Joe Ahlquist|Photographer: Year-End Post 1 of 2: Personal Photos, Last Semester of College (12/22/13)

As the year comes to a close newspapers and photojournalists alike reflect back on 2013 and some of the most important moments, iconic images, and personal favorite photos of the year (I will be making a post later of some of my favorite images from the newspapers I worked at in 2013). I've already seen a few of these posts, and there was a lot of amazing work done in 2013.

This post is a little different, as it's a reflection of the photos that I made throughout my own daily life as well as some of the photos/photo stories I worked on in my last semester of college at Winona State.

This past year has been an incredible year for me.

For starters, I graduated college. That alone was an incredible accomplishment for me. I was very pleased with myself to have completed my chosen degree in four years. I know some people out there absolutely loved college and wish they could have stayed there forever. I wasn't one of those people.

That's not to say I disliked college. I enjoyed it plenty. I was just ready to graduate when I did. I'd taken enough loans our and spent enough time working a regular job and trying to fit in schoolwork--I was ready.

This last year also brought me to three different states. Minnesota, obviously, a short time in Kansas, and finally to South Dakota. My time in Kansas, although brief, was an experience. I had never been that far away from everything I knew before. I would have done just fine in Kansas, but I'm very happy where I ended up.

Sioux Falls has been one heck of an experience. I love my job, I like the city, it's close enough to home for me, and the opportunities I've had here, as far as my career go, have been amazing, but that's for another post.

Now, about some of the photos, this rather loose edit of personal work includes photos from my everyday life as well as stories like the Unaccompanied Youth story that I worked on for my capstone project.

The story followed a teenage girl completing her final year of high school while living on her own. I should note that she was living on her own by her own choosing and was in a good place with her father who visited her from time to time. She did, however, live in a house which had been owned by her parents, but was going through the process of being foreclosed upon, in part, because of the recession. She worked a job to buy food, and also had to deal with maintaining the house, certain things that most teens don't have to do. What I tried to do was document her in her daily life.

There's also a portrait of a young man at the end of that series of photos who had lived on his own when he was a teen, but was now in her early twenties and living his own life.

Enough about that, though.

Other stories represented among these photos are from a 'slice of life' type assignment for a class where I spent about an hour and a half photographing the happenings of a local barbershop in Winona, Minn.; an overnight ice fishing trip with my dad--which was published in the Winona Daily News; and a trip to Ann Arbor, Mich., with an overnight stay in Chicago.

I think that about wraps up all I have to say about my personal day-to-day photos of the year.

2013 was a great year for me. Thanks for looking.

©Joe Ahlquist

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Year-End Post 1 of 2: Personal Photos, Last Semester of College (12/22/13)

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