My Favorite Photos of 2008

I've been back-and-forth a few times over whether to create this post or not, but I suppose it will be a useful reference to look back on. Also, I'll be submitting it to Jim Goldstein's "Your Best Photos of 2008" blog project.

2008 was a year (or in my case mainly the second half of a year) of trying a lot of things with my cameras. I got my digital camera off manual a lot more, learned a ton about post-processing, tried techniques such as HDR and creating 3D cross-view pairs for the first time, and shot a few rolls of film for the first time in several years.

So, this will not be a collection with a strong consistent theme beyond "here's the stuff I tried this year." I'll be very interested to see if, by the end of 2009, I have settled on a more consistent "look."

Here's the image that Flickr considers to be my most "Interesting." It was created for a challenge, and I think the constraint of that challenge (one second shutter speed) helped me to create something new for me:

It's also one of two in my top 10 "interesting" shots that is not HDR.

That is one thing I have learned this year at Flickr -- if you want a lot of views, shoot and process HDR. Here are my most viewed image followed by my personal favorite.


I call this one my favorite (today, at least) because I had a "look" in mind when I set it up, and I think I got quite close to what I was aiming for.

This year I not only shot several rolls of film, but I even shot a roll of black-and-white, something I hadn't done since college. Here's my favorite from that roll:


And, the collection of 2008 favorites would not be complete without including an image shot for the PhotoChallenge.org July challenge, Light Fixtures.


Another day, I'd probably pick different images for different reasons, but I think this is a good look back at 2008 for now. Looking forward to everybody else's Best of 2008 posts!

--sdc