Martin’s Personal Top Ten Photographs for 2020 (Podcast 729)

Believe it or not, but I have been looking forward to this post. This is a gorgeous set of images you have put together here (even though most of them are in color 😉).
It’s hard to pick a favorite. The Copse in Snow image is slightly Kenna-esque. Both eagle shots and the “Passionate Dance” shot are perfect examples of the importance of timing in photography.

These are the ones I like best.

I wish you all the best for 2021. Stay safe… and keep your head up in these bulls*** times.

Cheers,
C.

Oh, I forgot, here’s the link to my top ten post: https://www.chm-photography.com/blog/top-ten-photographs-2020/

Hi Martin.
I always enjoy watching you go through the process of selecting your top ten images of the year. I hope you stay healthy and have a great 2021.
Here’s a link to my top ten. https://wilddrakephotography.com/2021/01/04/top-ten-favourite-images-of-2020/

Hi Martin,
Lloyd here again…. I always look forward to this time of the year for this reason, especially with the past year that we have all endured.

I absolutely love the Steller Sea over the wall in Rausu and the owl in the tree.

With the restrictions in placed, I started working on way of attracting birds to my garden instead heading out my favourite locations to find them. The Two image of the Rainbow Lorikeet and the Willy Wagtail are from my front yard and one of the Kookaburra is from my mate’s back yard.

The bearded dragon and python image are from my last studio workshop before the lockdown started here in Brisbane.

https://500px.com/p/lkasper/galleries/2020-top-ten

Thanks again for the inspiration and Stay Safe mate…

Hi Martin

Stunning images, as always.

Although they conjure up different emotions, my two favourites are the Copse in Snow and The morning mist in Biel.

Take care, regards.

David

Hi Martin

Excellent images evoking a range of emotion. And so nice to see a few familiar locations. I join the others in admiring the Copse in snow and remain in awe of your wildlife in action.

This is not an exercise that I have done in the past but since 2020 was a year of moving in different directions, I might take a crack at the exercise.

Stay safe and healthy.

Ulana

I’ve just completed my top ten for 2020, not sure if its because I’m use to doing it more each year of maybe the quality of the shots wasn’t the same this year but I found it easier this year to get to my final top ten. The final top ten are still on the improvement curve from previous years so not lack of quality of the work. It’s been an interesting year shall we say. As always great to see Martins Top ten shots with a very difficult year there for Martin not being able to travel to all his amazing locations. As always great work Martin, always good to see your top ten each year there. Stay safe there everyone, I really don’t think this is going to end in a hurry any time soon so we all have to make changes in how we do things even the simple things like going to the shops is totally different experience to what we were doing 18 months ago. Our photography is no different things are changing and we have to change with them. Stay say have fun, and take care of each other.

https://glennsmithphotography.zenfolio.com/blog/2021/1/my-top-ten-images-from-2020

Yes Topaz impressions used in a fair few of these, To various levels using photoshop layers to mask back in the hero of the shot, It helps to soften the back grounds and gives then a certain flavour. Weekends I shoot week day nights I play with the weeks images to see where I can take them, there’s I just use the shot and only Lightroom edits. With Saturn you’ll be surprised but so far I’ve only used the single images not fully image stacked yet, still go too learn that skill yet, with the 100-500 you have then and the extenders you’ll get even more magnification than I get with the 800so you’ll see even more, you’ll need to zoom uneven so, Jupiter I can just start to make out the cloud bands. Saturn is a fair bit noisy, due to atmospheric distortion so really needs to be image stacked properly. You can make you the rings clearly and depending the angle of the planet at the time you see it you get quite a view. You can see it on the back of the LCD when you zoom in as you’re taking a shot but you really need to aggressively crop it later.
Thanks for your kind words there Martin, hope things settle down over there for you and you get to get out and shoot again there soon, take care there mate, stay safe.

I always love viewing your photographs and hearing about your process for choosing them, though this may be the first time I’ve commented to tell you this. I tend to find viewing your images a very calming experience, perhaps because of the subject matter but also how you photograph it. Even the action scenes with eagles or cranes are still very calming. Beautiful work, Martin! 2020 was a tough year, and this one will likely be much the same at least for parts of it. But I hope you are able to get out and create and share your passion and learning with the rest of us.

This wasn’t as productive a year as I’d hoped, at least from the perspective of creating new images, though I did spend more time on older ones. But I managed to create some, so here are my favorites from 2020: https://toddhensonphotography.com/blog/best-photos-of-2020

All the best to you, Martin!

Martin,

I look forward to your annual top ten blog post. Your images are wonderful, as usual. I particularly like the owl and woodpecker images – the birds are perfect, but what really makes these images for me are the environmental details of the textured trees the birds are in. I also really like the panning shot of the Hooper Swan with its perfectly focused head and almost poetic out of focus wings.

Unfortunately, narrowing down to my top ten photos was much too easy this year. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, I was able to do little photography and all of it was close to home. Nevertheless, I like the results.

https://photos.kotler.org/TopTen/2020

The first four photos of birds were either backyard photos or from a nearby nature reserve. The last six are all macro experiments with found objects in my backyard. All were shot with a Nikon D7100 and a Nikon 70-200 mm f2.8 lens. The macros were done with a NISI Close-Up lens mounted on the Nikon 70-200 mm.. The second through fourth photos had a 1.4x extender fitted to the Nikon 70-200 mm. The focal length is 35 mm equivalent after adjusting for the D7100’s 1.5 crop factor. All images were processed with CaptureOne Pro 20.

Martin – I love your annual post of top ten photographs and I know you are a terrific photographer from whom I’ve learned much But, to some extent, I think you annual images are a bit too repetitious. I know you base them on your tours, but I also know, because I’ve copied some of your images (shameless) on your tours, that you have the ability to do new work that doesn’t have the same subjects year after year. This is a friendly plug to get you to do some new tours that get to new places that you haven’t been before. Yes, going back to places repeatedly gives a photographer the best chance to get the right light at the right time with the right conditions, but so many of your earlier photographs of similar subjects are so stunning that it’s hard for your new photographs to top equal them. Go to new places and many of us will follow (at least once this damn pandemic is over).

With the greatest respect for your artistry,
David