I have logged into here a few times over the past month and am really impressed with all of the activity going on. I am really happy to see it. This is such a great group of people.
2011 was really an amazing year of photography for me. It did include 106K miles on airplanes, and spending 4 months of nights away from home (for work and photography) but I saw things I had been hoping to see my entire life.
I sat down this morning and looked over the work and put together my 10 favorites and want to share them with you. The 10 best images cover 3 continents and each one has a story behind why I took it and what it was like to be there at that moment. It was really hard to choose ten images. I started with a list where I hoped to write down my favorite 10 and it wound up being 16. So this is what I whittled the list down to.
If you want to see much of my new work from the past year check here
This image is my favorite from 2011 and was shot in Yangshou, China of a Traditional Cormorant Fisherman.
I have wanted to take an image like this since I was 19 years old. For the previous 2 days I woke up at 4AM and went out to get ‘the shot’ with no success. This day I woke up again at 4AM with my guide Lilly and our driver to head over to the Li River to head out on the water to capture an image of a traditional cormorant fisherman with 4 birds, lantern and bamboo raft. The skies cooperated with me for around 3 minutes and I captured this handheld panoramic while kneeling on my small raft.
I wish everybody a terrific 2012.
RichieV
Posted by Erik Stensland on December 31, 2011 at 11:49 AM
Rich, staggering work as always! Your travel photos are some of the best I've ever seen. I bet if you wanted to you could do it professionally. Thanks for the inspiration!!!
Posted by Todd Caudle on December 31, 2011 at 12:16 PM
Staggering? Yeah, that about covers it. Incredible stuff, Rich, and I'm glad you shared it here, on this forum, even after all that has happened.
Posted by Todd Caudle on December 31, 2011 at 12:17 PM
Oh, and by the way, my ten faves of your 2011 would be completely different than yours.
Posted by Paul DeCesare on December 31, 2011 at 1:25 PM
Holy smokes, the "Powder Tower" street scene did it for me, I could stare at that for hours. I love nature work, but I also have a thing for architecture and still life. You've got me going now, Richard, sonetimes it just takes one new image to get the spark going, and that one did it for me!
Posted by Joshua Hardin on December 31, 2011 at 1:29 PM
Thanks for sharing these here Rich. Your travel photos are amazing. I would have loved the opportunity to see even just one of the places you were able to visit this year. My favs are the pine needles from Banff/Jasper, the Powder Tower from Czech, foggy Mt. Huangshan in China, the Oia Santorini panoramic and... way too many more to name. Congrats on a successful 2011 and best wishes for 2012!
Posted by Bill Pelzmann on December 31, 2011 at 2:18 PM
What a GREAT year of travel. Your Turkey/Greece gallery was by far my favorite.
Posted by Anne K. Rusk on December 31, 2011 at 5:33 PM
What a great year!!! I can't wait to see these on a bigger monitor (I'm on my iPad...)! Happy New Year!
Posted by Don George on December 31, 2011 at 5:46 PM
Rich, Outstanding group of images! Of course my favorite was the Falls at Ithaca Did you bring home any spedie sauce?
Posted by Bill Bean on December 31, 2011 at 10:35 PM
Rich, as always your work is stellar. Thanks for sharing.
Posted by Doug Koepsel on January 1, 2012 at 11:17 PM
The lines, angles, perspectives and patterns in your architecture/cityscapes are a pure delight.
Thank you to all. I am really looking forward to seeing what I can produce in 2012. Just starting to plan two major trips. Fingers crossed that everything can come together.
@Don - I used to stay at a dive hotel near Lupo's when working in Endicott just so i could get my fill. I have the speidie maranade down to a science. Let me know when you want to come over and sample my 'Lupo's' imitation.
@Todd - It was a tough pick for me. I really shoudl have made it my top 16 since that was what I originally narrowed things down to. Will have you up sometime soon to evaluate the actual prints.
@Josh - No fair - I purposefully kept panos out of the selection process. If I was choosing though the Oia Pano and the Cappadocia Sunrise (which is like 8 images handheld from a moving hot air balloon) and the Longi Panoramic (my fav of the bunch actually printed at 80 inches) would be my favs. The Huangshan stuff was right out of the top 10 since i really liked this one . I really should have kept it to 16 instead of ten.
@Eric - WAY too kind. For me this is just a bad habit that took a wrong turn someplace.
Thanks again all!
RichieV
Posted by Grant Collier on January 3, 2012 at 3:25 PM
Great images!
Posted by Phillip Noll on January 8, 2012 at 3:09 PM
Superb collection, Richie! I was mentally keeping track of the ones I really liked but then there got to be so many I gave up! Stunning work!!
Discussion
14 replies2011 was really an amazing year of photography for me. It did include 106K miles on airplanes, and spending 4 months of nights away from home (for work and photography) but I saw things I had been hoping to see my entire life.
I sat down this morning and looked over the work and put together my 10 favorites and want to share them with you. The 10 best images cover 3 continents and each one has a story behind why I took it and what it was like to be there at that moment. It was really hard to choose ten images. I started with a list where I hoped to write down my favorite 10 and it wound up being 16. So this is what I whittled the list down to.
The list is here
If you want to see much of my new work from the past year check here
This image is my favorite from 2011 and was shot in Yangshou, China of a Traditional Cormorant Fisherman.
I have wanted to take an image like this since I was 19 years old. For the previous 2 days I woke up at 4AM and went out to get ‘the shot’ with no success. This day I woke up again at 4AM with my guide Lilly and our driver to head over to the Li River to head out on the water to capture an image of a traditional cormorant fisherman with 4 birds, lantern and bamboo raft. The skies cooperated with me for around 3 minutes and I captured this handheld panoramic while kneeling on my small raft.
I wish everybody a terrific 2012.
RichieV
@Don - I used to stay at a dive hotel near Lupo's when working in Endicott just so i could get my fill. I have the speidie maranade down to a science. Let me know when you want to come over and sample my 'Lupo's' imitation.
@Todd - It was a tough pick for me. I really shoudl have made it my top 16 since that was what I originally narrowed things down to. Will have you up sometime soon to evaluate the actual prints.
@Josh - No fair - I purposefully kept panos out of the selection process. If I was choosing though the Oia Pano and the Cappadocia Sunrise (which is like 8 images handheld from a moving hot air balloon) and the Longi Panoramic (my fav of the bunch actually printed at 80 inches) would be my favs. The Huangshan stuff was right out of the top 10 since i really liked this one . I really should have kept it to 16 instead of ten.
@Eric - WAY too kind. For me this is just a bad habit that took a wrong turn someplace.
Thanks again all!
RichieV