Your favourite photo of 2020 (taken by you), and why

I posted this one to RFF back in the summer, but it's really a collaboration by father, son and oldest daughter. Our team set out to turn Jake's room into a camera obscura. And we did. We built the lens out of cardboard to fit the room's one window, blacked out the leaking light, practiced with the "aperture/hole" and made the photo with a digital mirrorless. A bit of post colour saturation and contrast adjustment and Voila, "A Room with a View".

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PS. Happy New Year everyone. As much as Covid has dampened spirits everywhere, I have greatly appreciated the time I spend here at RFF, sharing photos, compliments and comments. My own life has taken a scary turn down a health path I never wanted to travel. Hopefully, it's a path that can lead to wellness, but it has just begun and already I am filled with the anxiety of waiting. If I'm away for a while, know that I can't wait to get back. Greg
 
I won't cheat and post two, but it was hard narrowing it down among a narrow few.
deJV7Ez.jpg

(Bronica SQ-A + 50mm, Acros in DD-X)

Palm Springs back in February. For ages I've dreamed of going to the Modernism Week architecture and design festival, which kicks off every year on my birthday. And every year, I couldn't take the time off, or in grad school, had major projects scheduled (and always *on* my birthday).

This year instead snuck up on me, and it was a late-night whim of arranging travel literally the weekend before. My girlfriend could only come for a little more than 48 hours, but we rented a car and hit up Joshua Tree (another bucket list) before speeding back down for the late-night kickoff party with a David Bowie impersonator.

I stayed for another week and a half; it was paradise and difficult to leave, and I was quite nearly talked into purchasing a fixer-upper cottage.

After a hellish last few years, I was truly contented and at peace. it was my first recreational travel in a long time and reignited some wanderlust—a reminder the world is big and full of adventure. I planned out a summer of travel to make up for it.

Haven't left King County in 9 months, but someday.
 
Not sure these are my best photos from 2020, but they're two that kind of assume a special significance. They were taken the 31st of December, in the north of Norway, were the sun is not due to rise before the 20th of January.

Getting there took a steep treck up the mountain in freezing temperature and a piercing wind. It was a struggle. But, at the top, there were signs of hope. Life that clings to bare rock. And that light... May these two images be a symbol of the year we just left behind.. an uphill struggle that leads to something much better..

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While not a "perfect" picture, this one is easily my favorite of the year.

Mostly because it evokes the quiet afternoons I spent this summer at Samuel P. Taylor State Park. When the wildfires here in Califonia allowed, my partner and I would escape the city for long walks on the paths here.

It also captures the sense of light that graces these peaceful redwood groves.

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Great images in this thread. During this Covid year, I've focused on reviewing older negatives and refining developer/development times for 35mm, which I haven't shot for many years. This is from a test roll of HP5 in HC110.


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Here's mine from October. Took a walk with a friend of mine and captured this at the end. A reminder of how nice it is to at least have a hobby where I can leave the house once in a while, pandemic or no.

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Most meaningful and favorite were the fading flowers. I think this was a way for me to reframe those who passed away from Covid-19 in the hospital. Those patients were in front of my eyes but maybe the photos could be for many more people. Initially the photographic process was a good distraction so I would take less work home.

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[/url]Oct 19 2020_DSC0490 by Dave Olson, on Flickr[/IMG]
 
This one, for two reasons 🙂

It was taken during my first overnight trip after Covid shut down everything, including our National Parks. Sitting above the clouds on a freezing cold evening, seeing nothing but sky and the tallest peaks of the Southwest and hearing nothing but total silence, was a perfect antidote for the craziness of 2020.

It is the first photo I've ever sold, as a real physical print, for real cash money, to a real human who I didn't know, and who isn't my Mum or Wife 😀

The Anne Massif, taken from near Tyenna Peak

Z6 and 90mm Tele Elmarit

 
Taken during a family trip to Zion National Park in July. The strongly backlit trees grab my attention every time I look.

M2, Skopar 35, Tri-x

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I did precious little photography this past year so there's not much to choose from. The following perhaps fits the bill, mostly for bringing a smile when it turned out the way I hoped it would.

Untitled by Alkis Plithas, on Flickr





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From a brief period where Italy relaxed the COVID lockdowns. One of the most restrictive countries 😡 I can't wait to leave. Talk about govermment overstepping powers. You think it was bad in USA. Imagine mandatory lockdowns, masks everywhere, can't even take your kids outside for 3 months, state police running the place like a police state.

Fairy-tale walk by Lyubomir Grigorov, on Flickr
 
2020 was not good for my photography, and not too good for my health either. Surgery on 12/29 went well, but it will take a whole year to get back to my pre-surgery level of fitness so, for me, 2021 will be about undoing 2020 in an actual, literal, sense, at least as far as my health is concerned. At least I survived...

I didn't have as many opportunities to photograph as I would have wanted, and I intend on doing more (once I can carry any real weight) in 2021. In September, I decided to test my new (bought in March) bag bellows for my 4x5 and have some fun with my wide angle lenses. I had bought a 65mm f/8 lens for a TravelWide long ago and used it for just 3-4 shots, so I repurposed that TravelWide to a pinhole camera and mounted the "as old as I am" 1960-s era 65mm Schneider Super Angulon into a lensboard to get more use out of it. The lens is tiny, and at f/8 a bit of a challenge to focus, but it was cheap, and it's fun to use.

("Crop factor" for a 4:5 image compared to a 2:3 is problematic due to the huge difference in ratio, but the easy answer is about 3.5x, so a 65mm on a 96x120mm image is similar-ish to an 18mm on a 24x36mm image, so it's a very wide lens.)

Anyway, learning how to use the bag bellows correctly caused a few errors on some of the shots, but the shot that most excited me during composition turned out just fine:


09-24-2020-04 by Drew Saunders, on Flickr

Ebony 45SU. 65mm Super Angulon, f22, 1/2". Ilford Delta 100 film.
 
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Early June 2020. I had visited George Floyd in his coffin in the North Carolina town where he was a boy a few days earlier, and photographed as much as I could there. This image is from the memorial in the town where I live. It was the first occasion I used the M10 Monochrom for which I (happily) traded away a lot of gear.

These young women agreed to pose with two of their signs inscribed with the names of people killed, more or less, for being black. Whatever else I do with photography, bearing witness is at the core. They were bearing witness too.

I recently received state funding for a portrait project about the African American holiday Juneteenth. I’ll be using the M10M for as much of this as possible. Maybe the Summilux too.
 
What a thread... so good photographs and words. It's a pleausure to look at it!


I haven't decided which one is my favourite yet. When I have decided I will share with you.
 
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