Category: Photography

Some end-of-the-year remarks about my favorite and most-viewed photos of 2024.

The Favorites

A “right place at the right time” photo of an anhinga bird with a fish at the Orlando Wetlands Park in November.

Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS in the western sky seen from beach parking at Marineland, Fla. I didn’t know this photo was successful until days later when I happened to open the Camera Raw file in Photoshop on a 32″ 4K monitor.

This comet was an interesting photo challenge to get a picture of something barely (or not even) visible to the unaided eye. The process was (1) use a stargazing app on a phone to find where it should be, (2) take a 15-or-so-second exposure of the area with your phone on a tripod, (3) find the comet in the phone photo and use that to line up a higher-end camera for the shot.

The above photo wasn’t taken that way, though, it was “point-and-pray” with Live View on my Olympus TG-6. It’s also worth noting that this location is regarded as one of the darkest places on the east coast of Florida.

The Popular

For some reason, Flickr likes to serve this 2006 photo of the Hancock Building in Chicago when viewers search for “building.” It’s been my most-viewed photo in my stats most days this year. It’s currently ranked 21st for all-time views in my photostream on the site.

The Instagram version of this photo from FANFARES & FIREWORKS seems to get a lot of random likes. Maybe because I don’t post there often and it’s currently still my most-recent post there.

Honorable Mention – Flickr in its year-in-review of my uploads says this photo taken while testing gear was my most-liked on the platform this year.

Cher performed in Jacksonville on January 23, 2019. It was an impressive show. Here are some photos.

The end of my morning commute is a several-minute walk from the parking lot to my office–around the UF football stadium. I looked up and saw this on Tuesday morning.

Many of my readers now that being asked for camera buying advice is a somewhat regular occurence for me. Mike Johnston of The Online Photographer summed it up about as well and succinctly as I have ever read in one in a series of recent posts:

“But seriously, here’s how to buy a camera: figure out what lenses you need first, and who has them; figure how big a camera you want to carry; figure out (from that and from the pricing and your budget) what level or tier you’re going to be looking in (and this level is a good one); then pick one and get on with it.”

My usual advice is to find the Canon camera that best fits your budget and desired features and then talk yourself into the next higher-priced model. If someone complains about not wanting to buy a Canon, I tell them that they asked the wrong person for advice. That’s not entirely true, though, since I do occasionally recommend Panasonics too.

Update: The day after writing the above, New York Times personal technology columnist David Pogue offered this even-briefer bit of advice in response to the cocktail-party question, “What camera should I get?”:

“The Canon PowerShot SD880. Or, if you’re willing to carry around a bigger, heavier model (an S.L.R.), the Nikon D5000.”

I’ve recommended the first camera. The latter I’m not very familiar with, but I have long found Nikon’s user interface to be confusing.