Tag: best
Best of 2012
by Dave Wilson on Dec.16, 2012, under Photography
In the past, I’ve put my year-end photography summary post here but as of last year, I moved it over to my photoblog instead. If you would like to see my favourite images of 2012, you can find them here.
Best of 2011
by Dave Wilson on Dec.19, 2011, under Photography

For a change, I’ve posted my “Best of 2011” post over on the photoblog. Head on over if you would like to take a look at the 10 pictures I consider to be my favourites this year.
162 “Best of 2010” Posts
by Dave Wilson on Jan.13, 2011, under Photography
Each year, San Francisco-based photographer and blogger Jim Goldstein compiles a list of photographers’ annual “Best Of” posts. Here’s this year’s list. From the sites I’ve looked at so far, it’s been a good year. You can see Jim’s original post here.
- Best Photos of 2010 by Jim M. Goldstein – JMG-Galleries
- Best Photos of 2010 by Matthias Wassermann – Mawpix.com
- Exploring Light -Top Photos 2010 – Chris Moore
- My Top Ten Photos for 2010 – Tom Varden
- My Top Ten Photos of 2010 | Craig’s Musings – Craig Vitter
- Top 10 Photos for 2010 | Dobson Central – Ken Dobson
- Best Photos of 2010 – Carol Bauer
- My Best photos from 2010 – Janis Janums
- My Best Photos of 2010 – David Daylor | SixtyOneNorth.com
- 2010 – Year In Review – Jon McCormack Photography – Jon McCormack
- S Zacharias: Best of 2010 – Stephen Zacharias
- 2010 Photos – David Hernandez
- Iceman Photography – Top 10 in 2010
- Best of 2010 – Dave Wilson
- Skolai Images – Bears of 2010 – Carl Donohue
- My Best Photos From 2010 – Art Kuntz
- 2010 in Review – Jay Goodrich
- My Favourite Images of 2010 – Sven Seebeck
- Lunchisoptional: Favorites of Year: 2010 Edition — Ken Trout
- My ten favorite photos of 2010 – Stefan Bäurle
- Top 10 of 2010 – Behind The Clicks – Mohammad Noman
- Top Ten Photos Of 2010 – Jed Link
- 2010 in Review – kRiZ cPEc Photo Blog
- Chuqui.com- Best Photos 2010 – Chuq Von Rospach
- My Favorite Photos of 2010 – Ed Rosack
- 2010 Favorites – Pat Ulrich | Pat Ulrich Photography
- Favorites of 2010 – Kevin Moore
- Top 10 of 2010 from BlazingB Photography – Bill Pennington
- My Favorite Photos of 2010 – Mike Criss
- My faves from 2010 – Matt Smith
- My favourite shots of 2010 – Catalin Marin | Momentary Awe
- 2010 a Year in Review, My Top 10 Memorable/Favorite shots – Mike Criswell
- Craig Ferguson Images – A Year In Photos – Craig Ferguson
- Top 50 Images from 2010 and Goal Setting – Mike Cavaroc
- Jim’s Photography – Jim Wheeler
- Sharpimage.net – The best of 2010 – David Sharp
- StephenWeaver Photography/Earth Systems Imaging-Stephen G. Weaver
- Best of 2010 – Changing Perspectives – Jenni Brehm
- katzekotz.de – best of 2010 – Thomas Kneppeck
- 2010 Favorite Images – Alpenglow Images – Greg Russell
- Best Images of 2010 – Peter Cox Photography – Peter Cox
- Best of 2010| Simon Says – Simon Ponder
- My Favorites Shots of 2010 – Fine Art Prints – Jeff Colburn
- Mountain and Climbing Photography – Alexandre Buisse
- Siam In Contrast 2010 – Adrian Young
- 2010 in review (colour)– Olivier Du Tré
- John Dunne Photography | My Top 10 Favourite Images of 2010 – John Dunne
- Best of 2010 Flickr Set – Tony Rath
- Top 10 from 2010 – Behind-the-lens-lukey – Luke Weymark
- Evan Gearing Photography’s Top 10 of 2010 – Evan Gearing
- 2010 Photos in Review: Water – Rebecca R Jackrel
- Justin Korn [dot] com – Best of 2010 – Justin Korn
- My Best Photos of 2010: Learning and Growing> – D. Travis North
- Uncommon Depth – Roberta Murray
- Organic Light Photography Best of 2010 – Youssef Ismail / Organic Light Photography
- The Best of 2010 – blackandwhite.ie – Neil McShane
- My Best of 2010 – Larry Rosenstein
- Will Wohler Photography: 2010 A Year in Review – Will Wohler
- digitizedchaos – best of 2010 – rian castillo
- My Top 10 from 2010 – Chaz Curry Photography
- – Suzy Walker
- Favorite Photographs From 2010 – Fine Art Landscape Photography of Seung Kye Lee
- Best photos from 2010 – Amanda Herbert
- Wrapping Up 2010: My Favorite Photographs – Ivan Makarov Photography
- Graf Nature Photography | Reflections on 2010 photographs – MARK GRAF
- VACANT SHOP IN DOWNTOWN SANTA BARBARA – G. Kaltenbrun
- Pat O’Brien Photography – A Look Back at 2010 – Pat O’Brien
- G Dan Mitchell – 2010 Favorites – G Dan Mitchell
- Favorite Photo of 2010 – Naturalvision-photo.com –Derek Griggs
- Crest, Cliff & Canyon – Jackson Frishman
- 2010 In Review – Photoimagery.net – Peter McCabe
- Favorite Photos from 2010 – In the Field Photo Blog – Richard Wong
- Year in Review Best Photos of 2010 – Matt Graham Photo Blog – Matt Graham
- Elizabeth Brown Photography PhotoBlog: Ten Favorite Photos of 2010 – Elizabeth Brown
- My Top Photos of 2010 – Jonesblog – Bryan William Jones
- latoga photograph: My Favorite Photos of 2010 – Greg A. Lato
- Best of 2010 Images – Rob Tilley
- Living Wilderness: 12 Best from 2010 – Kevin Ebi
- Highlights of 2010 – TO KNOW MORE WEB JOURNAL – KENT MEARIG
- Michael Russell Photography
- Best Photographs of 2010 – Chuck Goolsbee
- Favourite Photos from 2010 – Tim Smalley
- My Best 10 Photos 2010 – A Reconnection to Nature – Mark Fenwick
- Best of 2010 – Quotidian Photography – Jessica Sweeney
- My Top Images of 2010 – ANDREW KEE
- A Photo A Day… Done! – WelliverPhotography – Beth Welliver
- Batsto Village – Louis Dallara Photo Blog – Louis Dallara
- Best 10 of 2010 – John Wall’s Natural California
- 10 from 2010 on the Ann-alog – Ann Torrence
- Favorite Photos from 2010 – My Photo Blog – Ron Niebrugge
- My favorite photos 2010 on Flickr – Markus Heinisch
- My best photos of 2010 – Mike Hellers
- Dave Reichert’s Best Of 2010 – Dave Reichert
- Photographs: 2010 Revisited – Joseph Szymanski
- Best Pics 2010 on Flickr – Michael Rubin
- My 10 Best Shots of 2010 – ROBIN BLACK PHOTOGRAPHY – ROBIN BLACK
- Top 10 from 2010 – Anne McKinnell
- Vanilla Days – Best of 2010 – Pete Carr
- Top Photos of 2010 – Gary Crabbe / Enlightened Images
- Top Images from 2010 – Russ Bishop | Nature Photo Blog
- Favourite photos from 2010 – Bryn Tassell
- 10 Best Photos of 2010 by Scott Thompson – Scott Thompson
- My Top 10 photos of 2010 – Alexander S. Kunz
- My 10 Best for 2010 – Dan Baumbach
- Unified Photography – Best Photos of 2010 – Ken Snyder
- 5 From 2010 – Contemporary Wildlife Photography – David Lloyd
- Top 10 Photos of 2010 – Steven Bourelle Digital Arts
- 2010 Top Ten Photos – Andrew S Gibson
- 2010 Reflections – Dru Stefan Stone – Dru-Color My World
- Best of 2010 – Dave Hammaker
- Top 20 of 2010 – Jenna Stirling
- LandLopers.com Top Travel Photos of 2010 – Matt Long
- Best of 2010 – Stephen Davey
- Landscape Photography Blogger My Favorite Photos of 2010 – David Leland Hyde
- Views Infinitum – Best of 2010 – Scott Thomas
- One Per Trip – Favorite Travel Photos From 2010 – The Carey Adventures – PETER WEST CAREY
- I Love It, SF – Kara Murphy
- My top 10 pictures from 2010 – Duffy Knox
- Burrard-Lucas Photography – Will & Matt Burrard-Lucas
- Hank Christensen Photography Top 10 2010 – Hank Christensen
- My Best Photos from 2010 – 365-1/4 Sra
- Top Ten Images of 2010 – Michael Frye
- Jono Hey’s Best of 2010 on Flickr – JONO HEY
- My Favorite Photographs from 2010 – Stories From Home –David Patterson
- My 2010 Best Images of California and Arizona – Steve Sieren
- My Top 10 Landscapes of 2010 – Andre Leopold
- Best of 2010 set on Flickr – Erik Turner
- This was 2010 on Flickr – Jeffrey Van Daele
- Top 10 of 2010 – Brian Mangano
- Best Photos of 2010 – KBTImages – Kevin Thornhill
- Best Photos of 2010 – The Sun Shines & The Igloo Melts
- Top 10 of 2010 – Chad Griggs
- Best Photos of 2010 – WASEEF AKHTAR
- My Favorite Images from 2010 – Outdoor Exposure Photography by Sean Bagshaw – Sean Bagshaw
- My Best Shots of 2010 – Annika Ruohonen Photography – Annika Ruohonen
- Top sights from 2010 – Mariana Travieso Bassi
- Year 2010 in Korwel Photography – Iza Korwel
- WISCONSIN SUMMER – Jarrod Erbe
- Best Photos of 2010 – Jim Stamates
- Top 10 of 2010 – Younes Bounhar
- Light on the Landscape Photoblog/My Favorite Images of 2010 – WILLIAM NEILL
- My Best Photos of 2010 – Itsa a greyt day for a photo – Terri Jacobson
- Listening to Nature Photography Blog by Rhoda Maurer – RHODA MAURER
- My favorites of 2010 – David Richter
- Best of 2010 – View from the Little Red Tent – Edie Howe
- tmophoto best of 2010 – Thomas O’Brien
- Best Photos Of 2010 – Dawnstar Australis – Daniel McNamara
- Top 10 of 2010 – Cranial Aperture – Jeffrey Yen
- 10 Best Favorites of 2010 – Sudheendra Kadri
- Flickr – Best of 2010 – Chris Arts
- Flickr: Best of 2010 – Heidi Donat
- Best Photo of 2010 – Anton Huo
- Best of 2010 – Travel & Landscape – Eugene Cheng
- Preetalina Photography: 2010 Favorites – Preeti Desai
- Hidden Light Photography 2010 Favorites – Alan Williams
- 5Mae 2010 Favourites Flickr Set – Sarah-Mae
- Best Photos of 2010 – John Fujimagari
- Best of 2010 – Paavani Bishnoi
- Best Photos of 2010 – Phil Colla
- 100 Favorites from 2010 – Patrick J. Endres
- Top Ten Of 2010 – Steve Cole Photography
- Some of My Favorite Images From 2010 – Clark Crenshaw Photography
Best of 2010
by Dave Wilson on Dec.17, 2010, under Photography
It’s become somewhat of a tradition over the last few years to produce a “Best of” post at the end of each year and submit it to Jim Goldstein who faithfully compiles a list of all these posts from photographers around the world so here are my top 10 images from 2010.
I deliberately decided to stick with 10 images this year but that did leave me with a bit of an editing headache. Getting the picks down to 20 was no problem but when I got to 13 I had real issues and ended up having to throw out a few pictures that I really like (this one, this one and this one, for example). In the end, however, here are the images that made the cut.
It may be surprising to some, but only half of these images are HDR this year. Part of the reason is that I’ve been making a concerted effort to broaden the types of photography that I do and part is that some of the most inspiring places I visited this year didn’t require HDR techniques to produce stiking images. The fact that I spent a week with Raul Touzon in Utah in February probably also influenced things somewhat since a great deal of that week was spent discussing the virtues of getting it right in the camera and not relying on post-processing.
Anyway, without further ado, here are my picks in no particular order. Click on each image for a larger version.
Frozen Fir Trees, Utah

OK, I lied. The images below this one are in no particular order but this is my favourite image of the year. It was taken high in the mountains of Utah on a foggy morning in February when we made the decision to take the windy road through the hills rather than the main road in our travels from Zion to Bryce Canyon. It turned out to be an excellent decision and yielded at least a dozen images that were high on my list of candidates for this post. This particular one, however, stands out to me for the gorgeous subtlety of the colours and the amazing sharpness, detail and clarity (look at the original resolution to see what I mean). I took this with the D90 and Nikon’s amazing 24-70mm f/2.8 lens, a sharper zoom than I have ever come across anywhere else.
City Center Reflection, Las Vegas

The Zion/Bryce/Death Canyon trip started for me with a day in Las Vegas during which I wandered the strip and had about as much fun as someone who gets kicks out of architecture could have. On my return, I liked this series of reflection shots taken in the City Center complex but started fiddling in Photoshop and, by mirroring the original image a couple of times and stacking the results, I came up with a geometric abstract that really appealed to me. This is an image I would love to print large on canvas!
Saturn V Engine Fairing Abstract

Another highlight of the year was our now-annual Cub Scout campout at Space Center Houston. The boys and their minders spend a night in the complex doing cool science projects with the staff then get to sleep on the floor under all the exhibits. The highlight for me, though, was having access to the place in the middle of the night when no-one was crowding round the exhibits (allowing me to get shots like this one which was also in my top 20) and getting to spend some quality time in the company of the Saturn V they have down there. The trip yielded enough images of that one vehicle to have me thinking of using them as an exhibition in their own right. Of those pictures, though, this one really stands out to me. I love the contrast between the hard lines and the soft play of light. The monochrome HDR processing really brings out the texture and gives me an image that is probably my second favourite of the year.
Downtown Austin Skyline at Dusk

This image formed the centerpiece of my exhibition at Dragonfly Gallery at Rosedale in Austin during June. I had it printed 48″ wide on canvas and you wouldn’t believe the detail. I love the colour and overall feel of the shot but it’s probably here as much as a representative of my new interest in shooting large panoramas as for any other reason. This image is enormous and would easily print 15 feet wide with superb defintion if I could find someone with a wall large enough to hang it and a wallet full enough to afford it. The image is stitched together from 7 vertical shots, each one a 3 exposure HDR. I am proud to say that the Mayor of Austin ripped it off and used it on his official web site before I sent a nice email pointing out that he had not licensed it.
Fort Davis National Historic Site

Our summer road trip was a huge success and 3 of the images in this set resulted from it. The first was taken at the Fort Davis National Historic Site in far west Texas. We were fortunate to be there after a particularly wet early summer so the landscape was green and the temperatures were, as expected, a lot lower than back in the Hill Country. This image was taken just after the fort opened at about 8:30am or thereabouts. I used a longish lens to compress the perspective of the row of nicely renovated houses and pull in the dramatic rockface behind them.
Drum Major, David Forinash

Another highlight of the year for me, both photographically and musically, was to be asked to stand in as photographer for the UT Longhorn Band during two home games at Texas Memorial Stadium. What a thrill it was to march onto the field with 100,000 people cheering in the stands and to be right in amongst the band as they played both before the game and during it.
I spent a fair bit of the game shooting with an ultra-wide lens, up-close and personal, and this is my favourite of those images. This was taken during the third quarter of an afternoon game when the sky offered a dramatic backdrop to the scene (aided by the fact that I set the white balance for the floodlights). The band is conducted by several people during a game and here we see Drum Major David Forinash leading from the top of the ladder. I have a couple of dozen versions of this shot but the mix of sharpness and movement in this particular frame moved it to the top of the list for me.
Rippled Ridge, White Sands, New Mexico

Our summer road trip this year took is to West Texas and New Mexico and included visits to two places which are high on my list of favourites – White Sands National Monument and Santa Fe. This is my favourite image from the White Sands visit. I loved the contrast between the brightness of the gypsum sand and the sky. Incidentally, shooting here is interesting since the overall brightness is so high. To pull texture out of the sand requires some deft handling of black point and curves in Photoshop.
Shadows on Adobe, Santa Fe, New Mexico

The adobe architecture in Santa Fe is fascinating to me, being so different from what I typically see in Central Texas. The textures of the adobe coupled with the smooth, organic lines of the buildings make for great contrasts. This image was shot on a morning when I was able to spend a couple of hours wandering around the city center on my own. The light angle was perfect to cast great shadows down the front of the building and the HDR processing (done to look pretty subtle in this case) really helped pull out the adobe texture.
Dugout Gloom

One of my goals over the last couple of years has been to take more pictures of people and this is my favourite non-family “people shot” of 2010. My younger son, Drew, plays in a baseball team and I often hang around with a camera capturing images of the games. The light at midday is usually pretty horrible on the field but the dugout offers a chance to take some candid portraits in a nice soft light. In this one, Jeffrey was obviously having a bad day! Incidentally, they went on to win this game so I expect his mood improved later.
Lone Star, Texas State History Museum

This image is one of a set of 3 that I included in my exhibition in June. All three were taken within 10 minutes and show different aspects of the huge Lone Star sculpture outside the Texas State History Museum in downtown Austin. The air was crystal clear that morning and the high cirrus clouds offered a wonderfully dramatic background.
Stata Center Abstract, Boston

OK, OK! I know this is number 11 and I said I was only going to include 10 images. I didn’t say what base I was counting in, though, so I reckon this gets me off the hook 🙂
This image was taken during a trip to Boston in October and shows a reflection in some very shiny stainless steel panels forming part of the fascinating Frank Gehry designed Stata Center building at MIT. I have several “normal” images of this building and I’m happy with them but this abstract appeals to me even more. The warping of the brickwork in the reflection makes this a very interesting image to me.