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My favorite photos from 2018
I'm not saying they're my best, as what you think are my best and what I think may be two different things. Plus, you can't see all of the photos that I shot last year! You're welcome to peruse what I posted, but not all of these that are under this cut _have_ been posted, so there!
If you're a glutton for punishment, here's all of my entries tagged with photos:
https://thewayne.dreamwidth.org/tag/photographs
A total of eight photos from last year with five additional honorable mentions: they weren't shot last year, but I did process them last year and I think they're more than good enough to include. And one of the eight I took with a borrowed camera!
Surprisingly, there are no panoramic/stitched photos, and only two HDRs! Of course, I did shoot a lot of sunsets, so I'll lead off with one of those.
But it's under the cut. And as usual, you can click on any of the images to embiggen them. Both of my cameras are 20 megapixel, so they can get pretty darn embiggened!
This, I think, is a pretty darn good sunset shot! This is looking down from one of the pullouts coming down the mountain from Cloudcroft. Definitely one of the better ones that I've done. It is HDR, which lets you get brighter brights and darker darks that you wouldn't get with a single exposure since Photoshop composits seven exposures, giving you +/- 3 f stops.
A particularly stormy day at White Sands National Monument. I particularly like how the light shows the layers of mountains just above the bottom of the frame.
This was taken the same day as the previous photo. We were coming back from Las Cruces, it was snowing in Cloudcroft and had been stormy all day long everywhere else. It let up by the time we had crossed back to White Sands, and the dogs were restless having been cooped up in the car all day with the storms. So while Russet took them for a run with the bike, I went photographing. This is an extremely low angle of a picnic area: I cropped out the tables to the left and the restrooms to the right. I took the preceding photo from the top of the dunes to the center and just to the left. It's hard to believe that the sand is actually white gypsum, but when it's wet, cloudy, and getting on towards sunset - you get some interesting color and reflections!
This was from the big storm that hit right after Christmas, we got about 3' of snow in 18 hours. Sort of a mini-blizzard. This is a photo that I would encourage you to click on to zoom and fill your screen, it has some details that I think really pop at max magnification.
This is my borrowed camera shot: I try to go to the annual Festival of the Cranes, about 90 minutes S of Albuquerque, about 3.5 hours from my house. It's a bit of a drive! But I borrowed a $13,000 lens and body from Canon and had a blast with it! I really like this photo: it's simple, nice blue, and I love the curve of the duck's neck, both the real duck and the reflection. It also has extremely shallow depth of field, I wish it were deeper but this was my first time with a 500mm prime lens and I was still getting the hang of using it so close. Anyway, I really like this shot so I included it. The other photos from the Festival (including a photo of the camera and lens!) are here.
This is not an earth-shattering photo, but it pleases me. I think it's a pretty good composition, it has a nice diagonal movement going on, and it has my favorite mammals.
These were our Christmas card photos for '18, taken at local landmarks. The Alamogordo area grows pistachios and pecans, also has local wineries and grows grapes. The same pistachio farm that has the giant nut also does the Alamogordo sign, but if I zoomed the lens out far enough to get the entire sign, then the dogs and us were too small! So I cropped it down to Mogor, and my wife included this letter about the Cult of Mogor and our Ketonic pistachio worshipers. See - writing fanfic CAN contribute to ... something! (Sorry you didn't get the letter, AnnMarie! I had to get the internationals out ASAP and it was before she wrote the story.)
And now, on to the honorable mentions!
This is a familiar view seen in several of my landscapes and some of my sunsets, taken from the Mexican Canyon Trestle Overlook just below Cloudcroft. I shot this in 2015, but didn't realize it was an HDR. I spent some time processing it about two months ago and absolutely love what I got out of it! There was a very similar effect this year with a snow storm that came in and filled the valley below the mountaintop, but the overlook was snowed in and we couldn't stop.
The photo was shot on film around 1989 or so, I scanned it a few yeas back and came across it this year when I was cleaning up and reorganizing some directories. This is a rather sad story. These are two friends of mine who were in a relationship, and were having some difficulties. I had worked with the man, J, at a prior job and we're still good friends. The woman, G, had a young daughter. They wanted to go to San Diego to have some time to talk and see if they could fix things. They invited me along so I could effectively do some kid wrangling. At the time the Canon Eos system had just come out and a lot of photographers were flocking to it. All of my camera equipment needed servicing, so I rented an Eos 630 with a 35-105 zoom to check it out during the trip. After the trip, I traded in all of my equipment and bought what I'd just rented. I still have that camera, though the shutter needs to be replaced. ANYWAY, their relationship didn't last, but I really like this photo! There's so much in it! I couldn't have arranged better lighting and composition if I'd tried, this was a total "turn around and take the shot" photo. And having that gull down at the waterline? And the reflections in the water? And that wave cresting? I really like this photo. But the worst thing about it? I don't think that I can give the photo to either of them. J's wife is extremely jealous of previous girlfriends, and G is retired and I don't think it would be fair to give it to one without giving it to both. I'm hoping I can have lunch with J solo some time and show it to him, and if he says OK, then I'll send it to G.
The remaining shots were taken near Cape Elizabeth, Maine, in 2007. I recently came across these when I was cleaning up my galleries on my photography web site and was looking at my original source photos. And I absolutely love the composition! It was pure luck with the timing, getting the bird with its wings up like that. You never know when shooting wildlife what it'll do, especially with birds at a surf line - it pays to plan on shooting several images. The bird might take off, it might stick its head in the water looking for a bit of tid. The pose reminds me of an E-2 Hawkeye airplane, a propeller plane with a giant radar disc on its back. This I'm pretty sure was taken with the forementioned 35-105 zoom on an original Canon Digital Rebel, in its full six megapixel glory. Not too bad! (it was the longest lens that I had at the time)
A demonstration of why to take multiple shots of animals, in reference to not knowing what they will do. I just happened to catch this one with one foot out of the water, and I think it's a good shot. This one was taken just a few minutes before the previous photo.
Sometimes the sea she is a blue, but sometimes the sea she is a green. Now, the funny thing about this photo is that it fooled my wife! At the time we had a black poodle, but that is not our poodle! You see, we flew out to Maine for this trip, Celeste was in a kennel back in New Mexico! We were wandering around the beach and this poodle was having fun running around the tide line. Nothing particularly great about this photo, but it amuses me because it snookered my wife.
Now this photo, this I like. Again, this is one that if you zoom it out to full screen, some very nice highlight - specular highlights, what we call them. I love it when shadows make a photo, and that's the case here. Crop out that shadow and the photo is blah. If you're wondering why she's carrying two pairs of shoes, that's because I'm also barefoot. :-)
If you're a glutton for punishment, here's all of my entries tagged with photos:
https://thewayne.dreamwidth.org/tag/photographs
A total of eight photos from last year with five additional honorable mentions: they weren't shot last year, but I did process them last year and I think they're more than good enough to include. And one of the eight I took with a borrowed camera!
Surprisingly, there are no panoramic/stitched photos, and only two HDRs! Of course, I did shoot a lot of sunsets, so I'll lead off with one of those.
But it's under the cut. And as usual, you can click on any of the images to embiggen them. Both of my cameras are 20 megapixel, so they can get pretty darn embiggened!
This, I think, is a pretty darn good sunset shot! This is looking down from one of the pullouts coming down the mountain from Cloudcroft. Definitely one of the better ones that I've done. It is HDR, which lets you get brighter brights and darker darks that you wouldn't get with a single exposure since Photoshop composits seven exposures, giving you +/- 3 f stops.
A particularly stormy day at White Sands National Monument. I particularly like how the light shows the layers of mountains just above the bottom of the frame.
This was taken the same day as the previous photo. We were coming back from Las Cruces, it was snowing in Cloudcroft and had been stormy all day long everywhere else. It let up by the time we had crossed back to White Sands, and the dogs were restless having been cooped up in the car all day with the storms. So while Russet took them for a run with the bike, I went photographing. This is an extremely low angle of a picnic area: I cropped out the tables to the left and the restrooms to the right. I took the preceding photo from the top of the dunes to the center and just to the left. It's hard to believe that the sand is actually white gypsum, but when it's wet, cloudy, and getting on towards sunset - you get some interesting color and reflections!
This was from the big storm that hit right after Christmas, we got about 3' of snow in 18 hours. Sort of a mini-blizzard. This is a photo that I would encourage you to click on to zoom and fill your screen, it has some details that I think really pop at max magnification.
This is my borrowed camera shot: I try to go to the annual Festival of the Cranes, about 90 minutes S of Albuquerque, about 3.5 hours from my house. It's a bit of a drive! But I borrowed a $13,000 lens and body from Canon and had a blast with it! I really like this photo: it's simple, nice blue, and I love the curve of the duck's neck, both the real duck and the reflection. It also has extremely shallow depth of field, I wish it were deeper but this was my first time with a 500mm prime lens and I was still getting the hang of using it so close. Anyway, I really like this shot so I included it. The other photos from the Festival (including a photo of the camera and lens!) are here.
This is not an earth-shattering photo, but it pleases me. I think it's a pretty good composition, it has a nice diagonal movement going on, and it has my favorite mammals.
These were our Christmas card photos for '18, taken at local landmarks. The Alamogordo area grows pistachios and pecans, also has local wineries and grows grapes. The same pistachio farm that has the giant nut also does the Alamogordo sign, but if I zoomed the lens out far enough to get the entire sign, then the dogs and us were too small! So I cropped it down to Mogor, and my wife included this letter about the Cult of Mogor and our Ketonic pistachio worshipers. See - writing fanfic CAN contribute to ... something! (Sorry you didn't get the letter, AnnMarie! I had to get the internationals out ASAP and it was before she wrote the story.)
And now, on to the honorable mentions!
This is a familiar view seen in several of my landscapes and some of my sunsets, taken from the Mexican Canyon Trestle Overlook just below Cloudcroft. I shot this in 2015, but didn't realize it was an HDR. I spent some time processing it about two months ago and absolutely love what I got out of it! There was a very similar effect this year with a snow storm that came in and filled the valley below the mountaintop, but the overlook was snowed in and we couldn't stop.
The photo was shot on film around 1989 or so, I scanned it a few yeas back and came across it this year when I was cleaning up and reorganizing some directories. This is a rather sad story. These are two friends of mine who were in a relationship, and were having some difficulties. I had worked with the man, J, at a prior job and we're still good friends. The woman, G, had a young daughter. They wanted to go to San Diego to have some time to talk and see if they could fix things. They invited me along so I could effectively do some kid wrangling. At the time the Canon Eos system had just come out and a lot of photographers were flocking to it. All of my camera equipment needed servicing, so I rented an Eos 630 with a 35-105 zoom to check it out during the trip. After the trip, I traded in all of my equipment and bought what I'd just rented. I still have that camera, though the shutter needs to be replaced. ANYWAY, their relationship didn't last, but I really like this photo! There's so much in it! I couldn't have arranged better lighting and composition if I'd tried, this was a total "turn around and take the shot" photo. And having that gull down at the waterline? And the reflections in the water? And that wave cresting? I really like this photo. But the worst thing about it? I don't think that I can give the photo to either of them. J's wife is extremely jealous of previous girlfriends, and G is retired and I don't think it would be fair to give it to one without giving it to both. I'm hoping I can have lunch with J solo some time and show it to him, and if he says OK, then I'll send it to G.
The remaining shots were taken near Cape Elizabeth, Maine, in 2007. I recently came across these when I was cleaning up my galleries on my photography web site and was looking at my original source photos. And I absolutely love the composition! It was pure luck with the timing, getting the bird with its wings up like that. You never know when shooting wildlife what it'll do, especially with birds at a surf line - it pays to plan on shooting several images. The bird might take off, it might stick its head in the water looking for a bit of tid. The pose reminds me of an E-2 Hawkeye airplane, a propeller plane with a giant radar disc on its back. This I'm pretty sure was taken with the forementioned 35-105 zoom on an original Canon Digital Rebel, in its full six megapixel glory. Not too bad! (it was the longest lens that I had at the time)
A demonstration of why to take multiple shots of animals, in reference to not knowing what they will do. I just happened to catch this one with one foot out of the water, and I think it's a good shot. This one was taken just a few minutes before the previous photo.
Sometimes the sea she is a blue, but sometimes the sea she is a green. Now, the funny thing about this photo is that it fooled my wife! At the time we had a black poodle, but that is not our poodle! You see, we flew out to Maine for this trip, Celeste was in a kennel back in New Mexico! We were wandering around the beach and this poodle was having fun running around the tide line. Nothing particularly great about this photo, but it amuses me because it snookered my wife.
Now this photo, this I like. Again, this is one that if you zoom it out to full screen, some very nice highlight - specular highlights, what we call them. I love it when shadows make a photo, and that's the case here. Crop out that shadow and the photo is blah. If you're wondering why she's carrying two pairs of shoes, that's because I'm also barefoot. :-)
no subject
no subject
White Sands is good to shoot any time, because it's different even day to day because the wind reshapes it during the night. But it changes so dramatically during storms! And gulls are interesting to follow closely, you never know what you'll get! They're definitely made of attitude - the San Diego photo? We went out on a whale watching cruise and the guy was feeding hot dog buns to gulls that knew to follow the boats, I got some pretty good close-ups of that.