I decided to do a retrospective of my photographs from
2017. Knowing that I wasn’t a very
active shutterbug this past year I figured I’d still have more than a few
favorites. As it turns out, my first
pass yielded 17…quite the appropriate number, no?
I was going to put them in chronological order, but decided
to mix it up a bit and be mostly chronological, but save the best for
last. So, without further ado, my
favorite shots from 2017:
January
Our dogs, Banjo and Maggie, love to go for a ride in the car
(aka rideez). Maggie really, really,
REALLY wants to have her head out in the slipstream so her big hound schnozz
can take in all the myriad scents undetectable to us humans. Banjo also likes to do this but his desire to
do so is closer to an average dog’s.
When I take them rideez I will drive around with the back windows down
far enough for them to stick their heads out, but not so far that they can
easily exit. When they stick their heads
out we say they are navigating by smell (consequently, we consider all dogs
with their heads out of a vehicle window to be navigators). They will run between the windows, sometimes
each in their own window, sometimes jointly conferring on our position. On a relatively warm day in January we went out
and when I was stopped at a traffic light they both stuck their heads out the
driver’s side window and I managed to get this shot.
Around the same time as the picture above I went out to
Confluence Park on the Scioto River to get a shot of the Cbus skyline at dawn. Even though the sun was rising, approaching
weather allowed me to get this shot.
It’s not the greatest skyline picture I’ve taken but I still like it. And it’s going to have to do since I’m not so
disappointed in it that I’m going to make a 16-hour round trip just to give it
another whirl.
May
I relocated from Cbus to RVA in May, about a month before we
had a house purchased. One weekend, before the Missus and the pups migrated south, I met
with my granddaughter Tara (and her parents, who were kind enough to give her a
ride) at the Sylvan Heights Bird Park, a bird sanctuary and research center in
Scotland Neck, NC (don’t worry, nobody else has heard of Scotland Neck, NC, either).
I made some friends while we were there…
There’s an area where you can feed budgerigars (canaries)
and flamingoes. Visitors are warned – a
lot – to check themselves for hitchhikers before exiting. It’s easy to see why since they weigh
virtually nothing and if you’re wearing a hat, hoodie or backpack, or carrying
a purse, you’ll never know they’re there unless you look.
And yeah, you can get really, really close to the
flamingoes…
In my free time I also scoped out Pocahontas State Park, just 6 miles from
our house. It’s a 7,950 acre park. By way of comparison for Toledoans, that’s twice
the size of Oak Openings; for Cincinnatians, it’s about 5.5 times the size of
Mount Airy Forest; for denizens of Columbus, it’s 4.5 times the size of the
campus of OSU; for Manx readers, it’s about 17% the size of the island. In other words, it’s a really, really big state park. I didn’t get much exploring done
because I spent a lot of time in the nature center and the little but very nice
Civilian Conservation Corps Museum. I
did spend a lot of time at Beaver Lake, an incredibly tranquil place, where
I got this shot of a red-winged blackbird, tough to photograph but one of my
favorites to watch and listen to (https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Red-winged_Blackbird/sounds):
August
Solar eclipse. Carbondale, Illinois. Spectacular, exhilarating experience. Details can be found
here: http://timerskinephotography.blogspot.com/2017/08/a-hole-in-fabric-of-sky.html
and my favorite shots are here:
A few minutes after the start of the eclipse.
Totality. Pictures
don’t come close to capturing the experience of being in the path.
October
I took part in the Kelby Worldwide Photowalk, an outing for
photographers to get with a local guide to see the sights and shoot them. I went to Petersburg where we walked through
the old section of the town, the part that was bombarded during the Civil War’s
Siege of Petersburg. My Flickr album
from the Walk is at https://flic.kr/s/aHsm5FzUSb.
Here are my favorites from that morning:
November
My employer, the Virginia Office of EMS, holds a Symposium annually in
Norfolk. It is one of the largest EMS
conferences in the country (like 2nd largest). 2017 was the 38th edition. With that much experience, it runs like a
well-oiled machine, but it is an all-hands-on-deck situation. I didn’t have too much time for tourism, and
the pictures I was taking were less artistic and more documentary, but I did
get to see the battleship USS Wisconsin, which is moored two blocks from the
hotel.
And then the Missus and I went to Nawlins Looziana (New Orleans, Louisiana)
for Thanksgiving. It was a photo
bonanza. Here are a couple of my favorite
shots and the rest can be found at https://www.flickr.com/photos/traumastats/albums/72157690345221755
This is a long exposure from our hotel room on Canal
Street. I was hoping for more cars to
move through during the exposure, making for more pronounced trails from
headlights and taillights. Sadly, when there was a lot of traffic, it barely
moved, negating the effect. I think this
is pretty decent, though.
This is a cormorant on the Mississippi River. Specifically, it is an immature
double-crested cormorant. It was diving underwater looking for fish,
as cormorants are wont to do, and it wound up surfacing near to me after one of
its dives. This was the closest I’d ever
been to a cormorant. The picture itself
doesn’t have anything great in the way of composition (it’s a waterfowl in
murky water) and isn’t the clearest shot.
But what makes this one special is the way the midday sun (normally not
a good thing for photography) gave me a clear shot of its aquamarine eye. I had no idea that a bird’s eye could be so
blue.
I think of this one as “The USS No Smoking” because of the
warning in huge block letters on the pilothouse just below the bridge. It is, in fact, the MV Louisiana, a
US-flagged tanker, based in Jacksonville, Florida. It’s not a supertanker, but it’s still a
really large vessel to be operating on a river.
While the Missus and I were catching some rays on the Moon Walk (the walk along the river named for former NOLA Mayor "Moon" Landrieu) I saw it
coming around the bend to our left, headed upriver to pick up its flammable
liquid cargo. I walked up to the river’s
edge and waited for it to swing around head-on.
My patience was rewarded with this view.
For more information on the USS No Smoking, including its current
location, go to
The Best for Last - Back to the Beginning
At the end of January and the first of February, the Missus
and I went with the Friends of Hocking Hills Camera Club to LeClaire, Iowa. LeClaire is a small town on the
Mississippi River, a couple of miles north of the Quad Cities (Moline and Rock
Island, Illinois; Davenport and Bettendorf, Iowa). It’s the home of Antique Archeology of
“American Pickers” fame, but that’s not why we went there. It is also near to a lock and dam complex on
the Mississippi (Lock and Dam 14, to be specific). During the winter, bald eagles are
there. Dozens and dozens and dozens of bald
eagles. They are there for the
smorgasbord God and the US Army Corps of Engineers provide. You see, fish in the river go over the dam,
through the spillway or through the water circulators that keep the lock from
freezing solid and getting damaged. Not
all of the poor fishies make it and those that don’t float to the surface. Put yourself in the shoes, or rather the
talons of an eagle. Wait, that’s a bad
way of putting it. Let’s try this:
Imagine you’re an eagle. When you migrate south, wouldn’t you want to winter
over in a place where the fish are fresh, abundant and don’t dive away from you? Of course you would. That’s why so many are there.
I took thousands of pictures and some of them were
fantastic. But I picked four of my
favorites for this post (you can see the rest of my best on my Flickr account
at https://flic.kr/s/aHskQES3Ky).
I suppose I should mention that there was a pair of white pelicans at Lock and Dam 14, as well. They were there for the same reason as the eagles.
This picture is a prime example of a photography adage that says, "80% of photography is being there." In this case, there were around 100 photographers at Lock and Dam 14 but there were maybe 10 who were in or near the right place to get this shot. Of those 10, seven weren't looking around. Only three of us saw what was coming and got set for it. Getting this picture was our reward, and it was even better than I had hoped when I grabbed the shot.
This one shows an eagle headed for some trees to enjoy
its breakfast, which is tucked under its tail. The serious look and
intensity on its face is the only affect you will see on an eagle. Whether they are fighting to the death over a
mate, courting a mate, have decided to eat your offspring or as they tenderly and gently care
for their own, this is it, the bald eagle’s one-and-only mien. It’s the look you’ll always see and explains
why the Muppets’ Sam Eagle is always so stern.
I call this one, “Hey, look!
It’s the Moon!” I was accused of
Photoshopping this one (by someone who was there and clearly mad at himself for missing it) but it’s legit.
Both the moon and the eagle were in the frame, in those positions. I did use Photoshop to increase the
brightness of the moon because it was pretty washed out and a lot less visible,
but that’s it. When I saw the moon more
or less over the dam, I anticipated that an opportunity like this would present
itself. It took a long time, with a lot
of eagles flying near but not near enough to get both avian and satellite in
the frame, but when it did happen, I was ready.
Finally, of all the pictures I’ve taken in nearly 15 years
of serious shooting, this one is, hands down, my favorite.
There is just so much happening in this shot! This eagle was flying from my right to left
when it spotted some food in the river.
In order to get to it, it needed to kill off its forward speed and dive
while turning over 90 degrees to its left.
To do that it is twisting its tail to roll left; its wings are being
pulled back into dive position; in order to turn hard to the left, it is
killing off the lift of its left wing, as well as putting the outer half of
that wing down to cause drag to bleed off speed; the left talon is extended not
to reach out for its prey but to enhance speed reduction and left bank (once it
was on course the talon came back up to be extended again when close to the
water); and its eyes are locked on target (in the typical very serious bald eagle way).
When the eagle started its turn my finger pressed the shutter release and stayed there until my camera’s memory buffer was full. So I got the dive but not the action at the surface. To tell you the truth, I don’t remember if the eagle got the fish it was after. Doesn’t matter…I absolutely love this shot 💕.
When the eagle started its turn my finger pressed the shutter release and stayed there until my camera’s memory buffer was full. So I got the dive but not the action at the surface. To tell you the truth, I don’t remember if the eagle got the fish it was after. Doesn’t matter…I absolutely love this shot 💕.
So there they are...my 17 from 2017.
