Continuing my yearly tradition now since 2007, below are my top 10 favorite images made during 2010. Looking back at what was explored and experienced helps not only draw a map of where I have been, but gives directions to the roads ahead. It is a long post, but these end of year ones usually are. This year I feel particularly “chatty.” :-) I hope you enjoy the comments about the images.
2010 Collection
Many famous photographers are fond of the saying about how the camera and lens tend to look both ways. For someone trying to express themselves through the medium of photography, certainly aspects of their own personality and personal vision should come through in their images. I feel at home in these places versus in a crowded street or a concrete jungle. For all of the other important things that our lives become entangled in, there are many things overlooked that are important also. Some things may not be recognized to a particular individual as being significant, but in the grand makeup of nature – these little observations are segments of life cycles going on all around us.
These images not only represent personal growth in vision, but often moments of chance, inspiration, and visualization that have never existed in previous years, and may never again. Many times I have made some of these photographs, and decided “Hey, I’d like to do more of this.” Well, more often than not, the same situation just didn’t present itself again.
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Path to Ra
I was exploring some new areas near my house this past weekend where they have created a new hiking / mountain bike trail through my woods. I don’t know where my mind was, but I was seeing shapes that were everything but what the real object was. And yet, I wasn’t under the influence of any mind altering substances! So in these images, I couldn’t let my imagination get away from the idea that these abstract macro’s resembled ancient Egypt depictions of a sun god.
ancient Sun god
Burning questions
One key aspect of my approach to my nature subjects usually originates from a question, or series of them. While one may wish to be all knowing, it is quite hard to accomplish in actual practice. Shocking I know.
This particularly applies to the interesting patterns I may find in the woods that I enjoy making abstract photographs from. Sometimes after I photograph something, the answers come later on, leading to a bit of education. More often (much more than I like to admit!), the photograph remains as a reminder of those questions.
In the case with this photograph, I came across a burnt pile of wood in the middle of the woods near my home. Aside from wondering how the wood was burned to begin with (kids? lightning? meteor? magic staff blast?), I was quite curious about the pattern formed. It was hardly uniform, and I really didn’t know what type of wood it was. For sure it has something to do with the thermal decomposition of the cellulose in the wood. So questions about this pattern lead me down the path of learning about cellular structures in wood and the interaction with temperature.
I don’t always get the specific answers I am looking for. The pursuit and appreciation of the unknown are part of the journey. I suppose once I no longer have any questions left, I can stop photographing.
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. – Albert Einstein
This macro photograph was made in the woods along the Clinton River, Sterling Heights, Michigan. The photograph was captured by a Nikon D700, 14 bit RAW file, Nikon 200mm f4 macro lens, and post processed using luminosity masks in Photoshop CS3, and the plugin Topaz Adjust on a Mac Pro.
Read MoreJust as I did for 2007 and 2008, I suppose it is only fitting for me to take on looking back at the year of images I made in 2009. Most of them can be considered as favorites, but mostly they represent some significant direction I took with my photography or hold some special significance. Sometimes it is quite hard narrowing the list down to a manageable number or picking between two images of a particular trip or outing. Looking back on these images helps me solidify where I may want to go with future projects, and also it may give you (and me! 
) some insight on where I am headed with my photography.
Lightroom categories
With my images now scattered across multiple hard drives, it is quite convenient to have them all available in a central catalog in Lightroom. I am pretty certain that database management of images will become more commonplace (if not already) as people outgrow their storage volumes and have images scattered across all of these digital shoeboxes. It is much easier to group similar images and to look for patterns for special projects or arrangements. The process of selecting them was next, so I created a special collection for 2009 just as I did for 2007 and 2008.
My unprocessed images are RAW files stored by date, so they are quite easy to find everything for 2009. However, once I process and file them, they become organized by subject independent of dates. So I needed to use a metadata filter for 2009 to pick up all of the unprocessed and processed images that were made in that year. I then sorted that by images that were already flagged as “picks” to narrow the hunt down further and dragged candidates into the collection set for 2009. Then I weeded through those until I had 10 remaining.
Over time as I accumulate these lists, I suppose it will be interesting in how they compare. I am hard pressed to see any major shifts in what I like over the past 3 years. If I would have assembled a list say 15 years ago and compared, I am sure there would be a lot of differences. Over a greater period of time, picking “favorite top 10s” is kind of like asking someone their top 10 favorite songs when they are 16 years old, and then when they are 40. Chances are those lists are nothing alike. So enough of this process gibberish – let me move on to sharing my favorites of 2009. They are presented in the order in which they were exposed during the year.
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Cardinal feathers
Cardinal feathers
Cardinal abstract
These images are dedicated to a male Northern Cardinal that unfortunately struck the back door of my house and did not survive. I felt horrible. Before I placed his body to rest in one of our pine trees that he so frequently liked to visit, I captured these few images as a remembrance of his wonderful feathers and visits to our yard.
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