This year was a bit up and down for my photography due to lockdowns stopping me from shooting as much as I usually do during the colder months. Regardless I took some images this year that I’m really proud of and picking these wasn’t an easy task.
The choice had to be made though and here are my top 5 images in no particular order.
The Island View Pano
Gear Used:
Canon EOS R6 & RF 35mm f/1.8 STM IS
This was one of my favorite panoramas for the year. At the time I took this image, the widest lens I owned was a 35mm prime which means I had to rely on different techniques if I wanted a wider field of view. The lighting was really nice on this day and the buildings had a certain reflection to them that gave a really nice warm look.
I ended up visiting this spot quite a few more times after this trying many different views and focal lengths but none caught my eye like this one.
The Macro Bottle
Gear Used:
Canon EOS R6 & RF 85mm f/2 STM IS
In the final months of 2021 I started to participate in the Flickr group Macro Monday’s which I’ve really enjoyed doing. The weeks theme for the image above was “bottles” and when taking the image I had a rough idea of what I wanted to do in my head but I figured I’d just experiment and see what works.
I had the Christmas tree behind the bottle which made for the nice bokeh and the texture overlays I added in PS provided a bit extra character too. I also used my Godox AD200 on camera left to give some extra lighting and I was so happy with this image I felt it deserved to be in the top 5.
2021
Gear Used:
Canon EOS R6 & RF 50mm f/1.8 STM
If you subscribe to this blog you’ll noticed I don’t often shoot portraits, in fact it’s a genre I enjoy but hardly do. Considering I barely shoot portraits, it can be hard to find a willing model to assist me in improving them. For the above image I was out shooting a cityscape that afternoon and while the lighting was nice I decided to try a self portrait too.
This was taken with a budget lens but I was really happy with the final image and it even made Explore on Flickr for the day I uploaded it.
The Final Piece
Gear Used:
Canon EOS R6 & RF 16mm f/2.8 STM
This was taken on my second outing with the new Canon RF 16mm f/2.8 which was a dream lens for me. I love light trail images although you need to right location to make them work.
On this day I was actually heading to another location but I didn’t think I’d make it in time so decided to stop here which worked out for the better. This images was roughly 6 or 7 images stacked together in PS using the lighten blend mode which works really well for these types of images. Being that I was so happy with the way it turned out, it earned a spot in the top 5.
Cremorne Point View
Gear Used:
Canon EOS R6 & Tamron 100-400mm f/4.5-6.3
This is honestly what I would call my best cityscape to date. I had visited this spot the previous week but we had really heavy winds so I couldn’t get anything without severe camera shake. The following week we had some really nice weather so I headed to the same spot with the 100-400mm and managed to capture the image you see above.
This was also a panorama and quite underexposed to protect the highlights but with the dynamic range of the Canon EOS R6 I managed to recover the details without any issue. I usually go quite strong with the contrast but I took it a lot easier on this image which suited it much better.
The End
This concludes my top 5 images of 2021 which I hope you enjoyed. If you’d like to be notified of future posts, please subscribe using the form at the bottom of the page.
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