First and foremost, my family grew this year. Not only did I get to welcome a new nephew into the world, but I was also lucky enough to get engaged and married to the person I love most in the world. Like many other photographers out there, I have my amazingly supportive and patient wife to thank for helping me get to where I am today. So many evenings and weekends I abandoned you with the puppy to pursue this crazy obsession of mine. Not only did you allow me this indulgence, but sometimes you were the one pushing me out the door to make sure I always got the shots I wanted. And although your opinion is probably a little biased (okay, maybe more than a little), thanks for always being my first and most positive critic. I’ll always be grateful for your love and support.
Secondly, I grew immensely as a photographer this year…both behind the lens and in the digital darkroom. My knowledge of what my camera is capable of (and what it’s not) led me into the realm of HDR photography. Like many who are new to the genre, I began my journey with some (read: a lot) of images that were a bit over cooked. Those sliders in Photomatix were all maxed out to really make my point…look at me, I’m here, and I’m oversaturated! All kidding aside, I was able to learn from these early blunders, and through constant practice, took my processing skills to the next level. My knowledge of Lightroom and Photoshop and the various plugin suites I tried (and eventually bought) has increased exponentially. I still don’t consider myself even close to being an expert, but the growth is what’s important.
Last, but not least, the number of people who I can call ‘photographer’ and ‘friend’ grew substantially this year, and these new friends played an enormous role in my progression as a photographer in 2010. Most of these friends are people I’ve met through Twitter. I’ll be the first to admit it, when the Twitter phenomenon first hit a few years ago, I was skeptical about how a series of 140 character updates could be valuable to anybody. Here I am today, with just over 2,500 tweets sent and a healthy group of amazing followers/friends…and I couldn’t be more happy about it! The connections I’ve made through this amazing social network are ones that I hope I’ll keep for years to come, and the giving nature of the photography community I’m now a part of is really something to behold. Everyone is more than happy to share their personal photography secrets, and are always there to give an encouraging word or a friendly critique. There are too many people to name here, but I’d just like to send out a heartfelt thank you to all of these new friends…you know who you are.
There it is, my 2010 retrospective. I guess no blog post here would be complete without at least one image…so here are 7 faves from my 2010 collection (I know…7 is kinda random, but I started with 5 but needed a couple more):
This was shot after the madness of the gift opening was done. I shot most of the morning with my 50mm prime, but decided to throw on my 10-20mm zoom to try for some interesting close-up, distorted portraits of the kids. It was a bit of a challenge to get the shots because I had to be about 6 inches away from their faces to get the distortion I wanted, but it was fun. This is probably my favourite shot of the morning.
Unfortunately, the disappointment didn’t end with the harvest moon itself. After unloading my images and sifting through them, I found that I wasn’t particularly impressed with any of the shots I got of the harvest moon. I ran a couple sets of brackets through Photomatix and was still not very happy with the results…so, what to do? I knew I wanted to post a harvest moon shot, and now it was almost like a challenge to make at least one of them work. Maybe not the best exercise, but it forced me to get the creative juices flowing a little bit. I decided to throw a texture onto a single exposure (-2 ev) to add a bit of extra interest. After a few other local adjustments and a global saturation shift, I ended up with what you see below…and I’m actually quite pleased with how it all turned out in the end. Moral of the story? Not really sure…be persistent? Stubbornness sometimes pays off? You be the judge 
Yesterday, I went for my first short photowalk after my eye surgery, and since my car is still parked across the city, I was limited to wherever my feet could carry me. I’ve said this before, but I live in a relatively new development, so there are still a number of large construction vehicles around almost all the time. I had walked the dog earlier in the day and saw a couple of these construction giants that I wanted to capture when I went back out with the camera…unfortunately, two of the three I wanted to shoot were in use by the time I returned. So…with only one of my locations still available, I tried to make the best of it and ended up with a few usable brackets from the one construction vehicle….the first is below:
Oh, and here’s a pretty picture of a train track switch.
Hay bales are such a common sight along these country roads and I’ve always felt they make for great photographic subjects. I took a number of shots at the same location you’ll see below, but it wasn’t until I trespassed a bit more than I would have liked and got nice and close to this bale that I was really happy with the composition. Having one bale as a prominent foreground element was key.
I knew as soon as I saw this monster that I would have to come back to capture it, so on Friday night Brei and I made our way downtown to get a few brackets. Although I don’t think there’s anything outta-this-world about the shot, I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. Mostly I just wanted to get a shot of this thing while it was right over 9th Ave!
I took the below shot with my Sigma 10-20mm and purposely got nice and close to the building and shot at 10mm to get the interesting distorted perspective. I also don’t usually place a subject right in the middle of the frame but sometimes the symmetry of a shot can be much more powerful than a traditional “rule of thirds” composition.
