It's December 30 as I start writing this, down to a short list of 5 images from 2023. That was surprisingly easy. It's going to be difficult to get down to the final three, and I haven't even begun to think about their order.
To backtrack a bit, I actually ended up with 14 images with 5 stars this year, although there's two versions of one photo, for book related reasons. Similar to previous years, I could tell a story about any of these.
My photography has typically been about generating more images. I was out with a camera regularly, seeing new things I wanted to photograph. The decision was which lens or lenses to take with me. Now there's three quite different cameras to choose from, which makes the selection even more difficult. I'm tending to take one of the film cameras for my rambles as I look for interesting images. I'm mostly trying to get away from the blah 'there I was and this is what I saw' kind of images, or at least make such a thing look interesting.
There were two somewhat related goals for 2023. One was to work on making better images. Even for the races and community events I'm trying to get better images of the people involved. Images that tell a story or capture a moment, not just documentary. I take a digital camera to the events, mainly because the organizers want to see the images quickly. The other version of better images revolves around learning about film, trying to find images that play to the strengths of film.
The other has been to choose images for books, and towards the end of the year, start to think about making images for books. Like I've done an Image of the Year, I'm thinking about doing a book of the year. That would be 7 books now, counting 2016 and 2017 as one year, if I were to begin at the beginning and go forward.
As it turns out, for me at least, images for books are quite different than images for a blog. I've got one more book project on the go for a client, and then I can start to think about the year books. I'd like to build them in my head so there's a consistency from one year to the next.
So noodling about criteria. I've talked in previous blogs about what makes an image "the best." It's easy to go back through previous IofY posts so I won't put links here. Yes there are flukes or luck, and I'll cheerfully admit I was fortunate to have my camera in hand with the right lens, already pointing at the garden when the humming bird showed up for about 10 seconds. We see lots of other birds, especially since Linda has been putting out a food bell on the front patio lattice. That attracts lots of small birds, no idea what they are. I'm not good at birds, for all that two bird images show up in the finals.
The others are all a matter of choices deciding where to point the camera and figuring out the settings for the image I want. That includes the barn owl photo. I saw it flying towards the barn, tracked it in, changed settings on the fly for the dark interior and kept clicking. The two long exposure film photos of waterfalls had me thinking about where to set the tripod, carefully measuring the light, and setting up the camera. The sunrise mountain photo was mainly a matter of waiting as more and more of the mountain was exposed to the rising sun. At some point I realized that the neon hotel sign could be part of the composition and I moved to include it. The hard part was getting the exposure right so there was just a hint of the hotel. I'll see that image in print in a few days, and I can't wait to see how it turns out.
One of the questions I ask myself when thinking about which of my images is good and why, is 'Is this image of something, or about the idea of something?' Or as Sean might ask, "Does it have heart?"
Here's the 5 I got down to. All of these made the image of the month podium, which isn't really a surprise. I knew as I was doing the photos that the potential was there, and as soon as I saw the images for the first time I knew they'd be in the running for IotM, and probably for IofY.
In a way, I guess, even though I'm not saying it, the other two are like an honourable mention.
2nd Runner Up
1st Runner up
It should be no surprise to find I'm fascinated by water flowing over rocks, and trying to resolve the differences between what our eyes see, and what the camera sees. I'd put my camera bag on top of the waist high rock with the idea of using it as a stable place for long exposures. The rock at the bottom of the photo is the next rock over. I ended up climbing on the rock to keep my feet dry, with barely enough space for me and camera gear. I was happily settled in working different compositions and exposure settings when I realized the top of the rock was periodically under water and the tide was coming in. The rocks I had walked on to get here with dry feet were now under water. It was worth getting wet feet. I talked a lot about getting this image here.
Image of 2023
Sean and I were exploring upstream of Elbow Falls to avoid the crowds. I found this little waterfall and spent a long time working the composition by hunching over to squint into the rangefinder to find focus and figure out the settings. This is part of the fun challenge of film, to get everything right before the shutter button is pressed. At the time I wanted to see how the foamy glacier blue water would show up on the Kodak Gold 200 film. I knew I wanted the water colours and shadows to softly blend together and contrast the hard texture of the rocks. There's a bit more about this image here.
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I'm not sure that the best of year x books have to have a cohesive theme across the years. As we grow our craft and art the concerns of say year 2017 vs 2017, at the very least evolve if not change completely.
ReplyDeleteThese are all fine choices. Conceptually, the mountains and the neon image is the most satisfying, as it opens a conversation about our relationship with the environment. The second runner up also has that same possibility. The other images are all equally as good, and with stories that are important to you. That after all, is probably the most important thing.
Cheers, Sean