Anthony's 2012 Favourites, Part 2: Aviation

 A bit late I know, but here is the second part of my 2012 favourites.

I've done so much aviation photography in the last year, that it seemed pointless to include my aviation favourites in with all the others. It also means I can be a bit more generous to myself in my selection of pictures.

There's probably too many highlights to list them all, but the big bucket list item was flying with the the HAC Hurricane and Spitfire, which I've blogged about previously. Too many great events to list here. But if you have a look at my Pbase Aircraft galleries, you'll see a selection of pictures from each of the events I've been to this year. (I've kept the complete aircraft galleries going on Pbase, and generally have only posted highlights across on to Flickr. Arbitrary and probably random decision about this - not sure whether I'll keep on doing that. Not to mention there's pictures from a couple of visits to Heacorn Aerodrome I've not even developed yet.)

As before, there's Flash slideshow of the set. If you're on an iPad or similar and Flash is not supported, I suggest going to the original set on Flickr.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

And that's my 2012. Pretty good as far as I am concerned. And I'm hopeful that 2013 will bring some more good opportunities with it.

Happy New Year!

Martin's photo review of 2012

Introduction

When I started out doing serious photography a few years ago I was entirely focused on photographing birds in the wild. Having spent many a vacation birdwatching through the '80s and '90s (from the Isles of Scilly to Orkney) and always having a more than passing interest in photography, the two became fused in 2006 when I purchased a Canon EF 100-400 lens. I had a lot of fun with the old push-me-pull-you but it soon became apparent that it just did not have the image quality I was looking for (or indeed others were able to achieve with prime lenses).

In 2009 I blew my annual bonus (and some...) and purchased an EF 500 f/4; I have never looked back. My first club success came in winning the Natural History Competition at Ashford Photographic Society with the shot of a female kestrel, taken at Oare Marshes near Faversham.

Buoyed by this success I continued my bird photography, capturing some great images and having a lot of fun along the way.

Wonky horizons

 

One of the great things about joining a photographic club is that you start to network with like-minded people and, when you start to take notice of what they are doing photographically, you begin to realise how little you know and to appreciate the many other photographic opportunities that exist.

As Anthony has mentioned in his end of year post, we have all broadened our photographic horizons and will no doubt continue to do so. And for me, 2012 has been about diversity: landscape; portrait; portraiture; still life. None of these I'd really toyed with seriously before but I've really enjoyed the challenges that each of these bring.

So here's a slice through my 2012 photographic pie:


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

[If the slideshow fails please visit the flickr one]

Lessons from 2012

• Starting with the future in mind and reducing the number of variables I have to contend with
• A better understanding of light
• Slow down
• Everything is easy until you try it yourself!
• The power of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom (4)
• I need to get better at mono processing

Looking ahead to 2013

 

In order to diversify I had pretty much sacrificed my wildlife photography in 2012 (apart from the orchid season) and I feel the urge to get back to my roots and capture some bird action.

I have seen some great landscape work this year; none better than the images of Paul Sansome, who gave a talk at the Ashford club this season. I think landscape will be a slow burn for me but I do aspire to get better at it. My success in winning the Rural Landscape trophy at Ashford this season (with the shot below) has also given me the added drive to do some more.

Late evening high tide, Trebarwith Strand

I've promised my wife I'll take her to Venice in the spring and, yes, she does know she'll be sharing me with my camera.

For a whole raft of reasons we have not had many Wonky trips this year, something for Anthony, Philip and me to address at our next committee meeting.

New Year Message

Anthony's 2012 Favourites, pt 1

I thought that this year I should separate my favourites into two separate posts, one for my general photography, and one for my aviation photography. So, here is the first of those - the non-aviation photography.

I've got them down to 16 - an arbitrary selection that could easily have been different on another day. I think the simplest way to post them is as a set on Flickr, with the set of contacts above as a flavour of them (they're heavily cropped into shape).


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.
If you're on an iPad or similar device that does not support Flash, here's a link to the Flickr set

New things I've enjoyed? I've never previously photographed orchids in the wild: thanks to Martin for introducing me to that, and I'll definitely try to get back out to them next year. Martin and our friend Ian Macey also introduced me to photographing the British Superbikes: I loved it! I've never been much of a motorsport fan, but the bikes were fantastic.

I didn't do so much landscape photography this year, but I'll try to make up for that a bit over the next year. One picture in my favourites that I've not posted here before is the one shown in the contacts, bottom row second from the right. We had the first snow of the winter here at the beginning of December, and the picture shows a group of trees on the North Downs near Molash, surrounded by the snow.

Here's to 2013!