2020, My Photographic Favorites (Part 1)

2020, What a ride huh! The good part is, it didn't really affect us to much living here in NW Florida. Day to day was pretty much business as usual, except for a couple of hick-ups here and there. I was able to get out pretty freely and shoot to my hearts content. 
So with that being said, I'd like to do kind of a year in review of some of my favorite photos. The photos will be in no particular order. I didn't want to say best photo's as that can be pretty subjective, what is best to me may not be best to you and so on.
Ok, enough of that, on to the shots. First (the photo above) this old grist mill lies in the Blackwater River State Forest of NW Florida. A foggy day was forecast, so myself and a photographer friend headed into the forest to see what we could capture. This particular scene looks so much better with a little fog to create depth and a drama. The other thing with this shot is, this is pretty much the best angle to shoot from to get something besides a touristy snapshot, there's a boardwalk along with signs on the other side and behind me, along with a roadway to my right. Getting something unique here is hard, so the fog really helped.
 
Next, we have this flamingo. I know, it looks like any everyday flamingo shot, but for some reason, I just really like the the pose and vibrant pink color of this guy. I chose not to include the whole bird and liked how his feather come out of the lower left corner and lead you right up to his head. I also left a little negative space in front of him, so the close up photo doesn't appear too crowded. This was not a planed photo trip, it just happened to be a day out with our daughter at the local zoo. 

If you follow my work much, one thing is clear, I love photographing colorful sunset/sunrises. Luckily our house faces west, so it's easy to step out front and get a good idea of how sunset may shape up. This day, however wasn't looking so good and I didn't want to travel too far to get a "meh" shot. This scene happens to be at the end of our neighborhood, so I took a quick ride down there just incase something good developed. Well, what can I say, something good developed! the clouds moved in just at sunset and the sky exploded in color. I knew I liked this composition, with the "S" curve of the creek leading back into the coastal wetlands, it just needed a sky to compliment it and on this day it sure happened!

Back up to the Blackwater River State Forest, where once again myself and a fellow photographer friend headed out bright and early one morning to capture a Pitcher Plant Bog at sunrise. While we did capture some nice shots (you'll see one later) on our hike out the spider webs, which were everywhere, came to life, backlit by the morning sun. I knew, I needed to try and capture one of these natural works of art, so after looking a bit, I found this one. It almost reminds me of what a spider discotech might look like...lol. Once I got home and did a bit of processing to the photo to really bring out the backlit web, it turned out to be my favorite from the trip.

This shot took some doing and a lot of scouting before I landed on this composition. Why you ask, well....I made the mistake of going to one of our areas most popular tourist locations on a weekend (yea, I wasn't thinking). Being retired, days seem to run together and half the time you don't even realize what day it is, I know, tough problem to have....lol. Anyway, I found myself at Fort Pickens along with a 1000 other folks which were everywhere. Once I arrived, I realized my mistake, but decided to make the best of it since I was there. It was late in the afternoon with sunset a couple hours away, so I began my search for a good spot with minimal people, a sunset view and location showing It was a civil war fort (not asking to much, right?). So after about a 1 1/2 hours, I settled on this shot, the fort was prevalent in the scene and the tree made for a nice foreground, now all I needed was a nice sunset. Well, low and behold, the sunset gods shined bright for me again, the clouds were moving pretty fast, so I didn't have long to wait till they were in just the right position. Everything came together making this one of my favorites and one I have as a print on my wall.

Landscape photography is pretty much a lone wolf kind of hobby/job, you usually go out alone most of the time, so it is nice to have a friend to go out shooting with once in a while. As you may have noticed, I do have such a friend, which leads us to this shot. We took a trip up to northern Alabama for a photography workshop and to photograph the Little River Canyon area. On the way home, (as dumb luck would have it) we took a wrong turn and happened by this old abandoned gas station. Of course I was looking the other way when Walt says, look over here, that would be cool to photograph, so I did and it was! Beside being one of my favorite subjects to photograph (old abandoned buildings) in this shot its the symmetrical aspect of it I really like. Of course that didn't happen by accident, I spent quite a bit of time working the scene and taking several different shots. This one happened to be my favorite of the bunch and one of my favorites of the year.

Ok, that sums up Part One of my "2020 Favorites", I'll break this series down into four parts as not to bore you with one long lengthy post, and each post will contain 6 or so shots. After going through my years worth of shots, there were so many I really liked, it was hard to break them down and only pick a few.

I hope you enjoyed this little walk down memory lane with me and we'll see you back here next time.

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