I think I’ll like 2012. As for 2011, it’s been a weird time, and a blast some days, and infuriatingly wrong some other days, but full of discoveries. Here are a few things I photographed along the way.

The most unexpected by far: a bald eagle over Prospect Heights, photographed (badly, but he was way high) from our roof. How’s that for the transformation of Brooklyn? Not only has the place become the province of locavore hipsters from around the world, but now we also have formerly near-extinct birds of prey soaring over the chop shops and jerk chicken joints of Atlantic Avenue. Yes, in four years in this neighborhood we’ve also seen peregrine falcons, a lone and menacingly wide-winged turkey vulture, red-tailed hawks, a kestrel and even an osprey, but the bald eagle takes the cake.

Speaking of things that fly and the city we love, here’s what flying into it on a late spring night looks like, under a sliver of moon, while the sun sets. Technically it’s New Jersey, okay. La Guardia was still ten minutes away.  But I had to shoot before the light died.

Not so high but still high enough: a snap from the top floor terrace of a high-rise in Battery Park City, after a house concert by Carsie Blanton in the apartment of a Norwegian music producer. My first weeks in New York, I lived in this neighborhood, on the 23rd floor: utterly soulless, but the view! The view!   

Another soulless place but with killer views is East Midtown. This is the view from the office.

I wasn’t away from said office nearly enough last year: my job was way too much editing and too little traveling after stories, people, light. Sometimes, though, I managed to spend a couple of days on the road, notepad in my right jacket pocket and laptop in the backpack, feeling the old familiar terror of a looming deadline you can’t possibly make but will, followed by a night in a three-star chain hotel in Deep America. A true delight, and I’m not kidding. This is one of those trips. 

But the real American story of the year was right on our doorstep. Whether you’re for or against the Occupy movement, you’ve heard of them: and they are the most media-savvy protesters I’ve ever seen. I spent days trying to get a shot that would say to me “this is what they are about”, and I never caught one that conveyed enough message. In December, after they had been evicted from Zuccotti Park and had reconvened one cold afternoon in a square off Canal Street, I saw a group of protesters with signs that spelled OCCUPY WALL STREET, one letter each that they would flip to make other phrases. They did it for a couple of minutes for the benefit of dozens of photographers, who were lined up just like they would have been at the red carpet for a very un-revolutionary, very 1-percent event. The photogs called out to them just like to film stars, asking for another pose, another frame, another flurry of shutter clicks. Cannes or LA, but in cold and damp New York, at an Occupy protest. The disconnect was staggering. The only way to show it was to shoot from the opposite point of view from all the other photographers.

Bonfire, Thanksgiving. Shot with the  phenomenal Nikon D700, a new addition to our stable of cameras in 2011.

New camera, old lens: this is what the D700 does with the beautiful classic Nikkor 35-70 f/2.8 zoom from the mid-1990s, a perfect little brick of solid metal that feels just right in one’s hands. In 2011 it was reassigned mostly to portrait duty, but it will do so for many years still. And for once, Regan is on the other side of it.

And finally the story that was supposed to be but wasn’t: Hurricane Irene wipes out New York. In the city it didn’t wipe out anything more than a few trees and cars, but it left a spectacular sunset, with hopeful blue skies peeking through.