2012 Top 20 -- Photo 1

I took this back in April. Any photo I took after it this year would have had a hard time beating it for the #1 spot. Heck -- Pentax featured this photo on their Facebook stream in a blurb about me. This is one of those images that just works well, and I'm pretty proud of the final result, too.

And, a final fun fact: This image was taken during the same shoot (though two days later than) image 16.



Next year I'll continue this blog, for the three people who read it regularly, and for myself. Last year I set a pretty ambitious goal -- a different roll of film, camera, and lens combination every day. I managed that for much of the year, but since taking a job in the suburbs let it fall off. So next year this blog will be slightly different. I'm not sure exactly how yet. I plan to mix the subjects a bit more -- photography, how-to, technical information, and so forth. With luck, I can figure out how to embed YouTube videos and have them be centered. One thing I hope to do is more integrate this blog with my YouTube channel.

Anyway, have a safe and happy new year and stick around in 2013 for more, exciting, and bigger  blog posts.

And now for some 2012 metrics:

2012 blog views (through December 30): 4,305
Most-used camera: Pentax K-7 (64 times)
Most-used FILM camera: Nikon F3 (14 times)
Most-used lens: Sigma 35-80 (42 times)
Most-used film: Foma 400 ISO (20 times)
Most-frequented location: SOMA -- San Francisco's South of Market Neighborhood (33 times)
Most-viewed entry (2012 only): An Old Camera Photographs Old Piers (50 views)

2012 Top 20 -- Photo 2

Fun fact: This image was taken about five minutes after image 20!

2012 Top 20 -- Photo 3

2012 Top 20 -- Photo 4

Fun fact: This photo was taken just about two minutes after I took image 18. Off to the right, that's the Pacific Ocean at Ocean Beach in San Francisco.

2012 Top 20 -- Photo 5

A 1:1 macro using a Vivitar 135mm (f 2.5) M42 lens and an Asahi Macro Bellows II. Early next year I'll do a post on how to calculate macro ratios. I'll show you both the hard way (that involves lots of maths) and the easy way (that doesn't.)

2012 Top 20 -- Photo 6

Perhaps not the most technically perfect shot I took all year -- the focus was on the reflected mannequin. I like how jealous the reflected mannequin looks of the foreground mannequin, as though he wants to walk over there and punch that rather unsuspecting-looking fellow.

2012 Top 20 -- Photo 7

Fun fact: This was taken on the same day, with the same roll of film, and in the same camera as image 14.

2012 Top 20 -- Photo 8

This is my desktop wallpaper. This is one single frame, not an image composite. It includes an F-22 Raptor, P-51 Mustang, and FA-18 Hornet. That may be a Super Hornet, actually. I'm not sure.

Fun fact: This photo was taken on the same day and with the same camera and lens as image 11.

2012 Top 20 -- Photo 9

Robert Emmett, I believe. This sculpture silhouette was taken outside the California Academy of Sciences and DeYoung Museum. 

2012 Top 20 -- Photo 10

So, look, you may not actually be reading this right now. Yesterday was the 21st, so today may be the first day of Armageddon. I'm writing this on December 7th, so who knows what's going to happen in two weeks. In the unlikely chance that not all of humanity was destroyed by the Mayan calendar ending yesterday, here is the first of our top 10 photos from this year's top 20!

2012 Top 20 -- Photo 11

Fun with Photoshop! This is not a whole bunch of planes making a choreographed loop; instead, this is one plane from multiple photos that I arranged in a loop. The bottom two planes I had to slightly change the direction of to achieve this overall composition. One of the reasons this works is that because all of the shots were taken from the same vantage within about 20 minutes, the lighting is from the same angle on each plane, so it looks like to could be real.

2012 Top 20 -- Photo 12

Sunset over Walnut Creek, from Mount Diablo. From a technical perspective, this may have been my best photo of the year. Sunset images like these are notoriously difficult to capture and meter well. Mostly, though, I just lucked out. Thank goodness for bracketing!

2012 Top 20 -- Photo 13

The SF Public Library. I'm not a huge fan of gently upward architectural shots -- in fact, typically, I hate them. However, I liked this how because the upwardness is largely cancelled by the various angles within the image.

2012 Top 20 -- Photo 14

I never have figured out what to say about this shot.

2012 Top 20 -- Photo 15

High-key Tree

2012 Top 20 -- Photo 16

Number 16 -- Milwaukee Art Museum.

2012 Top 20 -- Photo 17

One of my personal favorites from this past year, I enjoy how this photo's subject and her shadow work together in the composition.

2012 Top 20 -- Photo 18

This was a fun photo experiment. To capture this I took a series of images in rapid succession with my K-7. Then I used Adobe Photoshop CS4 Extended to stack, align, and blend the images into one composite. Want to see how I did it? That's right -- there's a video at the bottom of this blog post.

2012 Top 20 -- Photo 19

A red tail hawk and a dead tree. No shade, just sky, dry grass, and heat. This was a fairly lucky shot, the hawk being in the ideal place for a rule-of-thirds composition. In fact, I used this image to create a three-minute how to about the rule of thirds. That video is below this image and also available on YouTube.

2012 Top 20 -- Photo 20

I really don't like Andy Warhol's art. Let me get that out up front. But, I wanted to experiment with modern art. So I took a photo specifically to try converting it into artwork. This was the result -- my 20th-best image for 2012. If you'd like to see a video explaining how I made this image, check out the video at the bottom of the page.