My Five Best Photographs of 2011
As has become a yearly tradition (again, kudos to Jim Goldstein for the idea), here are what I consider to be my five best photographs of 2011. This has been a big year for me, seeing the opening of my gallery and the first year of my son’s life as well. Oh yeah, and the first year in a new house. Three of the most stressful events in anyone’s life, all more or less at once. But I’ve loved it!
If you’d like to travel with me and learn how to make excellent landscape photographs, be sure and check out my workshops for this year, including a trip to Iceland to photograph the northern lights and to Svalbard to photograph polar bears in 2013!
Anyway, on to the photographs, in descending order.
5.
This image was made on my August southwest Ireland workshop and was a quickly seen and executed image. It was one of the first images I’d made with the Phase One IQ180 that I was really happy with. I used a 10-stop neutral density filter to lengthen the exposure which was made in the middle of the day.
4.
This photograph was made on a shoot with my friend Ronan Kirby – I call him my rabbit’s foot as it seems every time we go out shooting there’s some dramatic light! We went into the Hag’s Glen with a view to photographing Carrauntoohil, Ireland’s highest mountain. Unfortunately the light wasn’t right for that, but later on there was a break in the clouds that allowed the Eastern ridge of the Reeks to be lit by the setting sun. A passing rain shower provided the raw materials for the rainbow and the result is this image.
3.
This is the newest photograph in this list, having been made only a few days ago. As such it holds the risk of being included simply because it’s new, but I think it has lasting value. One of the most haunted ruins in Ireland, this castle will be familiar to anyone who drives the Cork to Killarney road with regularity. On this particular morning the conditions were ideal and I couldn’t but stop and make my first photograph of it.
The challenge with this image was to photograph the castle without distortion, and with dramatic perspective. This required the use of my 23mm lens (about 15mm on a small format camera). If I had framed the image with the castle to one side or the other then wide angle distortion would have stretched it into an unnatural shape. I also needed to use about 10mm of rear fall to drop the horizon without tilting the camera up.
The centered composition, while it would appear to break many rules of composition works very well. largely because the fence on the right of the frame balances out the bright area on the left.
2.
Another new image, this is one I’ve been after for some time. A photograph of Slea Head in stormy conditions with dramatic light. This image was made just after sunset during a northwesterly storm – which meant that the spot I was standing in was sheltered from the wind by Dunmore Head to the right of frame. This meant I could photograph with a nice stable camera and without salt spray being driven onto the lens. The lateness of the hour also meant that I could use a slightly longer shutter speed of just over a second – this gives a sense of movement to the waves without smoothing them completely.
1.
This is what I consider my best image of the year. Another one made with the Phase One IQ180, the clarity and detail in a large print are second-to-none. I had spent quite a long time waiting for conditions to be just right at this vantage point of Ross Castle and this morning delivered in spades. A perfectly calm lake, good light on the castle and mountains and good clouds in the sky all work together with the careful composition to really invite the viewer into the frame.
Remember that all my images are for sale as fine art prints in my Killarney gallery and online here.
To see my best images of 2010, check out the blog post here.
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