Rick’s Rants and Raves

Update: I made my choice!

The next Digital Photography School Assignment is “Best Photo of 2009″–I have to pick my best shot to submit. Initially I thought this would be an incredibly painful and soul searching process. I’ve shot probably 6000-7000 photos this year and initially I thought choosing the ONE best would take days (time I don’t have right now, thanks to holiday procrastination). And what defines my “best” shot? I absolutely adore one diptych for the interaction it shows between two people in my family. I think another is very cool for technical aspects. I really like my latest self portrait because it is so much better than previous attempts. And I could submit any of these to DPS because they don’t have any rules that would preclude these shots. But I want a more general “best shot”–something that a person who doesn’t know me would look at and say “Oh, great shot!”

Fortunately I have two things to help me in the process: a) I’ve been putting my best work on my Flickr account, and b) I can ask friends and family to help me choose. Since I’ve uploaded over 800 to Flirckr this year, I’ve made it even easier–I’ve narrowed the list to the ten that I think are among my best general work.

So, in the comments here (or on Facebook if you came from there), please let me know which you think is my best shot. If you can elaborate on why, I’d love to know that too. Thanks for your time and thoughts.

1. Sea Gull Parry Sound
   
2. Jim @ Peaches
   
3. Theo @ Thirsty Ear
   
4. Jim @ Dublin Pub
   
5. Emily Halloween Portrait
   
6. Albannach @ Piqua
   
7. Gaelic Storm @ DIF
   
8. Scythian @ DIF
   
9. Loon on Greenwood Lake
   
10. Mushroom
    

That’s it. Of course, you’re free to look through my 2009 Flickr uploads and suggest other candidates, but I doubt many would have the stomach for that.

I didn’t make a blog post about this shot when I originally did it, but I think it is worth mentioning now. I made this shot for the Digital Photography School Assignment Technology.

This was inspired by my family’s obsession with StormTroopers 365.

I’m pleased to report that this shot won an honorable mention for the assignment. How awesome is that?

We spent much of the day decorating the trees. OK, when I say “we”, I mean “Anne and the kids”. I helped by lugging boxes around. For some reason decorating trees just seems to stress me to an uncomfortable degree. I’m sure I could spend thousands on therapy to figure out why.

I recently read a post on how to photograph holiday lights, and decided to give it a try. I started off shooting our house, but it was still a bit too light out. Then I went to a nearby street that usually has about 15 houses in a row on both sides all lit with white lights. Most of them were still off. By the time I came back home, most of the evening sky had faded, but I still managed to get one mostly-decent shot of our house.

After dinner, we snuggled into the family room with a fire and a holiday movie.

Can you tell from the screen which one it is?

The Digital Photography School Weekend Challenge is “to take a picture of yourself and your camera”. Lots of people have done fascinating reflected shots, but I couldn’t think of a good way to compose something original with a mirror. So I started working out in my head how to do a shot of me holding a camera at arms length, lit primarily by its flash. But I didn’t want the picture to be from that camera’s perspective. Here’s the final result.

I’m holding our Fuji FinePix S5200. It is set to auto everything. I have my LumoPro LP120 on a light stand behind my right shoulder (to the left in the picture) set at 1/16 power, snooted, and set to optical slave. On a tripod taking this picture is our Nikon D60 set to a 4 second exposure, ISO 400, f/7.1. After I set the focus using the remote, I set focus to manual, then I turned off the lights in the basement. I triggered the D60 with a remote, set myself up, then fired the Fuji  in my hand which caused the LumoPro to fire as well. I then tried to remain still until the D60’s shutter closed, just in case there was a bit of ambient on me.

Because I know someone will be curious, here is the corresponding picture taken by the Finepix.