A photo of a firework display over Bournemouth Pier, Dorset, UK.
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All of the meteor talk in the news recently has reminded me that I saw one last March while driving home from work. I had just enough time to grab my camera and press the shutter button before it disappeared.
The photo isn’t great but it is straight out of the the camera and here is a slightly closer look:
I had never seen anything quite like it before in my life and haven’t seen anything similar since.
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Each year superb landscape photographer Jim M. Goldstein invites readers of his blog to take part in his best photos of the year project. As you might have guessed from the name this project involves readers of his blog choosing their ten best photographs from the previous year. I decided that this year I should take part too.
I found it incredibly difficult to pick just ten photos from the previous year as all of the photographs I have taken mean something special to me, but ten is the limit so in the end it was just a case of being brutal and making the tough choices.
The photos I have chosen are in the gallery below (in no particular order) and each one links through to a corresponding Flickr page. I am not going to provide descriptions for each of the photographs as I think that photographs should really stand up on their own without requiring descriptions. That said, it is often interesting to know more about a photograph’s location information and technical data so all of that information is available via the individual Flickr pages if you are particularly interested in that stuff.
So after much deliberation here are my top ten choices from the year 2011.
Thank you for taking the time to look at my best of 2011 and I’m very much looking forward to seeing all of the work from the photographers involved in the project.
Wishing you the very best for 2012.
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Today was Classic Cars on the Prom in Bournemouth, Dorset, UK. Shortly after I arrived it started to rain cats and dogs so I didn’t hang around for very long unfortunately. There were lots of lovely old cars so I maged to get a couple of shots despite the dreary weather.
Classic cars have such character, they are just screaming out to be photographed.
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This is the Bournemouth Carnival Band and you will often see them performing around the town centre, usually raising money for charity (as they were today).
I have seen them numerous times and it always brings a smile to my face to see thirty or so band members in full Spiderman costumes. Not only do they look great but they sound good too! 
Fortunately I had my camera handy today and was able to grab a couple of shots.
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Here are a couple of night time shot taken recently in Poole, Dorset to mark the 11th November 2011. I had originally hoped to venture outside during the daytime to capture some shots but in the end had to find my inspiration after dark.
It was pretty much impossible to avoid the fact that the date could be expressed as 11/11/11 recently, with numerologists crawling out of the woodwork everywhere you looked, while getting incredibly excited at the prospect of this once in a century event (these events seem to happen far more regularly than the excitement they generate would suggest).
There was even a Flickr group created especially for the occasion, as well as numerous other sites set-up to encourage people to document the day and I decided that I wasn’t going to miss a good opportunity to create some photographs. I was quietly considering the options available to me when I suddenly remembered seeing these lights embedded into the pavement back during the summer but was unsure at the time how to make an interesting shot with them. Fortunately 11/11/11 gave me the perfect opportunity to return for another attempt.
I don’t really need much of an excuse to take a photograph, even if I am a little dubious at times about the significance of the event in question!
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So last night we went along to see some fireworks at a local display and the venue we had chosen also had a fun fair with a bunch of rides featuring lots of neon lights and motion. It had been raining quite heavily when we left the house and I hadn’t taken my ‘proper‘ camera with me. So I nonchalantly took out my iPhone 4S and snapped a few impromptu images shortly after we arrived. When I got home I was pleasantly surprised with the result of one of the shots in particular.
I think what is really incredible is that the iPhone camera (and lots of other mobile phones I’m sure) have the potential to capture such decent quality shots in less than ideal conditions. It’s wonderful to have such a capable camera in my pocket with me everywhere I go and from now on I’m going to make a more concerted effort to use it. I think Chase Jarvis may have actually been onto something when he said that The Best Camera is the One That’s with You.
This has really made me reconsider how I think about my iPhone camera in relation to my Canon DSLR. I guess at the end of the day all that matters is making the shot, everything else is kind of irrelevant.
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Today I had no other choice but to carve a pumpkin. Happy Halloween! 
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American Football came to London, England this past weekend with the NFL’s Chicago Bears taking on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at Wembley Stadium. It was a really great atmosphere and I was able to get a few shots of some of the more dedicated fans.
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I’ve been thinking about it since Thursday and wanted to take a moment to post something about Steve Job’s passing.
I found out that Steve Jobs had passed away just under a week ago while eating breakfast and scanning the headlines using my iPhone, which has become part of my morning routine over the last few years. It was of course incredibly sad news and shocking despite knowing that Steve had been unwell for some time. I think it is fair to say that we all realised this was going to happen, especially following his resignation as CEO of Apple back in August but I don’t think anyone expected it to happen quite so soon. It was perhaps poetic that I along with many others learned of his passing while using one of Apple’s iconic devices.
I was of course saddened to learn of his death but not having known the man personally I didn’t feel the emotional connection that some people seem to have felt, judging by the numerous tweets and blogs posts that I have subsequently read. I did however spend my drive that morning on my way to work thinking about Steve Jobs passing. I thought about the legacy he leaves behind and the impact he has made on the technology landscape. He was multifaceted. A perfectionist and by all accounts could be very difficult to work with or work for but he was unquestionably driven and his drive has to be the biggest factor in pushing him to succeed and create the innovations that he will be forever be remembered for. I did not however intend for this post to simply be a shrine to Steve Jobs – there are already plenty of those available elsewhere, no doubt written far more eloquently than I could possibly manage.
While driving home that evening I turned on the radio and caught the second half of his 2005 Stanford speech. I do remember hearing this speech before only this time it felt even more poignant and personal and I have to admit I actually had a tear in my eye towards the end. I don’t think I have ever shed a tear due to the passing of a company CEO or somebody in the public eye but this was a little different. When you listen to Steve talk about life and death you forget who is speaking and just hear a universal message that applies to us all. The video is posted at the end of this post and the whole speech is moving but here are a couple of extracts I felt were particularly poignant:
“When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
– Steve Jobs, Stanford commencement speech, June 2005
The sentiment is both incredibly profound and completely true and has been at the back of my mind since hearing it. It makes me think about my own life and making the most of the time I have. We each have a responsibility to ensure our own individual happiness as nobody else can do this for us.
Stay hungry, stay foolish and thanks for everything Steve.
