Being 42

I originally planned to do this blog for a full year, from Aug 26th 2011 – Aug 25th 2012. I have decided, however, to continue for at least a second year.

Posted here are 10 photos which I think best sum up that first year. They are not necessarily the ten I personally like the best. Some of them are here because they had the most ‘likes’ from readers of this blog, others because they are photos I’m proud of in a technical sense or because they were particularly hard to capture. I have also tried to pick a range of subjects.

Feel free to comment if you have been following this blog for a while and had any other favourites.

Anyway, here we go – in chronological order (earliest first):

4th October 2011. Best portrait of a stranger. A shame the guy was walking behind him but never mind. I’m proud of this photo because I had only one chance to get it and was able to get the focus dead right. I feel I have also captured the soul of this man. Look how black his eyes are. You get the feeling there is not the slightest bit of love and compassion in him despite his professed ‘religion’.

24th December 2011. Morecambe Bay. I like this one, again, for managing to get great focus, this time while facing into the teeth of a howling gale. Capturing a single bird above the buildings is also a nice touch.

14th January 2012. Clare and Joe on Blencathra, 2,800 feet up. Encapsulates a glorious weekend of weather – in fact the weather was better this weekend than it’s been for most of the summer. I like the frost, the lit plants in the foreground, and just the general mood. Best Lake District photo.

28th January 2012. Best portrait of Joe, though I did have some other good candidates. Taken with a better camera than my usual compact but I never did upgrade as promised: in fact I’m sticking with compacts, they allow the more candid photography that I prefer and can be tucked under jackets etc.

15th February 2012. Best Hebden Bridge shot. Again, there were other good candidates but this one got a lot of ‘likes’ from readers. Also noteworthy as it was just snapped randomly while I walked to the station to spend the rest of the day in an office. Just one of those moments when the light fell just so.

3rd March 2012. Best ‘night out’ picture. I think the disembodied head to the left makes it. I also like this shot because, I must admit, I was pretty drunk when I took it and it’s not easy to get photos in such low light (I never use a flash).

11th April 2012. Best shot of Manchester, I think. In contrast to some of the others mentioned so far, I worked hard to get this shot, staying in position for at least two minutes to capture it at a point when no one was walking past and ruining the composition, and all the time worried that the light would go or the girls would move (or tell me to stop pointing a camera at them).

9th June 2012. Best animal shot. I worked hard for this one, too, but the results were definitely worth it. How little we can be aware of the beauty and colours in the world around us. This photo really revealed them to me.

30th June 2012. Chosen because of the happy combination of colours, with the spectator in the background who doesn’t spoil the shot at all; and also to epitomise the ‘up yours’ response of Hebden Bridge to all the crappiness (and water) that engulfed it over the summer.

20th August 2012. A late contender, but a strong one – in fact this photo has accumulated the most ‘likes’ of any of the 366 pictures published thus far, so I include it in the top 10 as the ‘people’s choice’.

Thanks generally to everyone who reads this blog and continues to encourage me with ‘likes’ and ‘follows’. You’ve at least another year of me yet.

Drew, 25/8/12