The time has come to post my favourite images of the year (although I reserve the right to change this later or adjust my date boundaries for next year since the last two weeks of the year should prove a photographic bonanza. More of that later…). As always, whittling this year’s 43500 exposures down to a dozen or so proved rather tricky. Getting to 25 wasn’t too much of a problem but I ended up having to throw away a dozen other favourites to get down to this set. Regardless, here’s the final set. Some of these are picked because they may actually be good, photographically. Others are there because they remind me of great experiences from the year.
I’m listing these in chronological order with the earliest-taken images first.
I just checked the EXIF on this and realised that I took it on December 31st, 2023 rather than 2024 but, given that it missed last year’s “Best of” post, I’m adding it to this year’s set. This was one of those amazingly lucky shots where everything just comes together nicely. I was in New Orleans with the Longhorn Band for the January 1st Sugar Bowl game and opened the curtains of my hotel room in the Canal Street Marriott at about 7am to be confronted by this view of all the industrial complexes across the Mississippi River. I had a camera with long lens right at hand so grabbed a few frames through the glass and ended up with this shot.
This shot was taken on New Year’s Day during the Sugar Bowl half time show in the Caesar’s Superdome in New Orleans. I was playing with my new Olympus 8mm f/1.8 fisheye which I discovered creates great starbursts at relatively low apertures (f/8 in this case) so I crouched down on the 50 yard line right in front of the drum major’s stand and captured a shot of the front line trumpeters with the camera placed on the ground.
We skip to April now and a visit to the Great Texas Air Show at JBSA-Randolph in San Antonio. This was my first visit to the show and my first chance to get a close view of the USAF Thunderbirds. I ended up standing right in front of a guy who had been on their flight crew and knew the show inside out so, as he fed me information on what was about to come up, I could get ready for the next shot. I took hundreds of frames during the show but this one, caught exactly as the 2 F-16s passed in front of me during a 20fps high speed burst, is definitely my favourite.
Once again, one of my favourite images of the year was taken at Dripping Springs Rodeo where we always have 10 or 15 minutes of incredible light as the sun sets right behind the chutes and bathes the area in gold. This competitor was in just the right place to catch some of that light on his face and his pensive expression really helped too. If anyone knows who this is, please let me know since I didn’t get his name during the event!
In July, I attended a fabulous western-themed photo shoot at the Buggy Barn Museum in Blanco. The event, organised by Precision Camera, featured a collection of models in western costume and various lights that you could borrow during the morning. I ended up with a dozen or so images that I love but this photo of Lucia Katie in the saloon stands out as a favourite.
This is the only iPhone image in this year’s collection and that was due to poor planning as much as anything else. While in Edinburgh last August, we were walking back to our accommodation after seeing a show on the Festival Fringe. As we passed the Scott Monument on Princes Street, I noticed that the sky colour at 9:30pm was perfect and, in combination with the warm floodlighting, created a great scene. I shot this with the ultra wide lens on my iPhone 13 Pro and love the result. I would probably have love it more if I had had the OM-1 and 7-14mm with me that evening but, as they say, the best camera is the one you have on you so…
This probably falls into the “postcard snap” category but I love the image and the memories it brings back. We spent a week on a small boat eBike/cruise in Croatia last August and I grabbed this frame during an early morning walk around the port of Pucisca on the island of Brac. I walked back to the boat immediately after taking this at about 6:40am, expecting it to leave at the advertised time of 7:30am. At 6:50am, however, a frantic text from my wife indicate that the boat was leaving. After high-tailing it back to the berth, I managed to get onboard by climbing across two other boats and jumping the last couple of feet as our boat came alongside. There was much embarrassment in the ranks of the crew that morning 🙂
I did several senior portrait sessions this year but this one in mid-September stands out for the number of great frames it yielded. I was photographing three cousins by Onion Creek in Arrowhead Ranch, Dripping Springs and it was one of those evenings when everything came together. The light was lovely, the girls were all enjoying the experience and there were no awkward smiles. This image of Alexa ended up as my favourite of the set. The serenity in her expression would never hint at the fact that she’s a competition wrestler on the school team.
I have so many frames I love taken in Texas Memorial Stadium after the end of the 3rd quarter when orange smoke is released near the student section. This one stands out to me, though, and I think it’s due to the contrast between the girl on the left, obviously posing for the photo while everyone else is going wild in the background.
Taking photos of F1 cars on track at Circuit of the Americas from outside the fence is beginning to lose its appeal since I’ve been at every race since it started and since there are only a very limited number of places you can stand and get images unobstructed by fences. As a result, I have a whole lot of essentially identical images, the only difference being the actual car in the frame. This year, however, I decided to shoot only Hail Mary panning images at very slow shutter speeds on the grounds that, even though the vast majority of attempts are unsharp messes, when one works, it’s amazing. In the end, I got a couple of dozen frames that I really like and this one is in the top rank. It’s not the absolute sharpest of the set but, hey, it’s Lewis Hamilton!
When I’m outside the fence at F1, my favourite images are usually those of fans rather than cars and this year was no exception. I mixed things up a bit by hitting the podium track invasion with a fisheye and flash on one camera and ended up with this frame of a group of Ferrari fans that I love.
In my attempts to “do something different” while covering the Longhorn Band this season, I spent some time at several games using the “fish stick” technique, putting a camera with fisheye lens and flash on the top of a monopod, holding it as high as possible, and triggering it via a radio remote. This shot of Dr. Cliff Croomes, Director of the Longhorn Band, and Drum Major Jaiden Walker wouldn’t have been possible normally since they are about 5 feet above head height on the conducting stand. I actually took this on a couple of games since, the first time, I ended up with the shadow of the camera on the front of the stand. Thankfully, by the next home game, the time and sun angles were different and it worked out.
Getting a good image of the Longhorn Hellraisers spirit group isn’t difficult. These folks are always super-hyped and super keen to show it! This particular frame stood out from the half dozen or so that I had in my original selection for the expressions of the two girls in the foreground. They were having a good day!
