Photo Friday - 'Best of 2010'

It's always difficult to look back on a year of photos and determine the "best" shot of 2010.

In what context?

Family memories? Flickr popularity? Published work? Personal satisfaction? Technical perfection?

Well, my final selection has to do with some of those items, but more specifically the act of being deliberate about photography. I very much remain an advocate of letting the photo opportunities coming to me as they will. Having said that, I am learning that there are times when a photographer needs to be able to make a photo upon request regardless of the situation (lighting, weather, etc.)

Obviously, I don't create or control the weather, but this is one of those times when I deliberately set out to get this shot and I came back with it:


Honorable Mentions...

SPC - 'Shine' - #3

Harrison turned four years old this past week and we decided to do a "Super Mario Brothers" themed party.

Well, to our surprise, our local party supply stores and commercial bakeries did not have anything ready-made for our chosen theme.

We found plates, napkins and a balloons online, but we had to improvise for the cake and some of the other decorations.

This is one of the paper stars we made for the party. I found instructions here (we just had to add the eyes with a pen).

It's been a busy week for many reasons, but I thought I might get away with this simple SP for week 3 of the 'Shine' theme.


Here's the cake we made:

I designed the cake to appear like a 1-up mushroom from the Super Mario games and Christy came up with the idea to use some fondant icing.

We used the left over icing on the gingerbread cookies for party favors. Most of them had yellow icing instead of the blue one you see here.


Finally, here's a recent portrait of the birthday boy:

Photo Friday - 'Gathering'

SPC - 'Shine' - #2

Photo Friday - 'Tranquil'

SPC - 'Shine' - #1

Photo Friday - 'Chill'

SPC - 'Six Word Story' - #5

You're Gonna Need A Bigger Boat

A quick-and-dirty composite attempting to recreate this image from Jaws which is then quickly followed by the brilliantly delivered line -- "You're gonna need a bigger boat."

Photo Friday - 'Hands'

SPC - 'Six Word Story' - #4

WAS IT A RAT I SAW?

Searching through my Flickr photostream, I was dismayed to discover that apart from a brief mention in the comments of this photo, I've never mentioned my appreciation for palindromes.

Palindromes are words or phrases (or numbers) that are spelled the same backwards and forwards.

For example:
Mom
Dad
Wow
Bob (my Dad's informal name)
Racecar
Go hang a salami, I'm a lasagna hog
A Man, A Plan, A Canal, Panama

etc.

My daughter's name is Hannah. That was easy enough to sneak through. I wanted to name my son Llewk Cot Stockwell, so that his entire name would be one big palindrome and, phonetically, he'd still have a 'normal' name, "Luke," right? But, alas, I was vetoed on that one. Fortunately, Harrison was born on December 21st, a palindromic birthday (12/21)!

Be that as it may, I'm moving beyond palindromes for my six word story this week. I'm also fascinated by Reflection Symmetry.

Here is a diagram showing horizontal, vertical and rotational symmetry in the uppercase English alphabet.

As you can see, my entire image has a vertical symmetry axis which means one "S" is backwards and I had to fudge a little bit on the "R" but otherwise, it holds up. You get the idea.