The Mid Year Review

At the end of each year I like to take a look back the images I’ve captured and the select my favourites. This is always a useful exercise as it allows me to reflect and judge how my photography has developed over the year. A year is a long time though so I also like to have a quick review of images midway through the year. This is a useful exercise as it shows me that perhaps it’s not been such a bad year and it reminds me of some of the great adventures I’ve had. It also inspires me to plan more adventures for the remainder of the year!

Let’s take a look at 3 of my favourite images of the year so far. (If you want to see some of the images that didn’t make the cut and why, then check out my blog post from last week).

Snowdonia

My first big adventure of the year was a cracker. I was lucky enough to meet up with Nick Livesey in Snowdonia to discuss his book Photographing the Snowdonia Mountains. We spent the day wandering his local area, taking photographs and having a good old chat. You can see my photos and the video I made of my time with Nick here.

The image below was the first image I took that day and remains a firm favourite from the trip. It’s not a perfect image. I like the composition, with the warm sky and the distant mountains but with only a partial covering of snow in the foreground I feel it looks a little messy. I suspect the image has made it onto this blog post due to my attachment with the adventure rather than it is an amazing image. Still, I said I would share my favourite images, not necessarily my best!

Snowdon from Clogwyn Mawr, Capel Curig, Snowdonia National Park - Nikon D850, Nikkor 24-70 mm f/2.8 VR at 36 mm, f/11, 1/2 sec at ISO 64, polariser and ND grad. — **Snowdon from Clogwyn Mawr, Capel Curig, Snowdonia National Park** - Nikon D850, Nikkor 24-70 mm f/2.8 VR at 36 mm, f/11, 1/2 sec at ISO 64, polariser and ND grad.

Dartmoor

Given that Dartmoor is on my doorstep if would be unusual if this blog post hadn’t featured a photograph from there. You can read about how I captured the image below by reading this blog post here.

This image has definitely grown on me. I remember thinking it was OK at the time, but now that I look at it again several months later I rather like it. I like the row of tors on the left as they curve round to the distant tor and then on the right you have all the scattered boulders which also seem to curve in. Add in an interesting sky and I think I have a fairly decent image. It will be interesting to see how it fairs at the end of the year when compared with everything else.

Belstone Tor and Belstone Common at Dawn, Dartmoor, Devon - Nikon D850, Nikkor 16-35 mm f/4 @ 26 mm, f/13, 3 secs @ ISO 64. — **Belstone Tor and Belstone Common at Dawn, Dartmoor, Devon** - Nikon D850, Nikkor 16-35 mm f/4 @ 26 mm, f/13, 3 secs @ ISO 64.

Macro

And now for something completely different. Though the vast majority of my photography is landscape based, I have been wanting to try macro photography for some time. This year I finally got around to it and you read about how I captured the image below here.

The image isn’t perfect but I do love it. The tips of the wings are just falling out of focus, and my eye for composition in this genre needs developing, but I do love everything else about it. The Zeiss lens that I used as produced some wonderful bokeh and the D850 has rendered some beautiful detail in the butterfly. It’s an image that has solidified my desire to get a macro lens and I expect that the shots I take next spring will feature a lot of macro work.

Common Blue #1, Devon - Nikon D850, Zeiss 100mm f/2 at f/3.5, 1/400th second at ISO 1600 — **Common Blue #1, Devon** - Nikon D850, Zeiss 100mm f/2 at f/3.5, 1/400th second at ISO 1600

I hope you enjoyed these images. Remember to have a look at the links to the blog posts that go with these images to see more photographs and possibly even a video or two!

Do you review your images just once a year or a number of times over the year? Let me know in the comments below.