David Naylor: Blog

I was leafing through my photos in Lightroom, rating all the ones I hadn’t rated during the last year.

Rating photos is really hard! Well, that’s food for a whole post on its own.

Anyway, this gave me the idea to try and find my three very best shots from 2009. Having gone through all the photos and starred them from 1 to 5, I had at least narrowed down the choice to 44 five star photos.

My three favourites are all composites of several exposures. They were all taken using a tripod. Two were shot in very familiar surroundings.

Eiffel Tower panorama

This panorama of the Eiffel Tower is, in my eyes, easily the winner. Even though it is quite probably the worlds’ most photographed object.

The Flickr 1024 pixel size doesn’t really do it justice, so if you have a large screen you can see it 1800 pixels wide here.

It might even be my best photo ever. I really like the blue light in the sky and how it mixes with the orange glow of the city. I guess part of it is also being happy that my planning and lugging around my tripod actually paid off. 🙂

I took the panorama from the top of Tour Montparnasse, which I highly recommend if you’re visiting Paris. You get an arguably better view than from the Eiffel Tower itself, and only have to battle a fraction of the number of people.

This is a slight crop from a panorama made of nine vertical shots stitched together using Autostitch. I have bumped the colours and contrast slightly.

Dandelions at sundown

The second shot is this tonemapped image from a field by Kronskogen here in Eskilstuna.

I really like the green colour of the grass and the glow from the sun. The out of focus oak in the background also adds to the score.

I took this using my Gorillapod, which is great for getting low angle views like this.

Vaksala Church/Jan Jansson’s family grave

This third shot, of Vaksala church and churchyard in Uppsala, has a lot similarities with the previous one even though it is taken in the middle of winter. This is also tonemapped, and taken from a low angle using my Gorillapod. It also has a low sun in the background.

Here I like the bare trees, the grave stone, the cold blue sky and the low sun rays on the frost.

Conclusion

This was really fun! If you like taking photos, I really encourage you to have a go at finding your three/five/ten best photos from last year. It really gives your ego a boost! 🙂

Do post a link in the comments if you do!

Runners up

Here are some more shots I considered: