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 :-)
Click image for full-size 1920x1080px desktop wallpaper image.
For the second installment of the monthly wallpaper calendar series, I have chosen a shot taken at the very end of September as my favorite image of the month. Lightning is not an easy thing to capture and I’ve wanted to try for a very long time. I finally had an opportunity to on September 28 and after many attempts and mosquito bites to the legs, I finally captured one. It was very satisfying to have good outcome like this after tinkering with settings and composition for over an hour and finally put it all together at the end. So, there you have it; October 2011’s free desktop wallpaper!
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Waterfront Strike
During the early evening yesterday, I noticed some large, billowing clouds starting to roll in. Seeing that it would more than likely develop into a pretty big storm, I rushed home to grab my gear and find a vantage point where I could get some shots. In the following few hours, the sky took on many different awe inspiring tones. The clouds made formations that I have never seen in person and things were going really well. I was set up shooting some HDRs at Union Point Park when I noticed that I couldn’t see the massive Neuse River Bridge anymore. Uh oh, here comes the rain. Before I could get my tripod folded, I was caught in a downpour. I retreated to my Jeep and suddenly there was lightning all around. I wasn’t about to get out, so I decided to head home. Just as I pulled out, the rain stopped. I took a short drive to a good vantage point just up the street and set up my gear once again. There were some really great lightning strikes, but for the most part they were either just off frame or missed completely. This strike was the first really good lighting strike that I’ve ever captured.
I’ve been following the work of Arizona-based photographer Mike Olbinski (see his lightning gallery here) for some time now and I’m always blown away by his shots. My image is nowhere near the level of his, but it’s a start. Please take a minute to check out his gallery!
The shot: 30” exposure, 25mm, f/25, iso-100. Tripod held, remote fired.
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Photo ©2011 Zach Frailey
