2016 Favorites – Black and White

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Light Patterns.

Another year has whizzed by and it’s time to post some of my favorite pictures from 2016 – black and white first. Like last year I’m presenting my ten favorites – in no particular order.

At this point last year I said:

I’ve been trying to find a focus for my photography, which at the moment is all over the place. I had thought that my primary interest was in old buildings. However, in looking at my favorites I was surprised to discover that none of them (black and white or color) contain old buildings. While I’ve taken lots of pictures of old buildings over the year it seems that I don’t consider any of them to be favorites. Just for curiosity I looked back at 2014 favorites and found that the same was true in 2014: pretty much no buildings. Go figure!

The same is pretty much true this year too: A few abstracts; a couple of wildlife pictures; a couple of ‘people’ pictures; a still life; a landscape of sorts. No sign of a focus emerging.

Maybe I’m just interested in a lot of different things rather than being passionate about a single subject.

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Bird in a Tree.

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Moth.

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Altar. In Chapel of our Lady Restoration. Restored chapel in Cold Spring, NY

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Still life with lilacs.

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Vortex.

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Topiary.

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Self portrait with trash pile

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Make America Great Again

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Abstract composition.

Still life in blue and white

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My wife collects blue and white stuff. We have lots of it. It’s probably what people remark on the most when they come to the house.

One morning, around 8:00am I was sitting in the living room drinking my coffee when I noticed that the light coming through the living room windows was particularly impressive. It was illuminating this group of objects on the shelf in front of our fireplace.

If this picture is successful I suspect that it’s because of the splash of orange that contrasts so starkly with the dominating blue and white. What are these orange things? I’ve never noticed them before. When did they arrive? I’ll have to ask my wife.

Still life with food

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In the preceding post I mentioned that we recently hosted a meeting of our local garden club. After the presentation refreshments are traditionally served. At one point the refreshments were getting quite elaborate and some members complained that this put pressure on them to provide food and that this made them reluctant to host meetings. So the head of the club announced that in future refreshments would be limited to coffee and cookies. This lasted for a couple of meetings, but you just can’t stop people from making things and bringing them along. So eventually what was supposed to be coffee and cookies became a full lunch. This was the case with our meeting. This photograph shows about half of the refreshments table.

Included in the picture are some cucumber sandwiches – a traditional British delicacy. My wife was going to make them, but she got caught up doing other things so I ended up doing it. I’m familiar with simple cucumber sandwiches i.e. buttered bread with cucumbers inside. Pretty boring and I don’t generally like them. However, my wife’s version included mayonnaise, mustard and chives, which was a big improvement. I must say that I rather enjoyed them.

It was taken with a Sony NEX 5N and Zeiss 58mm f2 Biotar pretty much wide-open. I think it has a lovely “glow”.