The Year’s Best - 2011
I wanted to put together a little collection of my favorite images of 2011. They’re in a slideshow format, so there isn’t a big write up of commentary and technical details with each one—just what you see in the captions. So take a look, most of them should be familiar to you but there are some there that may not!
“2011 was a year in which I grew immensely in photography.” That’s something I say every year, except with 2009, 2010, etc. at the beginning. I think that for the rest of my life, I’ll probably be saying the same thing too. That is the great thing about photography, you’ve always got to be evolving, changing and adapting and that suits me very well.
This year I had the great fortune of traveling to some great new places, shooting some great new perspectives of old haunts and even getting in some portrait work. I’ve me some amazing people along the way and loved every bit of it.
I had a tough time trimming the list down, but my blog helped out by limiting the number of images I could include in the slide show :-)
From the Summit of Pikes Peak | Elevation- 14,110 Feet
During a recent trip to Colorado, I had the good fortune of taking in two sights that were on my “must visit (aka must photograph)” list. No, I don’t really have a list per say, but I do have a mental compilation of several places that I really, really want to travel to. During this trip I was able to put a virtual check mark beside the Garden of the Gods and the summit of Pikes Peak, both in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Now, aside from the Appalachian Mountains in Central Pennsylvania, I have never seen mountains. When I laid my eyes on the Rockies, complete with their snowy peaks I was in awe and absolutely could not put my camera down.
On the day of our trip up the slope of Pikes Peak via the Cog Railway, I scoffed at warnings of the thin air at the top. However, as I reached the summit a pretty harsh headache set in. I’m not sure if I’m ready to blame it on the altitude, but it may have been because of just that. I snapped a few frames while at the top, pushing my total for the short trip to near 2,000 photos. As we descended the mountain and almost immediately left for the airport, dreams of editing and processing the HDR images danced in my head. We arrived back in North Carolina in the wee-hours of the morning and I went straight to bed. This was the first image I edited when I awoke. Hope you enjoy!
©2011 Zach Frailey
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‘Colorado Landscape’
I spent the weekend in Colorado Springs, Colorado. I was there for a wedding, but was also able to pack in a lot of sightseeing and photography in the short time I was in the area. One of my favorite spots to visit was The Garden of the Gods. Numerous large rock formations and great views of Pikes Peak made this a place where my camera really got a workout, as did I. The land was donated to the city of Colorado Springs in 1909 by the children of Charles Elliott Perkins with the wishes that admission be free, and it has been that way ever since. The park is very well maintained with paved bike trails, hiking trails for all skills as well as very popular rock climbing formations. A dinosaur was even discovered in the Garden of the Gods over 100 years ago that in 2008 was named after the park, being that so far, it is the only example in the world of this species to exist. you can see a cast of it’s skull at the visitor’s center overlooking the park.
I shot a lot of HDR brackets while here, but this image was not shot in high dynamic range. This is a panorama composed of 9 individual vertically oriented shots. This image was shot from a overlook near a residential area overlooking the Garden of the Gods park. What an amazing view the people who live there have!
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©2011 Zach Frailey, please do not copy or use this image without permission.
