Best of the Best

I like to keep up with what's going on in the photographic community so I regularly read a lot of blogs written by other photographers.  One I read this evening detailed going through all the files from 2010 to pick the Best of the Best.  Not a bad idea and one that I may adopt and put into place after the New Year.  For now, though, I've already picked 2 of my favorites from the year and they both are shown above.  The image of Jackson Lake and the Grand Tetons is one of my favorite images of all time and from a purely photographic standpoint it is probably one of the 10 best images I've ever created.  Recently it was selected by my fellow employees to be on the cover of a calendar put together by my employer.  Because my image was selected, the proceeds from sales of the calendar will go to the charity of my choice, Special Olympics of Colorado.  (It's not available to the public but if you'd like to spend $5 on a decent calendar and know your money is going to a good cause, let me know.)  But that's not why I chose it as one of my favorites.  The other image of a sunset taken in the desert near Queen Creek, AZ is probably not as technically good.  If I weren't so lazy I would go into Photoshop and clone out the jet contrails in the sky and I'll get that done soon but for now, I love the image just the way it is.  Here's the story on both.....

My daughter, Heather, is a wonderful young woman.  She's a Special Needs kid and part of the reason I selected SOCO for my charity is because of her history competing in Special Olympics. Before heading off to Roswell, NM to attend college a few years ago, Heather was 8 times defending State Champion in Special Olympics gymnastics and it was a wonderful experience for her so naturally, I'm a bit biased towards Special Olympics. 

While she was going to school in Roswell she learned many things and researched a lot of stuff and about 2 years ago she started asking me to take her to Yellowstone.  We'd been there once when she was much younger but only passing through on the way from South Dakota to San Francisco.  Well, I love Yellowstone and can always use an excuse to go so we started planning and in May, 2010 we packed up and headed north.  We spent 3 days in Yellowstone and 2 days in Grand Teton National Parks and saw some amazing things.  Mostly, though, the company was wonderful and being able to show Heather the parks for the first time was very special to me.  Creating a wonderful image like this one was a bonus.

The desert sunset came to be in a similar manner.  When my oldest daughter, Erin, and her family lived here in Colorado we got to spend a lot of time with granddaughter Katrina.  We were built in babysitters nearly every weekend and saw her several times each week.  It nearly tore my heart out when they moved to Arizona but it was a good move for the kids and they really love living there.  That was 6 years ago and Katrina is now 10 years old going on 11 and quite the young lady.  Naturally, I try to visit as often as I can which is not nearly as much as I'd like but being a seamhead (baseball fan) I take advantage of the situation and almost every year make a trip to AZ in March to spend time with my girls and see some Rockies spring training games.  This year I made that pilgrimage and one afternoon when I was heading out to San Tan Mountain Park to photograph a sunset I asked Katrina if she'd like to go.  To my delight she said yes so we took off.  We talked about a lot of stuff and took a short hike to which led us to the image you see.  It's probably not the most technically perfect image I've ever created but I have a new hiking buddy and who knows...I may even turn her into a photographer like Poppaw! 

So there you have it...my two favorite images of 2010.  The images are nice, the trips were great, and the company was exceptional.  Not bad!