Year end is always a great time to look back on your works and pick out what you feel are your best works.  I am going to share with you what I feel my best works are, and why.  I wish I could claim the idea as my own, but I have to credit Jim Goldstein, a great nature photographer with his own blog, for coming up with the idea for his latest Blog Project:  “Your Best Photos From 2008″. It’s a great idea and I really feel compelled to participate.  After all, I spend a lot of time analyzing my work and what I did wrong or what needs improvement, it’s only fair that I commend myself for my achievements.

So, lets get on with my Best of 2008…

Joci – Jocelyn (Joci) is my niece.  I love this shot because of the innocence that is exhibited in her expression.  Originally, this was shot in color (as I usually do) and converted to black-and-white in post processing.  Aside from that and a few contrast and level adjustments, I really didn’t have to do much – not even cropping.  This is a case of getting it right “in the camera”, something I always strive for but don’t always achieve.  I’m most proud of my timing (knowing when to click the shutter) and my choice in focal lengths so that I get that nice bokeh behind her.  I also used a relatively high ISO to achieve that grainy effect.

Black and White Ruffed Lemur – This was a difficult shot for me.  Lighting in the Philadelphia Primate House is intentionally poor, and a pane of glass stood between me and my subject.  I needed to use a slow shutter speed and I was without my tripod and this guy was moving around quite a bit.  After five or six attempts, I was finally able to catch this guy sitting still just long enough to snap the shot.  I had to compensate for the composition with a crop in post-processing.  But in the end, I’m quite happy with the photo.

Coneflowers – This shot was actually taken early in the summer, but I only recently got into the post-processing.  I admit, I spent a lot of time in post-processing on this one, but that’s why I really love this shot.  To me, it is a milestone achievement.  This is, in my opinion, one of the first photos where I think I really “get it” with respect to post processing.  I have a lot to learn, but this was the first time I think I really started to fully understand almost every tweak in Adobe Camera Raw (ACR).  This photo required some white balance corrections, noise reduction and some cropping.  I continue to use this photo as reference for my post-processing moving forward.

And my absolute favorite shot of 2008 is…

Stormy Fields – When I set up for this shot, I had a goal in mind.  I had long admired the work of DeviantArt members X-Horizon (David Preissel), SSilence (Tobias Zeising) and Angelreich (Marcin Stawiarz).  I’ll admit, my goal was to generate a landscape photo with dramatic contrasts and coloring as is characteristic of their works.  I spent a lot of time analyzing my own landscape works and trying to figure out how to achieve the effects that they have each mastered.  This was not my first attempt, but it is by far my best.  I still have a ways to go before I can achieve a quality as rich as that of these fine artists, but I feel that this is a huge step for me and I don’t believe I have far to go before mastering the technique myself.

So there you have it, my best works of 2008.  Lets hope 2009 yields more leaps and bounds in my photographic growth.

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