My Top 5 Images of 2021

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.

4 Comments

Join the discussion and tell us your opinion.

Joeyreply
December 30, 2021 at 1:40 am

Great images and nice variety, too! Cityscapes look very nice. 😅 Have a relaxing year-end break!

nemesisstorm5reply
April 26, 2022 at 11:37 am

Excellent work my friend your photos are Dope .

Daniel Leereply
April 28, 2022 at 8:14 am
– In reply to: nemesisstorm5

Thanks man I really appreciate the kind words! 2021 and even this year is pretty slow for my photography but trying to get back into it 😅

nemesisstorm5reply
April 26, 2022 at 11:38 am

your work is dope Boss .

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