Year in Review: things that are outside

2011 is freshly over, so in the spirit of Scott Strazzante, i have decided to throw together a few blog posts in which i review 2011 and the photography that it held.

2011 included two noteworthy developments in my photography: a slight re-emergence of landscape photography as a genre that i devoted effort to, and the development of the panorama as a thing that i do.

When i began taking pictures, landscapes were the only thing that interested me. i tried to tell myself that i was a photographer for over two years before i started voluntarily taking pictures of people, and to this day i remain fairly uncomfortable taking non-impromptu portraits. It's nice to be taking the pictures that first made me like photography again.

Admittedly, living in Boulder helps one take landscape pictures occasionally. i live a walking distance from mountain trails, and i can easily be around treeline in an hour from my apartment.

i once felt that it's much easier to take a very good landscape picture than a very good portrait or action picture--that ship, however, has clearly sailed. i find that the standards by which i measure good landscapes continue to rise, and i'm rarely well-pleased with landscapes that i have taken. i am satisfied with five or six of the photos in this update, however, and that is a nice feeling to have.

i saw some ominous graffiti in the Paseo district of Oklahoma City--its timely omen is the only reason that i have included it in this post. i pulled my tripod into my apartment's parking lot in the middle of an April night and took a picture of clouds drifting past the moon. John Stewart and i trudged eight miles (round trip) through knee-deep snow to Long Lake to take pictures of the sunrise (we arrived about ten minutes late. oops.). In my most successful landscaping endeavour, i backpacked to Willow Lake in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, and was able to take some reasonably nice pictures of the stream feeding the lake and of the lake itself. i spent two or three days a week in the Indian Peaks Wilderness for much of the summer, arriving as early as 5am for morning light. i returned yet again to the George Miksch Sutton Wilderness Park in Norman, Oklahoma, and took yet another sunset picture from the same venerable tree i have known for four years. i spent more time hiking and jogging in Boulder Canyon in October and November than i had in the previous 14 months of living in Boulder. i bought a splendid 40 year old telephoto lens, and used it to take a 12 photo panorama of trees in the Indian Peaks Wilderness during the first snow of the year. i pretended that i didn't need to read for class one Wednesday, and instead hiked up Mount Sanitas in a blizzard. i took a 20 photo panorama of a peculiar tree near the National Center for Atmospheric Research--a tree of which i still haven't taken a picture i'm particularly proud of, but perhaps this is my best shot yet.