Retrospective 2013
Happy New Year everyone, or rather, happy old year since today I revisit some of my favourite photos from 2013.
I thought about doing the best-of-the-month approach but some months were slim and others had more than one photo I really like, so in the end I chose categories. And because that is not flexible enough, sometimes I show a ‘couple’ (well, ok, a few) photos in a category. I do give category titles below, but they are not mutually exclusive and some photos would easily fit in several. Can you tell I had a hard time choosing? Can you interpret that “category” = “meaningless”?
Anyway, I hope you like some of these too. Click on any image to link to the original post. If I missed something you think should be here, put a link in a comment. I hope you all have a great 2014.
Naturally I start with my granddaughter, which is the big change for this family in 2013. Photographing her family was a trigger for me to take and post more portraits than I had previously felt comfortable with, so it marks a change at BurntEmbers too. The first photo links to a post that has two of my favourite baby-and-family shots. I like this one best because of the symmetry in their arms. In fact, I might crop it to just the arms and baby sometime.
OK, that is it for discussing the photos – I often do so in the linked posts, but really they can should be able to speak for themselves.
PORTRAIT – Grandchild
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PORTRAIT – Stranger
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PORTRAIT – Self
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PERFORMANCE
This was a hard decision – lots of choice on the original post, with audio link too. That’s my son on keys.
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HDR
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LANDSCAPE
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WEIRD
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DOCUMENTATION
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CAT
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ANIMATED GIF
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BLACK AND WHITE
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ARCHITECTURE
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URBAN NATURE
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ABSTRACT
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MACRO
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FILM
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MINIMAL
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TIMELAPSE
Find this post here.
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Find this post here.
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burnt embers 
love this post! both ‘urban nature’ shots are stunning
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Thanks martine, I am appreciating all your comments today 🙂 It can be fun to look back on past posts.
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Hey, just got back from visit to Van for a couple days (we go up 4-5 times a year to eat good Chinese and Indian food and party with friends). Excellent portfolio/yearbook! Very glad to have found your site this year, it always brightens my day. Especially the West Coast of the Island and the San Juans – you really have a good eye.
Happy New Year!
~Sam
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Hi Sam. I hope you had a good time in Vancouver. It has been nice having you commenting and sharing your experiences which overlap so much with my own, though we seem to have never met. I do have intentions of posting more from the Friday Harbor Labs, just never quite got around to processing all the images! Anyway, have a good new year.
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It’s been a good year!
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That it has! I hope 2014 is as good for you and us as 2013 was.
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Many thanks for the retrospective. I love your work and what I learn from it. Also appreciate the Dirt photos link, I have brrn taking shots of dirt and mud and sand and ice and snow for a while but never thought there would others with the same interest. You have me wanting to look at decent software, seeing your photos prompted me to convert some recent winter eastern cedar forest photos to black and white and play just with exposure and contrast with Apple Preview. Pretty cool results even with that. Hard to choose favourites but I am drawn strongly to the abstracts.
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Hi maddog – thanks for joining in the conversations this year – nice to have you around. I went through a long learning curver with my processing, for a year or more I stretched Picasa to its limits, and now use Lightroom for many things, but in the past half year or so have branched out to other software to supplement it. So I am coming on to 2.5 years and still have not broached (or it breached?) the photoshop hurdle, but finding there are few instances where it might really help.
For inspiration, you might want to take a look at Ken’s (oneowner) photoblogs. Lightscatter in particular has a lot of terrific shots of “dirt” – pavement, ice, sand and so on. And nice details of cool cars too. Very abstract and cosmic and well crafted images. http://wp.me/35AtB and http://wp.me/348qH. Also, when you feel comfortable with a dirty image, send it along to Melinda for dirtscapes, she is a great person to know in the blogging world – makes me laugh pretty much every day.
Have a Happy New Year!
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And the abstracts – I am drawn to those very strongly. I will surely be doing more.
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Maddog – this is Melinda, from Dirtgazing, which Ehpem linked you to. I want to echo the invitation to email me photos you’d like to have on the blog. There’s a link at the top to contact me. Hope to hear from you!
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This is a excellent set of images, and it was good to see them again. Thanks for taking the time to compile them for us; that was surely a daunting task.
(As I scrolled down to read your post, I got the crop of baby-and-arms that you described, and it really is a very nice image.)
(Oh, and I like the new header photo. It makes me want to gaze upon some dirt,)
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So, end of the year and here I am having to approve your comment. You must have set some WP alarm off somewhere….
Thanks for the compliments – it was daunting. I think I spent the better part of a day over the past week pulling that together, and I left a fair number of images behind that there was not room for.
I put that crop on 500px if you want to see it – tepid response there though. http://500px.com/photo/56400872
Not sure how long that header photo will stick around, but it goes well with b&w photos. It is a painted curb sitting on asphalt, so is dirt only in the way you have defined it over at dirtgazing.
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Our editorial policies at Dirtgazing are, as you mentioned, rather loosely defined. But it’s working out (you ought to see the batch of images I’ve gotten from another blogger!)
I can’t imagine what was in that comment that made WP think you needed to moderate it. Maybe it was just so brilliantly written that the WP Gods wanted to made sure you read it…
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That is going to be cool to seem some more dirtgazing happening!
I just checked that post in more detail. You had left the m off the end of your email address, and it was sent from an IP address you have not used for other comments. So, one or both those would have contributed to the need for an approval at my end.
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I’m glad you took the trouble to pick the best because it’s something I would be unable to do. This blog, and a few others, have been very inspirational to me and I think helped me grow as a photographer. Thank you and Happy New Year!!!
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Wow and thanks Ken. Inspiring you seems wrong somehow as I am constantly inspired by your work. Thanks for you steady presence around my blog – it is very reassuring to have the kinds of feedback I get from you and a number of others – it keeps me interested and involved. So, thank *you* and Happy New Year!!!
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Great stuff. Where next, I wonder?
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Hi Val. I too wonder that. I will probably dabble more with film in the half-frame camera. I would like to do some 3D modelling, my early efforts in that (for the past two years) have been fails due to software issues (free = you get what you pay for) and I seem to be sliding towards simpler subjects. Otherwise, I can’t really predict. I will be getting a new digital camera soon – a pocket sized one, so maybe more street. I need to get out the bellows unit again soon, so perhaps some more high magnification macro. We will see.
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street scenes with human interest gets my vote
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Well, there will be some of those. I am scanning film right now, some street scenes in there, most of the shots are taken on the street, though not always with humans, or even dogs.
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Great body of work…..a very productive year and a wonderful legacy. Happy new year.
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Thank you John! Happy new year!
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Very beautiful and diverse collection, happy new year, Ron.
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Thank you Ron! There is much beauty in my surroundings and it is nice to be reminded of it this way.
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Fabulous. such a rich and varied collection, presented with great technique and aplomb. I’m really looking forward to 2014 and learning more from you.
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Thank you Patrick! It surprises me a bit when I look back to see all the variety. I wonder if I should be worried about the lack of emerging style, but mostly I am not as I am still learning the “how”.
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