Compared to last year, this year's work definitely tailed off a bit. Understandably as this year I was significantly busier with work and YouTube video commitments, so I didn't have as much time to shoot. Next year, I hope, will see improvement from 2013.
2014 will see some changes to the blog's format. I have some posts planned out but need to carve some time to write them. Hopefully the blog will grow in 2014. And now for some 2013 metrics:
2012 blog views (through December 11): 10,801 -- up from 4,305 in 2012
And my best photo of the year is ... government property. Yup. I can't share it. And on that anticlimactic bombshell, see you in 2014. Wait. It already is 2014.
But wait! Standing in for the best photo of the year is this one:
Somehow I forgot to include this photo in my top 20. Actually, I'm really comfortable with this being the best photo of my 2013 photographic year.
I couldn't decide, so I went with both.
That's right -- It's time for the year-end photo countdown. This year's photos are much different from last year's. Objectively, I am not as happy this year, though I think that in some areas I had really good work. In general, I'm still very proud of these 20 photos, and choosing a top 20 was another hard task this year. So, without delay, here is photo 20:
After this, there will be one more post from these slides. This week, I'll share five slides I liked but didn't have a chance to work into the previous narratives.
For kicks, I took an old card box I was going to throw out and made it into a pinhole camera. Instead of putting one hole in the middle or the end and calling it a day, I put two holes in and decided to try making a stereoscopic camera.
Here was my test image, a stereoscopic negative of a building under construction.
And the positive inversion. I printed this as a positive, but made this inversion in Photoshop.
This was the first image that got the camera noticed. I took this onto Zone VI fiber-based paper, so I had to press it after development and drying. I had it pressing under glass and noticed a few people looking at it and commenting on it. It definitely hints at what the Dragon Box (the camera's name) can do.
A Photoshop inversion to show the image's positive.
This negative really did not appear to turn out well at all, so I let it sit without much attention. When I digitized it, though, I decided to invert it. That inversion convinced me that this, the second image I took with the Dragon Box is the first solid sign of what this camera can do.
A double-exposure of a high-tension tower. I exposed the shot and then turned the camera around 180 degrees, capturing the same shot in reverse. Yes, this camera has potential. I'm glad I didn't thrown the box away.
And here's the Dragon Box and an explanation of how to make it.
