Paul Wellman

PAUL’S PERSPECTIVE: This marks the 10th straight year that our Year in Pictures issue is dominated by the photography of Paul Wellman, who was first hired by this newspaper in 2001, became the staff photographer in 2002, and is still perfecting the grueling selection process required of this week’s visual offerings. “Each year, I look at what happened nationally and across the world, and I see amazing images of huge and beautiful and devastating and horrible things, and I think we will never have anything here that comes close to that,” said Wellman. “But the next thing you know, I have 450 photos that I would kind of like to see in this issue, and we can only fit about 50. There’s an amazing amount of stuff that happens each year in Santa Barbara, and a review like this puts in perspective how much news we cover.” Wellman also published his first book of photography in 2012, about The Loft on Haley Street (and titled The Loft) and its artsy owner J.W.“Bill” Adkins, available at store.blurb.com/ebooks/327372-the-loft.