After a bit of thought, I have compiled my top 40 picks from the last 12 months. I selected from a variety of outings and types of photography, ranging from landscape, to wildlife, to pet photography. Unfortunately, 2014 was not the year I caught up on my backlog of photos waiting to be processed, so this list was not selected from all of my 2014 photographs (you’ll have to wait till next year’s round-up for those!)
This year included a fantastic fall color photo trip to the San Juan mountains in Colorado, as well as visits to the Sierra Nevada and of course many bird photographs, including some previously unpublished.
Please enjoy the gallery below. For best viewing (especially if viewing on a mobile device), please click on the following photo:
Gem lies on the floor, fast asleep
Or, just enjoy the gallery here on the page. To view larger photos in the embedded gallery below, click here to enter full screen mode.
If you are interested in compilations from previous years, please see the 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013 lists.
Two weeks ago I was challenged by friend and photographer Jerry Dodrill to post 5 black and white photographs on social media over 5 consecutive days. As I am not known for shooting much black and white, I dug back into my archives to see what I had. From that selection, I chose five photos from a variety of subject matter (landscape, wildlife, and architecture) that spoke to me more as fine art than editorial photos. Here is my selection collected together, along with a short synopsis of each.
Day One
Dawn breaks over Banner Peak and Thousand Island Lake, Ansel Adams Wilderness
I shot this last year on my attempt at the John Muir Trail. Thousand Island Lake is a beautiful location in the heart of the Ansel Adams Wilderness. This was a dark, moody, stormy morning, and during a brief pause in the torrential downpour, I braved the elements and scrambled out of my tent to capture Banner Peak with the lake below. In order to convey my feelings at the time I shot it, it seemed like a perfect candidate for a B&W conversion.
Day Two
Death Valley’s Mesquite Dunes are a study of form and lines
This shot is of the Mesquite Dunes outside of Stovepipe Wells in Death Valley National Park. I shot this fairly wide (21mm) as I was standing on the foreground dune. Those who have photographed a lot of sand know that you can’t just back up to reshoot – you’ll end up with a photo full of footprints! Black and white allowed me to add contrast into the sand ripples along the crest of the dune.
Day Three
Four american white pelicans line up, all of them fishing at the same time. There was a nice symmetry to this image, which was calling very strongly to be rendered as a black and white fine art photograph.
With this photo, I’m switching focus to birds (hey, birds can make great B&W too!) I was shooting a group of American White Pelicans and was waiting for that perfect, synergistic moment. Finally they all ducked down for fish at the same time (the white pelicans tend to be much lazier when eating as compared to the California Browns who are constantly dive bombing their food). I caught the moment and new it would make a nice pano crop – a conversion to a high-key black and white was icing on the cake.
Day Four
Church and cemetery, Great Smoky Mountains National Park
This image is a little different from my usual fare. Quite a few years ago, a friend and I were hiking through the woods of Great Smokey Mountain National Park. It was a still, crisp November day, and we were utterly alone with the trees. Throughout the day, we had been getting a very creepy vibe. Unlike the wilderness of the west, these forests are littered with remnants of past civilizations – small mountain villages linked to other settlements only via walking paths. It almost felt like the ghosts of the past were watching our progress through their woods. Suddenly our trail opened up into a clearing with an old church, complete with cemetery and 100+ year old headstones. When I took this photograph, I knew I wanted to try to convey that feeling that we’d been getting all day. A black and white, high contrast conversion was in order.
Day Five
Soft light across the dunes adds a milky texture to the wind carved lines, Death Valley National Park
My final shot is another B&W dune photo from Death Valley. This time I kept the contrast and the clarity low, to emphasize the soft buttery texture of twilight. What first attracted me to this spot was the three tall dunes in the background. I think they reminded me of pyramids off in the distance. I set about looking for a foreground. When I found layer upon layer of sand “waves” stacked up in front of the dunes, I knew I had my shot. I fell in love with the way the light moved across the sand like it was a living thing. In order to remove all other distractions from the photo, I subtracted all color and let the interplay between the shadows and highlights define the photograph.
I spent about an hour this morning doing some bird photography with my new 7D Mk II. My primary use for this camera will be birds and wildlife, and I found and photographed some of the usual suspects around my home. This is not meant to be a formal review by any means, but I wanted to share some of my first impressions.
A black-crowned night heron perches above water in pre-dawn light, Belmont, CA.
Before we get to performance, I have to address how the camera felt out in the field. It was a real joy! The build quality is solid and the camera was extremely responsive and accurate. Ergonomically, the buttons are laid out well, and I can tell a lot of thought went into designing the UI. The number of settings on this camera can be daunting, but almost everything can be customized to suite your exact photography needs.
A golden-crowned sparrow perches atop an ornamental bush, Belmont, CA.
Obviously auto-focus capabilities are one of the headliner features for this camera. Canon’s new auto-focus debuted on their flagship pro body, and have been filtering down to less expensive cameras in the last couple of years. I haven’t tried out the myriad AF algorithms available (I’ll do further testing with these using birds in flight), but I can say that auto-focus was fast and accurate. Almost everything I captured was tack sharp. I’ll be setting up the camera with different AF settings depending on whether I’m photographing stationary animals or birds in flight.
A blacktail jackrabbit pauses in the morning light to watch for predators, Belmont, CA.
As the sun was rising, I shot mostly at ISO 1600, gradually dropping down to ISO 400 as the day got brighter. At ISO 1600, there is still some noise visible in the shadows, but it was easily corrected in post processing. I found very clean shadows at ISO 800 and below. With my previous camera (7D), my starting ISO was usually 400 and I’d go up from there if the situation demanded it. Based on the performance of the Mk II, I will probably do most bird photography at ISO 800, giving me a full stop of extra light to play with in most circumstances.
A great blue heron is reflected in still water in early morning light, Belmont, CA.
Shooting at 10 frames per second felt awesome. Even though I’m used to 8 fps with the older 7D, the incremental speed boost was noticeable. While I didn’t have any action situations that called for this speed this morning, having that capability was reassuring. With the large buffer, I never hit any card write delays, even though I was shooting with a slow card.
A black-crowned night heron stands on a buoy, watching for fish, Belmont, CA.
At one point, I crept close to a black-crowned night heron and began to fire off 10 fps bursts (mostly just for fun). The chatter of the shutter was loud enough to get his attention, and he stared at me, looking a bit anxious. I then remembered that the camera features a silent shutter mode (it applies extra dampening to the shutter mechanism so that it is very quiet). I set the camera to silent burst mode. This reduces the fps from 10 down to what felt like 3 or 4 fps, but it was nearly silent! I continued shooting photos of the now comfortable bird. This feature will actually be very helpful for getting close to some of the more sensitive wildlife – a nice little bonus.
A greater yellowlegs is reflected in shallow still water, Belmont, CA.
So far, the results are fantastic. One caveat is that at the time of this writing, Adobe does not yet support the camera’s RAW files, so I had to use Canon’s software to convert to tiff before processing them in Lightroom. I’m sure I’ll get better results once I can process the RAWs directly with Lightroom, as Canon’s processor seems very poor. But the images are sharp, and the tones are pleasing. Auto white balance seems accurate. If anything, it seems that the Mk II overexposes a little more than the 7D, but I’ll get a feel for where the exposure compensation needs to be for various lighting conditions as I use the camera more.
Of course, the camera also has some goofy crowd-pleasers like multiple exposure and in-camera HDR. While I wont be using these for any serious work, they can be fun to muck around with if you’re bored.
A black-necked stilt fishes in shallow water, Belmont, CA.
Recently I was asked by a prospective digital camera buyer about my opinion on full frame verses cropped sensors. The answer is actually not very simple, so I thought I’d expand on my thoughts in this post.
For those who aren’t familiar with these terms, full frame refers to a digital camera that has the same sensor size as 35mm film. This became the prevailing film standard, and most of today’s digital SLR lenses use this size to calculate their relative lens magnification factor. A cropped sensor camera is a digital SLR that has a sensor smaller than 35mm film. These cameras use the same lens focal length scale, but apply an additional “magnification factor” to the 35mm numbers. For example, Canon’s cropped sensors apply a 1.6X magnification factor to lenses as compared to 35mm-sized sensors. If a full frame camera used a 50mm lens, the perceived magnification factor using the same lens of a cropped sensor camera is 50mm X 1.6 = 80mm. In other words, in the resulting photos, it appears as if the camera was zoomed into 80mm when using a 50mm lens on a cropped sensor camera.
So which is better? As with any tool, it depends on the job. I use both full frame and cropped sensor cameras regularly in my photography. When I’m shooting landscape, architecture, or macro, I typically use a full frame camera. My current workhorse is the Canon 5D MkII (now practically a dinosaur of a camera!), which allows me to use a full range of lens focal lengths, including my widest. In these shooting conditions, camera features such as auto focus and frame rate are not as important to me as pixel count and low digital noise. With this camera, I shoot from a tripod most of the time and work slowly and methodically through the scene, getting as much right in camera as possible.
Barrel cactus is just starting to bloom in the Alabama Hills, Lone Pine, CA
The photo above is an example of using a full frame camera with a wide angle lens. Here my 17mm lens truly gave me the wide angle using my full frame sensor, instead of the appearance of a 27 mm lens (17 X 1.6) if I used a cropped sensor. I worked from a tripod, manually focused, and shot at ISO 100.
When I’m shooting bird and wildlife photos, I always use a cropped sensor. This gives my long lenses that extra reach, and cropped sensor cameras tend to have slightly lower pixel count, which allows for faster frame rate. My cropped sensor workhorse is the Canon 7D, which has my most important traits for these shooting conditions – fast auto focus and high frame rate. While low noise is always desired, here the highest pixel count is not as important, as wildlife and bird photos typically don’t end up in huge prints. Pairing this camera with a 400 mm lens allows me to handhold while photographing giving me lots of mobility. When I use it with my 800 mm lens, I get the equivalent of 1280mm due to the lens multiplication factor. This gets me in close to my subjects without needing tele-extenders, which reduce auto focus performance.
Crouching down and ready to strike, a juvenile green heron watches the surface of the water for movement
The photo above is an example of using a cropped sensor camera with a long lens. Using the equivalent of 1280 mm (800 X 1.6) allowed me to be far enough from my subject to not disturb it from its normal behavior. I was also able to shoot many frames per second to capture the perfect body and head position while the green heron was fishing.
Just as a carpenter wouldn’t just use one type of hammer, a photographer won’t resort to just one type of camera. If you are just dipping your toes into the world of digital SLRs, think first about what type of photography you’d like to explore first. That will likely help you list your desired features and point you to the right tool for the job.
