A Year in Pictures – St. Paul’s at Sunset

[swan_tower]

This work by http://www.swantower.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

This is almost certainly the best photo of St. Paul’s Cathedral I’ve ever taken, and it’s mostly because of luck: I was coming home from research during the Midnight Never Come trip, and the sky had cleared just enough in the west to let the sunset light through. But the air behind the dome was still filled with clouds, and this brilliant contrast was the result.

It seems a fitting note to end this series on. I missed a single day in the Year in Pictures project — November 10th, because I failed to schedule something ahead of time for the day I’d be traveling back from World Fantasy — so you get one extra today to make up for it. I’m proud of myself for missing only one (though frustrated that I didn’t have a perfect record); this turned out to be, well, precisely as big of an undertaking as I expected it to be. I’m glad I did it, though: several of you have commented repeatedly to let me know you enjoyed certain pictures, which reassured me that I would not be the only person interested in a public series of my photos.

Stats in the end: 260 five-star pictures posted, 172 not posted. (Not counting my shots from New York and DC, which haven’t been edited yet on account of Lightroom needing to update for my new camera model.) That latter number is . . . ye gods. A goodly way toward being able to do a second round of this, though boy howdy no I am not doing that any time soon. Maybe in a few years, when I’ve traveled to other places and gotten more fresh material — many of the 172 unposted are very similar to ones I did post. Though really, travel isn’t as necessary as it used to be: one effect of getting more serious about my photography is that I see more opportunities for it right in my own back yard. Even so, there’s nothing like visiting a foreign country to give me an itchy shutter finger. ^_^

I hope you all enjoyed this, and many thanks to everyone who commented along the way!

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

Comments

[dhampyresa]

This is gorgeous! Thanks for all the photos this year and I hope you do this again some time.

[swan_tower]

I'm glad you enjoyed them!

[difrancis.livejournal.com]

I have enjoyed your pictures tremendously. I"ll miss them. Thank you!

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

It's been a pleasure!

[pameladean]

I've really loved these, but I certainly do know how incredibly much work you had to do. Thank you.

P.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

The biggest part of the work was editing the photos -- which, now that has been done, means it will be far easier to keep up with new additions. I also developed a better system as I went along for getting them all posted. The main thing stopping me from doing this again just yet is that I don't have enough material; a lot of the unposted shots really are very similar to posted ones, and I wouldn't want to repeat myself. (For example, I might have the same image in both portrait and landscape orientation, or wider and closer shots.) Given enough new material, though . . . :-)

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

I loved these. Thanks for sharing your photos.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you enjoyed them!

[eve-prime.livejournal.com]

Thank you for improving my entire year - I've enjoyed them every day! What a gift to your readers!

(If I hadn't been so busy that day, I'd have noticed that my birthday was the "missed" day. Thanks for today's extra photo!)

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Heh. Happy belated birthday! :-)

[eve-prime.livejournal.com]

Ha, thank you!

[davidgoldfarb.livejournal.com]

Even though I didn't comment on many of them, I have enjoyed this series of photos quite a lot. Thanks for doing the work to get them to us.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

You're more than welcome!

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

A while ago, I walked to HyVee just between rainstorms. The sun was setting in clear sky and the bright green maples were lit up against slate-gray clouds, a perfectly even bright-lit darkness in themselves. The green was all the same green, the gray was the same gray, and it looked just marvelous, exactly marvelous.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I love it when the angle of the sun means you can get light and storminess all at the same time.

[lokifan]

I've really enjoyed this series of posts, and that shot is BEAUTIFUL.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Thank you!