Review of the Year My Favourite Images of 2015
At the end of a calendar year it is natural to reflect back over the last twelve months. I enjoy seeing photographers postings online of their personal selections from the year. There are some inspiring images and photographers out there. There are a variety of approaches such selections take and all work well. Some opt to show their 'best' image from each month. Others display their favourite ten or twelve images and so on. That is the great thing about such exercises, there are no rules - we can set our own parameters to please ourselves.
My decision here is to show a wide range of my favourite images. I have not limited myself by number or subject, I decided just to put together a collection of images I found especially pleasing from 2015. As an exercise, these reviews can be beneficial, especially if we keep each years sets and look back over them in future years. It is surprising how quickly some images we once felt delighted by, now make us cringe, while others remain firm favourites. As we reflect over previous collections we can see our skills with the camera improving, our creative and compositional eye developing and changing. Often we notice shifts in our chosen subjects, the way we portray them and development in ability to work in projects rather than simply cherry pick images.
As I looked back and started to collect together my favourite images from 2015 it dawned on me just what a good year it has been photographically for me, culminating in what has been the best autumn in many years (even if the early winter has been somewhat disappointing). I have included more than my very best (or favourite) images of the year, deciding to pull together a wider collection of pictures I really like or which hold good memories for me. This is a bit of a cop out really, avoiding those difficult decisions that come when whittling collections down to just ten or twelve images, but I am prepared to live with the shame.
I still have about 200 hundred images in my Lightroom Catalogue from 2015 marked for urgent processing, so more could be added to this collection over time. But if I wait, I might never get this done.
The image above and the one below were both taken within half an hour of each other at the same small lochan in the Cairngorms National Park on evening back in Februray 2015. For me, in both cases, it is the light on the water and the consequential reflected colours that make the images.
A trip to the Hebridean island do Harris & Lewis was a particular highlight for me in 2015. Despite battling wind, rain and midges, it yielded nothing but glorious photographic opportunities day after day. As a place it is simply breathtaking. A place to spend a lifetime making images. With nothing between it and America, the prevailing wind brings constantly changing skies and weather. My pictures don't do it justice, but just to be there was a privilege.
I have written before of how, on the day two years ago, when I fell and broke my leg in Glencoe, I learned the benefit of shooting handheld. Since that day I have done much more of my landscape photography tripodless. I know this is heresy amongst most landscapers, but it is liberating and I have taken many of my favourite images this way. These images of mountain light have all been captured handheld and would have been much harder to get if I had been shackled to a tripod.
The following is a collection of images of the autumn colour from the Cairngorms.
And finally, one of my last photographs of the year, taken in a woodland close to home. And, yes, it was raining.