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Favorite Photos of 2009, Part 1

Since the year’s coming to an end, I thought I’d reflect again on what I’ve learned about photography in the year 2009, and share a few of my favorite shots with the stories behind them. This first set is photos I took from January to June.

In January, my Fuji point and shoot finally died, so I took a break and started saving my pennies for a DSLR. I wanted an Olympus E-520, because of the in-camera image stabilization. My biggest complain with the Fuji was that I had no control over shutter speed, which ruined a lot of photos over the years. Built-in IS would go one step further towards eliminating blurry photos without buying expensive IS lenses.

I ended up buying a Canon Rebel XSi. I have friends who already shoot Canon, so I figured the ability to borrow equipment would make up for the slightly higher cost. I think it was a good decision. The XSi is a solid camera except for the mode dial, which is way too easy to bump. Several times this year I lost a shot because I had somehow nudged the camera from Aperture Priority mode into Manual or the strange and useless A-DEP mode.

I got to travel quite a bit in early 2009. I went to Minneapolis and New York for work, saw my parents in Florida, and took a road trip to Toronto. Back at home, the town where I live flooded and my photos got hundreds of hits in 24 hours. I also became a Toledo Zoo member this year, so I took the chance to visit many other zoos on the cheap and practice with my telephoto.

1. Rhinoceros Hornbill, Toledo Zoo

   The Toledo Zoo aviary is one of my favorite places to shoot. The aviary is an old, Depression-era brick building with huge windows and skylights. No matter how bad the weather is outside, there’s always beautiful light coming into some corner of the aviary. Most of my favorite bird shots are taken from the free-flight zones where birds fly all around the room and you can get right up on them with a telephoto. The hornbills have their own small cage along the wall, but because of the fence I had rarely tried to shoot them. I started with an underexposed and pretty mediocre shot, but when I started adjusting the contrast I found some really great detail on the bird’s face and head, with the ghost of the fence panels helping to break up the stark white background.

2. Webelos Medals

   In June, my brother and I went out to my parents storage shed to look for old family pictures. While there I found a box of my old knickknacks, including these Cub Scout medals. Each one is some kind of merit badge. One evening after work I came home and there was great, long light coming in through the front windows, so I set a bunch of objects on the glass table in our living room and took pictures of them. I love how the light picks out every braid of the ribbons and every edge of the metal pins.

3. Westwood Theater, Sylvania Ave.

   While my camera was broken, my friend John let me use his Canon 30D. We went out walking in North Toledo on a bitterly cold day in January and got some beautifully gritty shots. This was taken with John’s Canon 16-35 L lens, a very strange lens that I didn’t appreciate at first. My own style tends to close-up details and faraway things (i.e. zoo animals), whereas John shoots a lot of interiors. I’ve used it a couple of times since then, and I’d like to experiment more with extreme wide angle photography in 2010. On a side note, this is one of my most searched-for photos on Google. I imagine that has less to do with the Westwood’s aesthetic qualities, and more with its current incarnation as a 24-hour porno theater.

4. Cat’s Eyes

   What can I say, it’s a cute picture of my cat. This is one of the first pictures I took with the Rebel XSi. I shot this very close with my 18-55mm kit lens, so the cat’s face and eyes look even bigger than they really are. Sometimes that’s an annoying affect (e.g. when it makes a person’s nose look enormous), but here it works.
   

5. Portrait of a Bear

   Best photographic purchase this year: a Tamron 70-300mm telephoto lens. It’s a cheap lens, and not the greatest all-around performer, but under certain conditions you can wring some good images out of it. I use this lens all the time, and would probably go so far as to say that I over-use it. The Toledo Zoo has a great polar bear exhibit, and on days when it’s not totally mobbed by kids you can get right up to the glass and get some great close-ups.

6. Geese, Toledo Botanical Garden

   Another local favorite this year was the Toledo Botanical Garden. As well as being great for flowers, there’s a big pond that attracts lots of ducks and geese, and in late summer every flower and bush is covered with bees, making for some great macro opportunities. I stopped by the garden one spring day after work and got some beautiful shots with the telephoto.

7. Wine Cork and Pins

   This image was taken the same day as the Webelos Medals photo above. When I was in college, a roommate used to save wine corks and use them for all sorts of things around the house. I used this one as a pin cushion. The ridged surface under the cork is a cheap metal business card holder.
   

8. Chinese Alligator

   This small alligator lives in the reptile house at the Toledo Zoo. I debated back and forth between posting this photo, and posting a later one that’s focused more tightly on his eyes. In the end I went with this one because I like the additional detail of his jaws and teeth, and because this earlier photo illustrates something I learned this year. Going through my zoo photos, I noticed that a lot of the animal close-ups looked flat. By trial and error I learned that just like a human portrait, an animal portrait looks best when the eyes are bright and expressive. I started experimenting with dodging and burning in lightroom to bring out more detail on the eyes. The alternate photo I mentioned before has a much brighter catchlight in the alligator’s eye.

9. Knowles Chapel, Rollins College

   My dad works at Rollins College, a small liberal arts college north of Orlando. The campus is beautiful and well-landscaped, with buildings in the Spanish mission style, and Knowles Chapel is my favorite spot there. This is taken at the top of the stairs leading from the main church to the choir loft. There’s something mysterious and lovely about this room, with light coming in through the stained glass window and illuminating the single chair.

10. House Finch

    In April this year I bought two bird feeders and put them in the gravel pit off my back patio. I bought the kind of birdseed meant to attract colorful songbirds, and for a few weeks in May we had some beautiful red and yellow finches around. After they left, we saw lots of sparrows and a few pigeons, but not much else for the rest of the summer. I’m hoping they come back next spring so I can get some more shots like this. Best viewed large.

11. Mantel Sculpture, Sir Henry Pellatt’s Bedroom, Casa Loma

    In April, Michelle and I went to Toronto for a long weekend. We wandered around downtown, went to the Royal Ontario Museum, the CN Tower, the zoo (of course), and capped it off with a visit to Casa Loma, a hilltop mansion built by an eccentric industrialist named Sir Henry Pellatt. Although Pellatt lost most of his fortune in the Great Depression and only lived in the house for a few years, while there he decorated lavishly, including this carved marble mantelpiece.

12. Dundee Flood, March 2009

    In March of this year, we had a lot of rain for several days in a row. The River Raisin, which runs through downtown Dundee, rose and rose, and finally flooded on the 12th. I saw roadblock signs up when I came home from work, so I drove down to take a look. The whole town had turned out to see the flooded park, with cameras and camcorders in tow. I got some good pictures, and over the next few days my Dundee Flood set got over 1200 views. My only regret is that I didn’t find a way to get over to the other side of town, where the flooding was worse, to get some even more dramatic pictures.

The first six months of 2009 were great and resulted in some good photos, but the last five months have been equally exciting as I continue to travel and get better with the camera. After Christmas I’ll post another collage of my favorite photos from the second half of the year.