My Ten Favorite Photos of 2010

2010 was a very busy year. I did a lot more assignment work in 2010, and branched out more into agricultural and aerial photography. As a result, selecting my ten favorite images of the year is going to be virtually impossible. There are just too many images to choose from. But, like last year, I've decided to break it down into categories and pick my favorite images in each.

Landscapes

These two photos were actually taken on the same day in March. I was in the hills of western Tehama County in a remote corner of Northern California and took a road I'd never been on before. I discovered not only beautiful green rolling hills, but unexpected views of Mount Shasta and the coast range. It was one of the single most productive days of landscape shooting I've ever had.

Rolling Hills near Paskenta

Oak and Shasta

Architecture

I did a number of architectural assignments this year.

My favorite assignment was to take an 'iconic' image of the City of Redding in Northern California. I was given free reign as to the exact subject of the image, but it had to say "Redding". So naturally, I focused on the only "iconic" thing in Redding - the Sundial Bridge. I took images of the bridge from every conceivable angle, including from the air. The image below, was my favorite, mostly because of the lighting and the reflections on the river. In the end, the client ended up selecting the aerial photo of Mt. Shasta and Shasta Dam (see below), but I really enjoyed shooting the Sundial Bridge.

Sundial Bridge - Redding

I also had an opportunity to shoot some of the buildings in downtown Sacramento last year. And my favorite image from that shoot is of the relatively new Bank of the West Building. This shot was taken very early in the morning and the building looks almost transparent with the blue-on-blue of the windows and the sky. Taken with a 24mm Tilt/Shift lens.

Bank of the West Building, Sacramento

Agriculture

At the end of last year, I had the opportunity to shoot some lettuce fields near Yuma, Arizona and I fell in love with the rows of alternating red and green mixed greens they grow there. This is one of many of my favorites from that shoot.

Mixed Greens in the Field near Yuma, Arizona

I also had the opportunity to do an aerial shoot of the rice harvest here in the Sacramento Valley. The harvest was very late this year, so I ended up going up twice, but I got some amazing images. This is easily my favorite from both flights. What makes this shot are both the curving lines of the harvest tracks and the contrast between the golden heads of ripe rice and the still green stems that become visible after the harvester passes.

 

Rice Harvest - Sacramento Valley

Aerial

I did a number of aerial shoots this year. My favorite shot from all of the shoots is the one of rice harvest (above). However, I got some great images on all of my shoots. One of my favorites was an unusual angle on some blooming peach orchards near Live Oak. I particularly love the contrast between the pink flowers and the green grass on the levee.

Peach Orchards in Bloom from the Air

I also got some great images during my aerial shoot of Redding. I hadn't actually intended to go up to Shasta Lake during the shoot, but figured that it was only a few minutes away (flight-wise), so we did several loops around the dam. It turned out that the client liked this image better than any of the others from that shoot and used this for a 30 foot wide mural.

Mt Shasta and Shasta Dam from the Air

Food

I didn't do as much food photography this year as last - something I hope to rectify in 2011. However, I did get a few images that I particularly liked. This lamb and cucumber soup was particularly successful because of the contrasting colors of the plate and the geometric composition.

Lamb and Cucumber Soup

Though there was nothing particular special about the lighting or setup of this shot, it's one of my favorites because of the simplicity of the composition, well, that and the fact that I love peaches and any kind of dessert with peaches in it. This layered peach and pecan parfait, was especially delicious.

Peach and Pecan Parfait

Top Selling Images of 2010

Just like last year, the most viewed images on my sites were not necessarily the best selling images.

The following are the top 10 best selling images from 2010 and includes images sold as prints or licensed as stock. Only two images from last year's top 10 made it into this year's top 10.

1. The Tower Bridge over the Sacramento River in the late afternoon.

2. Mt. Shasta and Shasta Dam from the Air.

3. Shasta from Red Rock Valley.

4. Dusk brings out the colors in the lighted walkway of the Sundial Bridge at Turtle Bay in Redding.

5. Newly sprouted rice grows in fields south of the Sutter Buttes.

6. Rice fields surround the small towns of Nelson and Richvale in the Sacramento Valley, with the Sutter Buttes in the distance.

7. The downtown Sacramento skyline at night.

8. Rice harvest continues right up until sunset.

9. A rice combine harvests rice at the foot of the Sutter Buttes.

10. Storm clouds are reflected in a flooded rice field near Maxwell.

Top Ten Most Viewed Images of 2010

Last year, I listed the top ten most viewed images of 2009, and I thought I'd do the same thing this year.

2010 was a very different year from 2009. Business was up dramatically, due to an improving economy, and my business changed radically in 2010 from previous years, shifting away from stock and more and more toward assignment work.

Unfortunately, virtually the same images ended up in the top ten most viewed this year as last year. I was hoping that some images taken in 2010 would end up in the top ten, but that didn't happen. Though people seem to be viewing most of the same photos as last year, as we'll see in a future post, the most viewed images were not necessarily the most sold images.

Here are the top ten most viewed photographs on my  www.adunnphotography.com and www.sacramentovalleyphotos.com sites.

1. The Tower Bridge in Sacramento

2. Downtown Sacramento Skyline at Night

3. The State Capitol Building at Sunset

4. Old Sacramento at Night

5. The Sacramento River and Skyline at Dusk

6. The Ziggurat Building in West Sacramento

7. The Sacramento River at Night

8. The Tower Bridge at Night

9. The Elks Club Building in Sacramento

10. Rice fields and the Sutter Buttes

Bald Eagle at the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge

I always try to get out and shoot for my personal pleasure on my birthday, and this year was no different. Unfortunately, it's been very foggy and rainy for the past month or so here and there haven't been too many opportunities to get out. But we got amazingly lucky on my birthday. The fog and clouds cleared off and we had the most beautiful day you could imagine.

I had rented a Canon 600mm f/4 L super telephoto lens from BorrowLenses  (see my previous post) just for this weekend, and I was very happy to have good weather to shoot with.

My wife and I spent the day at the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge south of Willows, mostly photographing geese. But we were also lucky enough to encounter a very patient bald eagle sitting in a tree right by the side of the road. We actually went around the driving loop twice, and he was still there. Several other vehicles stopped to photograph him, and he never moved. He was very accommodating.

I'll have a few more shots from our trip to the SNWF in my next post.

More Crops Near Yuma

Though I really enjoyed photographing the mixed greens while I was down in Yuma last month, I also took a bit of time to photograph a few other things as well.

I particularly like the abstract patterns that crops can create on the land, and I tried to capture that in some of these images.

Red and green lettuce sprouts

Fields of red and green lettuce sprouts

Fields of red and green lettuce sprouts

Fields of red and green lettuce

Iceberg lettuce sprouts, with date palms in the background

Lettuce sprouts in a field south of Yuma

An Afternoon in the Sun at Mount Shasta

Last week (well, and this week as well) have been very gray in the valley. On Saturday afternoon, I had finally had enough, packed up my gear and drove up to Mount Shasta, where the satellite photos showed there was plenty of sun above the Tule fog that filled the Sacramento Valley.

Coming over Black Butte Summit I saw a bank of clouds forming around the base of the mountain, and worried that the long drive might have been in vain, but once I got past Weed, to the north side of Shasta, it cleared out nicely.

Though I thought I'd have only about a half an hour of light when I got there, I managed to get several nice images of the mountain from the north before the sun went down.

Mount Shasta from a ranch on the north side of the mountain.

Panorama of Mount Shasta

Bare trees below the mountain.

Panorama of the summit of Mount Shasta (view larger on Flickr)

The last photo is a stitch of 10 images taken with a 600mm lens, and shows incredible detail. The original image is 16,400x5120 pixels!

All in all, a great - if short - day of shooting. The biggest bonus was seeing the sun!

Canon 600mm f/4 L - First Day

This weekend is my birthday, and as a present to myself, I rented a Canon 600mm f/4 super telephoto lens from borrowlenses.com to play with over the weekend.

Snow Goose

Canon 7D, 1/1250 sec, f/4.5, ISO 400

This is an extremely large lens, weighing in at 12 pounds (see below), but also provides incredible magnification. My goal over this weekend was to have a little fun shooting wildlife at our local wildlife refuges.

© 2011 Scott Jungling

Unfortunately, this is also Tule fog season, Tule fog is a dense ground fog that can persist for days or even weeks, and has been the source of many chain reaction car accidents. And today was - unfortunately - the first solid day of Tule fog this year.

But I didn't let that stop me from heading out to the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge south of Willows to see what I could do despite the weather. I attached it to my Canon 7D camera, giving the lens an effective focal length of 960mm.

Considering the dense freezing fog, I think I did pretty well. There were a lot of birds out and the large objective element on the lens gathered enough light despite the fog to allow some very nice exposures. Here's a sample:

Northern Shovelers
Canon 7D, 1/1500 sec., f/6.3, ISO 800

White-fronted Geese
Canon 7D, 1/1600 sec., f6/3, ISO 800

Marsh Hawk

Canon 7D, 1/800 sec., f/6.3, ISO 800

Marsh Hawk

Canon 7D, 1/1600 sec., f/6.3, ISO 800

Snow Goose

Canon 7D, 1/500 sec, f/7.1, ISO 400

My initial impressions of the lens are that it's very useful for specific things, but amazingly unwieldy. It's very difficult to maneuver. Even propping it on the window sill of the car requires a lot of work and effort. However, the image quality is incredible. I'd love to own this lens, but at $8000, it's a bit rich for my blood. For now, I'll stick to renting.