End of Year round up of some of my favourite images from 2014
My end of the year round up is a selection of some of the pictures I have enjoyed making the most over the past year. To share their blushes, I have left out family portraits…naturally they would be at the very top of the list – pictures that bring back memories of the events of the year, from the birthday of my grand-daughter in January to the birth of my second grandson in July and the birthday of my first grandson in November – moments to treasure…along with the photos of my father with his new great-grandson only a week before he suffered a stroke which took his life. These pictures can never be replicated or replaced.
Now I intend to record a short tour of personal images that I have made this year…pictures for competition, pictures for myself, pictures that capture a moment and pictures that helped me to develop new skills, starting in January with:
This is one of a series of ballet pictures that were shot at the end of 2013 – the shoot itself brings back bitter-sweet memories of a friend and colleague, Maurice Jones, who passed away just a year ago, shortly after arranging this shoot for Wigan 10. A very special man, he will always be remembered with affection.
My favourite composite from that shoot is “Reverie”, below:
In March, I was thrilled to receive the award of ABPE. This requires a further 100 exhibition acceptances in British Photographic Exhibitions after gaining the 5 crown award, which itself required 300 acceptances…plus 20 new awards in those exhibitions with at least 10 different pieces of work…and one of my personal favourite photographs whose awards went towards this honour was “Home for Tea”, shown below”.
The next notable image was “Rise of the Dark Angel” which became one of the two most successful exhibition images of the year…this is shown below along with my top competitive image of the year, “Naughty and Nice”…these two formed part of the set of images which won the PSA Gold for the best Creative Set in the RPS Images for Print Exhibition…and were chosen to represent Wigan 10 in the FIAP World Cup, which the club won for the third time in a row.
Success in exhibition aside, I enjoyed thoroughly making some traditional record photographs and landscapes…they require a different skill-set and have difficulties of their own…
Maybe they will never impress the majority of photographic judges, but they do float my boat!
The summer gave me the opportunity to try new things and I concentrated for some weeks on improving my nature skills…here are a few shots which I personally like:
In fact there are so many, it was difficult to choose, but maybe this angry baby bird should not be left out!
The opportunity to try out some studio work presented itself on another shoot with Wigan 10…with the striking model, Amy:
and raiding the back catalogue is always worth a try…I came up with “Woman in a White Dress”:
Exploring the square format resulted in “The Red Balloon”:
and “Incantation”
As the year came to a close, family matters have dominated and the best I could muster were a couple of opportunist shots in fleeting light…so I will end 2014 here, with a shot from a short drive through Cumbria in early December and lastly a picture taken this week on a walk from home after snow:
If you want to read the blogs associated with these pictures, please scroll back through the months.
I now wish you a very Happy New Year and hope that 2015 is a happy and peaceful one.
Chris
31 Dec 2014
