2019……a long year with lots of photographic opportunity! But did i capture the 12 great images every photographer wants to make in a year! I’m going to have a look back and run through my favorite images from the year and at some things i tried for the first time or improved the most on. First up, on the 1st January 2019 i posted a “street” photo from Nottingham Winter Wonderland, a photo that at the time i really liked, on the back of the camera i knew i had captured exactly what i wanted from the night, after editing, even happier, and now looking back a year late, i still love it! I had been walking around the food stalls with my brand new Nikon 35mm f1.8, getting used to it, first prime lens is always weird. I knew i wanted an image like this, a singled out subject in action, i had seen this girl open the lid to the food before and steam came pouring out. I waited, she opened the lid, the steam came out, i fired the shutter!

My next photo i was happy with was my first attempt at some product photography, i had done the odd bit before but this was a full set up, i wanted to think about the whole set up and lighting. I thought it had just been Christmas, so i have a ton of Jack Daniels about, so what better product to try than that ?! I have some large bottles and some mini bottles, all i needed was a place to set up. The island in the Kitchen would be perfect, i can get low, there is a huge window to one side, the back ground can be a range of colours depending how i move around the island, I set them out in a few different ways, and thinking of stuff i had seen before i knew framing the main subject and foreground blur would look better, so i shot past some of the small bottle to the large one, and i was very happy with the result.

Next up is my first star photography image i was really happy with ! I had attempted this shot before, happy on the camera but when i got it to lightroom the stars just didnt stand out, so next clear night i went out, bumped the ISO way up and took the shots, i lit the tree with my car headlights from a distance for a few seconds then i would turn them off for the rest of the exposure. The photo was shot at 10mm, the camera was pointing almost straight up and i was right under the tree and it has stretched the tree a little, but i like it and i even have it printed and hung on my wall !

My next photo is another night photography attempt, everything else between these photo was a bit crap. It was another lone tree, but this one was more alive looking, even though it was winter and looks half dead. I had decided weeks before when passing this tree i wanted to come back at night to capture it. Finally a clear night came and me and my girlfriend went out, its only a 15 minute drive from home and i went to quickly capture the images, from my last photo i knew the rough settings so could get it done quickly. It was about a 400m walk from the road to the car through a field, i set up, took a couple of photos, but was cut short when a two cars pulled up on the road, and started taking photos and looking around my car, so we hurried back but they one car left and the other moved and we got in the car with no issue and left, i think because i was on farm land they thought i was hunting illegally. I manged to salvage and image in lightroom from the couple i got and i ended up really liking it.

This is a photo shopped image but it still counts. This is one from under the Humber Bridge, on a cold windy day i decided to drive all the way there and take some long exposures. They came out cool but it was missing something, the water level in the Humber was low and the bridge was impressive but everything else was lacking, so i took it into photo shop, flipped and mirrored the image, creating a Humber Bridge refection nobody could capture, the water would never create this. Very happy with how this came out.

This one is something a bit different from the rest ! I live about 5 minutes from Cadwell Park, and go a couple of times a month to watch some racing and photograph the track days, i have slowly been getting my panning better and better and i decided to try on this day a shutter speed of 1/10th of a second, very slow for anything, even a person stood still might come out blurred from this slow shutter speed, but i managed to capture this Golf going into the mountain perfectly sharp ! That was me happy for the day, back to normal shutter speeds and normal shots, i do have another slow one from Cadwell coming up, but i liked this because it was my first really slow one and it came exactly as i wanted.

This is a photograph i had been after for years and years, but never managed to capture. My brother manages Woodside Wildlife Park in Lincolnshire, and they have this gorgeous Bengal Tiger that lives in this lovely huge grassy enclosure, but she is often high up and far away, or up against the fence because its feeding time, so getting a photo of her that looks wild is difficult. This day was fairly quiet, so my brother feeds the tiger, but throws the food in the long grass in the middle to get her away from the fence for me, and as she lays in long grass, staring up at the meat flying through the air i fire away. A tiger, in the long wild grass stalking a bird…..or it could be ! I was very pleased when i got the shot, i have others that look wild but there are some human elements but this could be truly wild.

This one was one i got in a bit of a rush, the poppy fields come and go pretty quick, and i had found a few in a corner of a field but it wasn’t much good but i was told about this field and it was full! I arrived for sunset and has a photo in mind, a taller poppy on its own above the rest of the field, back lit my the sunset. Harder than i thought it would be, with a million poppies in front of me. I found a composition that would work and took the shot. Not the greatest image in the world but i like it.

This photo was mostly done in editing, i will share the original to show the difference. I went to a car show in Manchester, FittedUK, a huge annual show with some of the best cars from Europe attending, i had been a few times but never to get photos, it was very busy with people and cars and stalls and just a lot of fuss, i like simple, clean car photos, but i managed to get a few shots that were ok. I really liked the look of this shot, head on into the mean Audi RS style grille. But there was distractions and it lacked excitement. So some heavy editing followed and the end result was very much what i was after !

First street photo to make the list. This one was in Lincoln and i had gone to Lincoln with the intention of trying to make a video using my new Gopro and Gimbal, but decided it was too busy and i wanted to do some street photography. I walked about for a few hours, captured some good images but on my way back down the hill towards the car, i spotted this street performer playing guitar, on his own, to a few people enjoying coffee across the road. Im not sure why exactly i like this images so much, i think maybe its simple and easy to tell what is happening in the scene. Black and white worked best for this image.

The next Cadwell Park slow shutter speed shot. I really like this one, i did copy the idea from somebody i had seen on Instagram doing the same thing so wanted to give it a go, and knew hall bends at Cadwell was the perfect spot. I put my 17-50mm on, wound the shutter speed right down, and started firing away, the blurry shots out numbered the good ones 10 to 1. But the good ones did look good! I captured a few, some tighter and faster, but this was my favorite of the day, its Motorsport mixed with artistic photography.

Back on the race track, but this time its Santa pod drag strip, home to the fastest cars in the world. We had gone down for a weekend of watching the Top Fuel Dragcar championships. Cars with 10,000 BHP ( Your standard family diesel might have 140bhp) tear down the track at speeds of over 300MPH, making you physically shake as they pass. It is an insane weekend, that leaves the ears ringing for days after! I went with the intentions of getting a few good images, from the track and in the pits that you’re allowed to mingle in. The cars accelerate as such a rate it makes panning almost impossible, but on the good side, they are up to 100 in a second, i can keep the shutter speed high and still get motion blur. After finding a spot above where i could see above the crowds, i photographed many races, finally capturing a good image of this yellow beast, slightly slower than the top fuel cars so easier to catch but still a 6000bhp monster.

More street photography in Lincoln, this time going only to use my new 85mm f1.8 lens. It would be a challenge, but i like a challenge. It was quite an unconventional lens for street photography, usually using much wider like 24 or 35mm. I headed out into Lincoln, getting a few photos i liked, but it was difficult. I saw two women holding “free hugs” signs, and getting very mixed reaction off people, i like these images as a pair because it shows how different people can be in the same situation.

My next favorite photo was a lonely old hut in the middle of a field. I had wanted a photograph like this for a long while, and was finally pointed in the direction of this one. Only a 20 minute drive from my house, i went down real quick just to have a look and see how it might work for sunset, but while i was there i took a bunch of snaps at midday and i actually liked how they turned out! I did go back at sunset and because its in a dip the sun leaves the hut a lot sooner than i thought.

It wouldn’t be complete without a photograph of my niece ! I had not long bought an 85mm prime lens, and had 5 minutes in the garden with her while she was getting ready to go home. There isn’t much to say about this photograph except its adorable!

Back at the hut again but this time for sunset, there wasn’t much of a sunset but the vibrant autumn colours made up for it ! I like the very simple composition and autumn feel as the leaves are just changing.

Something a bit different for this one, a portrait of my girlfriend wrapped up in fairy lights! This was an idea we both had separately! Having seen a photo similar on Instagram we thought we would give it a go, and i like how it turned out, the colours and bokeh all work well.

Now were into my recent Scotland trip, where i got many photos, but to choose my favorites of the year will be hard! The first one is in Glencoe, and this is the exact scene that comes to mind when i imagine the highlands, this could be 2000 years ago, its almost untouched by humans and i think thats why i like it so much!

This is a very simple photo actually taken from a carpark in Fort William, it was a freezing cold morning and i liked the very simple, contrasting colours. I also like that this photo feel like winter, maybe further north in the arctic circle, but you can’t tell. Of all the photos shown on here this is also my phone background i liked it that much!

I cant decide on the next few so im just going to share them all ! They’re all still from Scotland, but hard to compare and i feel i have to like some more than others simply because they were harder work to get!

These are still Scotland, but the Isle of Skye instead of Glencoe. The Isle of Skye is very wild and cold and made for some difficult but great photos! Once again i wont choose one i will post a few!