My Top 10 Images for 2019
In order to see where you are going, you sometimes need to look back at where you’ve been. That applies to many aspects of life. A good friend and hiking buddy once gave me the advice to turn around and look back at the trail behind you every once in a while. That way, on the return route, you at least have some familiarity with that trail and will be less likely to make an error in navigating back to the start. This is something I do regularly when out on a hike, especially in unfamiliar territory. It’s also something similar to what I do with my photography on an annual basis.
Top 10 Images for 2019
“Which of my photographs is my favorite? The one I’m going to take tomorrow.”
I’ve been going through this process of choosing my best 10 images of the year for the past several years. This a great way to look back and reminisce about the places you’ve been and the memories that were made. As a photographer, it also provides insights into your creative pursuit and offers a way to ‘grade’ your work on a technical level. My goal is to continually improve and create better images each time I’m out with the camera.
Before presenting the photos, let’s do a quick review of what my 2019 looked like from a photography standpoint. Looking at my Adobe Lightroom catalog, I see a total of 4,199 photos for 2019. That may seem like a lot, but it’s a dramatic decrease as each of the previous two years show more than three times that amount of images. In fact, 2019 was by far the lowest quantity of images for any full year since I got my first DSLR camera and started taking photography seriously in late-2011. That comes as no surprise as I knew that 2019 was a down year and I just didn’t have the camera out that much.
Capturing fewer images over the course of a year isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s not really about quantity so much as the quality of the images. That’s where the rubber really meets the road with this exercise of selecting my top ten images for the year. The hope is that the overall quality of images will improve each year, regardless of the total number of images created. To be brutally honest, I don’t believe I accomplished that in 2019. So now, after looking back to see where I’ve been over the last year, I can look ahead and plot a course to where I want to go this year with photography. There is lots of room for improvement, and it’s a long journey that begins with each click of the shutter button.
So now, on with the photos…
Le Claire Sunrise
Making a Stand
Cold as Ice
Nature’s Cleanse
Cosmo’s Snow Day
Delicate Arch Milky Way
End of Day
Frosty Morning
Treasure Falls
Country Sunset