Always hard to look back on the year and summarise everything that happened photographically. Some people do a sort of location centric list (all those fab countries they visited), others more about their professional or award achievements (assuming they pay to enter all those competitions, which I don’t!) and others just show what they think are their best shots. Although I was shooting in UK, Spain, USA and Australia (of course – Vic, SA, ACT, NSW) I think I will just have to do a simple chronology that captures other things like exhibitions and my workshops, focusing on shots that perhaps show my photographic evolution over the year, or captured a particular phase of it. In any event showing only a handful of shots is gonna be hard. Off we go.
January & February
Alongside running start of year workshops including as Intro to Landscape Photography, Waterfalls and Astrophotography I started as I do every new year, exploring lesser know regions of the northern Grose Valley, plus I had some wonderful misty sunburst mornings locally and began a long series of high resolution 360 Photos of the Blue Mountains – here is a page on this site with a growing selection. This is of course alongside the usual daily sunrises and sunsets in the greater Blue Mountains area.
March & April
My astrophotography and autumn workshops were extremely popular this year. As the Milky Way begins to fill the southern skies and as the deciduous plants in Blackheath and Mt Wilson turn to warm colours I ran over 10 workshops in this period. Also some photo camping on the edges of the Wollemi, several amazing misty sunrise shoots and some major upgrades to my physical gallery made this a full two months.
May & June
Punctuated by a three week photo trip specifically around San Diego, Alabama Hills, Yosemite and San Francisco the period also included some processing workshops, a few chilly astro workshops and several camping shoots at local bucket list locations such as Goochs Crater and Newnes Plateau (Gardens of Stone). A whistle stop trip to Newcastle and Mackay were also nice coastal breaks, preparing 20 plus images for permanent display at the Fairmont Resort and the last of the deep autumn colours in early May saw two more final workshops plus the usual licensing to publications, including Nat Geo Spain.
July and August
San Fran and back down to Los Angeles followed by family issues saw several trips to the Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia – based in McLaren Vale shoots up and down the coastline there and on one occasion a long route back via the Snowy Mountains and three camping evenings resulted in a flu that lasted over two months! Also a ramp up in high rez 360 imagery using 8mm lens and dedicated stitching software (follow my Blue Mountains VR Facebook page), a few snowy Blue Mountain shoot days and more renovation of my physical gallery.
September and October
Due to a long flu this was an exploration period finding new locations in Grose Valley, Kanangra, Newnes Plateau, Goulborn and Canberra region combined with daily 360 shoots at more regular locations. Also asked to present/workshop at several places such as Canberra on Virtual Reality and a keynote on printing (yes I know?!) for the APS in Adelaide meant another opportunity to shoot around the sunset coast near McLaren Vale. And the Waratahs came out late October.
November and December
Lucky to be invited as part of a ambassador (the real political one not those photo influencer things!) trip for Australian thought leaders in interesting innovative parts of Spain – these three weeks also allowed a side trip to UK to do family and a few photo shoots in the Peak District and some of the literary parts of northern and southern england, namely Bronte and Agatha Christie country. Alongside lots of online print orders, calendars and readying for exhibitions another two week trip to South Australia brought a few surprises and a sad (personal family death) end to the year.
So thanks for getting this far and for following me on Facebook (crept up to 17 000) and Instagram (sneaked up to 27 000) amongst other social sites and look forward to perhaps seeing you on one of my workshops or in the comments on my sites or just liking some of my pretty snaps. Have a great New Year, over and out for now…oh apart from this little selfie taken at 5.15am dawn on New Years Day…
Fantastic work,they are all brilliant
Cheers Narelle.
Every image is superb and a credit to a true craftsman/artist. Well Done.
Very kind Frank, and a happy new year to you!
You can’t say one is better than the other. All totally different yet they have one thing in common, absolutely amazing.
Thanks very much Brad – that said I am always after a single style and I suppose this selection is more about illustrating the text vs what I think is more my voice 🙂
a very beautiful selection of photos to capture your 2016 in review. Sunrises are always breathtakingly beautiful.
Thanks Karen – theres a big selection of sunrises in my gallery here too http://garyphayes.com/photography/galleries/sublime-sunrise/
Your all photos very… Very wonderful…
I really love it. Thank for your all post and informations. Thank very much…