé di Voila, Italy. Photo: Sven Martin
Brian Lavoie and Dominic Unterberger. Revelstoke, British Columbia. (Photo: Ryan Creary)
Luca Cometti. San Clemente, California. Photo: Heather Young
Brett Tippie. Deep Cove, British Columbia. Photo: Margus Riga
Queenstown, New Zealand. (Photo: Callum Wood)
Janne Tjärnström. Trillevallen, Sweden. Photo: Gosta Fries
Ludo May. Verbier, Switzerland. Photo: Mattias Fredriksson

From Fall 2021