Saturday, December 31, 2011

My Top 12 Photos of 2011 According to Flickr

Flickr ranks photos according to interestingness. As of Dec 31st 2011: here are my top 12 photos according to flickr.
Green Points#1 Green Points: a lens baby shot of the tip of a branch of an unidentified cactus tree. Taken on the Sunshine Coast while on our BC Vacation this summer
Close Up#2 Close Up: Rebecca wanted to do a vintage pin up shoot, but she wasn't going to model. She was going to do make up and provide the outfits, then her friend couldn't make it so she filled in. Flickr likes her.
Lion's Gate Bridge#3 Lion's Gate Bridge: We spent Easter in Vancouver as it lined up with Sarah being done at UBC.  This is from a drive Kim and I did through Stanley Park.
Mountain Glory#4 Mountain Glory: A shot from Sulfur Mountain in Banff, I went up with my niece and brother and law in March.
Splash#5 Splash: An idea that worked. Smantha Greenwood stepped up to do this shoot when she heard that another model had backed out. I'm glad she did and flickr seems to agree :)
Lounging#6 Lounging: another shot of Rebecca.
Light Stage Left#7 Light Stage Left: this was the first shoot I did with Cactus V radio triggers. Made it very easy to change the flash location, title reflects what I was thinking.
White Cherry Tree#8 White Cherry Tree: Another Easter in Vancouver shot. A combo of my Sigma 8-16 MM Utlra Wide and my improving skills with PhotoShop. I removed two people talking right beside the tree and a number of parked cars from the left hand side.
Calgary by Sunrise#9 Calgary by Sunrise: My first shot of 2011. I may try to recreate it now the bow is almost done.
Hair#10 Hair: a shot of Samantha Greenwood. I had to create some of that hair in PhotoShop. Not much just enough to fill in a gap in the arrangement that I didn't notice when shooting.
Legs by the Water#11 Legs by the Water. Fun with the Ultra Wide and Samantha Greenwood. Here I used PhotoShop to fill in the grass so it didn't distract from the shot.
Light Stage Right#12 Light Stage Right: Another lighting experiment with Rebecca

I track all the shots that make my all time top 10%.  For 2011 125 shots have made it so far.  I still have some 2011 pictures to post and late 2011 shots could still break into the the top 10% in 2012.

It's been a good year for my photography. Thanks to Kim for putting up with me wandering off to shoot stuff and all the people who agreed to pose for me in 2011.

- Peace

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Free Christmas Music and New FIF for a Happy New Year!

Was checking out free Christmas music at NoiseTrade when what did I see?  But a new single from Five Iron Frenzy! 

From the FIF NoiseTrade page:
Five Iron Frenzy is an undead band from the Denver, CO area. They spent a few years (1997-2003) touring, creating music that made people happy and gave them something to listen to on road trips. The band quit FIF on November 22nd, 2003. They were greatly missed. 8 years after their break-up they launched a Kickstarter Project and raised enough money to record a new album ($30,000) in just 55 minutes.
A new FIF Album in the works? It will be a Happy New Year after all! Oh and for Xmas music, I'd recomend Ten Out Of Tenn Christmas and the Paste Magazine 2011 Christmas Sampler!