2011: Hit Me with Your Best Shots

Here's a round up of a dozen of my favorite shots from 2011. I picked these for their composition, light and the moment they capture.

Cold Rose

Cat Nap

Sound Table

Bowling ball in flight at Kingpins

Eeyore and Tigger, the best of friends 

Warehouse District: Asheville, NC

Ivy + Benjamin: Dallas, TX

Elyssa + Ethan: Twin Lambs

Jesus & Llama: Asheville, NC

Hannah + Elliot: Cleveland, GA

I Swing

Queen Anne's Lace: Newland, NC

Self-Evaluation

Through my viewfinder, here's how I stacked up:

Funniest
For me the funniest capture was Overhead. I should've made one of my family members take a video of me, scooting around the parking lot with my telephoto lens while big beefy farmers carried giant seed bags out to their trucks. The looks I got were hysterical.

Most Troublesome
It's a toss up between Lost & Found and Front & Center. Both these categories gave me a time. In the end, I'd have to say Lost & Found kept me puzzling to the very end. The number of ideas conceived and tossed out for this photo were too many to count!

Not What It Seems
Without a doubt, this one is Front & Center. I thought I was taking a picture of the barbed wire fence for "Narrow", but instead, the two barbs came out perfectly centered in the shot. And then, when I loaded the photos on the laptop and could see the details, I notice my little eight-legged friend. Unexpected good things come to those who keep clickin'!

Second to this is Solitary. It looks quiet and peaceful, but I was standing in a ditch along a busy road shooting through a fence, getting poison ivy, picking up a spider bite and nearly falling in the road when I stepped in a hole.

Hardest to Capture
I think the hardest to capture might have been the totem pole for Spirit. First of all, I chose a tough time of day, when the sun was at its brightest and clearest. But there was also the tug of war between getting the impact of the "big picture" and the uniqueness of the "little" picture in the finely carve details all with an incredibly vertical subject.

Most Creative
For the play on words, I love End. Not only did I get to incorporate my love of Harry Potter, but I thought it was an unexpected choice. And the mysterious light of the setting sun and its shadows and highlights on the books really made this shot come to life.

Pride & Joy
I think that Shoes takes the cake for favorite shots. I bet I took more than 100 photos of these shoes in all different configurations - and in two separate shoots to boot! Anna gave me the great "in the round" idea, and I thought that it added interest while keeping it simple enough to appreciate the detail of these tiny shoes. Plus, I finally got them in the right light!

Runners up: Little Things because of the soft focus and because my love of these thimbles was truly rooted in that they were such pretty little things; and Confusing because of the innovative idea for it and the fact that it was a wholly created picture.

I loved Amy's idea of outtakes, so here's a few that didn't make the cut:

Narrow(ly) Escaping a Barbed-Wire Gouging

Solitary (Confinement. At Alcatraz)

Shoes (Tiny, tiny shoes...)

Public Art

Through the Window

Very Embellished