Many of you know that I shoot a huge number and variety of images each and every year. 2019 was no exception with my shot count being in the ballpark of 130K (which has been the average over the last 4 years). While I have usually chosen my best photos and put them in a gallery for people to see from a given year, in addition to this, I had the idea to do something different as well. I have collected some of my, not only photographically pleasing images but ones that also have meaning and significance to me. Whether that was the conditions or location the image was created at, an example of trying a new technique or just a representation of my own photographic journey; the images that will be part of this series are memorable to me. Over the coming weeks, I will be sharing them and the story or background that goes with each one. Hopefully, this may be inspiring for you as you consider what your goals are for your photography this year. Or, maybe it will be just interesting for you to get a glimpse into what photography represents for me. Either way, I trust you will enjoy the images and maybe even the words that go with them.
In early March, I attended the Annual Meeting for Carolina Nature Photographers Association (CNPA) for the first time. Beyond winning the Small Stuff category in their Member’s Choice contest, the other highlight of the weekend was just being reminded that sometimes choosing shutter speeds that cause some blur of motion (but not all) is OK. I tend to see motion as needing to be either frozen completely (fast shutter speed) or blurring completely (slow shutter speed) but in this situation and many other examples throughout the rest of the year, I started thinking about using medium shutter speeds to show some blur. This image was after a major storm the night before on our Outer Banks Expedition in April and one of the participants, gave me this idea to show some motion.