At the end of each year I run through my photos from each month and try to pick my favourite from each month. Some months I have so many to choose from that I agonise over which to choose. February for example involved a trip to Iceland and I could have chosen dozens to represent that month. In other months I really don't have a special shot due to a busy life and usually poor weather! March and April were particularly bad this year. So here are my 12 personal favourite images from this year. I hope you enjoy them.
JANUARY
In January I went to Rutland Water for the first time. Id planned to shoot from the other side of the church looking into the sunset but there was a line of cloud that I knew would spoil things. Instead I shot so that the last rays of light glowed on the brickwork. This was a 153 seconds exposure using the Hitech Formatt Firecrest 16 filter.
FEBRUARY
October 2016 was my 50th birthday and my wonderful wife had been saving for a trip to Iceland for me (cannily she also got a free holiday out of it!). We headed out in February this year and I have so many amazing images from that trip-it truly is one of the wonders of the world. Whilst I have technically better images this one means the most to me. I had always wanted to see the Aurora Borealis and on our last night before flying home we headed into the mountains for a final look. Hours later, after seeing nothing, we decided to head home when we saw a weird greyish brightness in the sky. We stopped to look and within minutes the colour burst out and we had this stunning spectacle!
MARCH
Not a big month for great shots and this is 'meh' if I say so myself but the best of a bad month . This is 5 minutes from home.
APRIL
I pass within 2 minutes of this view on my drive home from work so sometimes throw my camera in the back of the car and see what happens at the end of the day. Fortunately some lingering cloud added some detail to the sky.
MAY
I keep saying "I wont shoot bluebells this year" as I have so many but this was a new wood to explore and, well...
JUNE
The sun never rises exactly at the gap in the trees but around about the longest day it gets as good as it can so this was a 3:15 alarm and a fast drive for sunrise. I was rewarded with a stunning sky with singing songbirds as a soundtrack and a kingfisher just feet away from me on a branch. Perfect.
JULY
These trees are 10 minutes drive from home but I only found them this year. I saw the tractor tracks leading in to the trees on the horizon and knew it had potential. I revisited this spot with my camera sooooo many times-sunrise, sunset, stormy weather, blue skies. This was a beautiful blue sky day but I like the added drama from the black and white conversion.
AUGUST
There is a field I know, mostly just wasteground, but if if I head there in late summer I always see a few common blue butterflies . I aim for cold, clear mornings just after sunrise. The colder weather makes them immobile so I can get in close without scaring them off and it also covers them in micro-droplets of dew which glisten in the rising morning sun.
SEPTEMBER
This is a great row of trees and I thank the landowner that planted them who surely must have been a fellow photographer! In mid-September the sun rise to the left of the trees giving shadows across the path. Add a bit of mist to the early sunshine and you have a perfect combination.
OCTOBER
In the Half Term holiday we took a trip to Northumberland-my first visit to the area. Oh my what a place for photographers! Each morning I was up early and out somewhere but the weather wasn't ideal until the morning we were due to depart when this happened!
NOVEMBER
Another first visit-this time to Burnham Beeches. I arrived on a good, clear, frosty morning and the colour was amazing. Lots of autumn leaves on the ground but still enough on the trees. As the sun climbed and lit the forest floor a light mist rose up.
DECEMBER
I always visit this tree each December as the sun rises underneath the overhanging bough. This year we had a heavy snow and I thought the sun glowing on the fresh snow would work well. I wasnt wrong-the difficult part was driving here through the snow!!
Well that's it for another year. Thanks for all the clicks, comments, likes etc on my social media pages over the last 12 months. They mean a lot. Here's hoping to a successful year of images in 2018.
All images were shot with an Olympus OMD EM5ii and either the 7-14, 12-40 or 40-150 Olympus M-Zuiko Pro lenses with Hitech Formatt filters.