2009 was an interesting year full of ups and downs for pretty much everyone. We were (are) facing a massive economic crisis, unemployment was at an all time high, people were loosing their homes, on going war, yet we all are continuing to battle on and continue to live life doing the best we can with inspiration from stories of courage, charity and love. 2009 brought a lot of people together with great collaboration projects from artists who wanted to give back (Help-Project is a great example) and while photographers are doing their best in an environment that is changing against them, we are all coming together to bring new ideas and innovations.

2009 for me was a life changing year. Faced with the economic crisis, I, like many, lost my job. I saw this as an opportunity and took off with my wife on a road trip across country to take some time to think about where to take my career next and really concentrate on what really made me happy.

2009 saw me slowly fading away from design work and more into photography and at times, combining both elements together for my clients.

So I figured the best way to sum up 2009 is using pictures. Click on each photo for a very quite sentence about the photo.

So how was your year? Leave me a comment and let me know!

Great Falls National Park - Tony Eckersley

EXIF:

Taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II.

• Exposure: 0.6 sec
  
• Aperture: f/16.0
  
• Focal Length: 70 mm
  
• ISO Speed: 50
  

A wintery photo I took a few weekends ago on my way home from a meeting… With Great Falls National Park being the closest park to home, I like to stop in when I can, especially at this time of year where it is very quiet, peaceful, yet rough in the conditions of the falls.

There is a little bit of Post Production done to this photo, so let me explain a little:

This is 3 exposures combined, but not a HDR. I like to experiment with different exposures and water to create interesting textures, so what you see here is -2 / 0 / +2 overlapped to generate this unique water feel. The water has a very choppy feel to it, while still containing that milky feel from a long exposure. For a place like this I feel it is perfect to show the rough conditions and bring the viewer more into the picture. I generally use the Luminosity blending mode, mixed with lighten and darken. It’s all part of bringing the water to life and really pushes it away from the results you see with one exposure.

I boosted the colors in the sky a little too. The winter sun set had created a nice purple hue, but the blues had been washed out a little, so I upped the blue saturation a little.

I also added clarity to give the rocks a bit of a punch, but the sky exposure and water exposure come from using a grad ND filter (0.9) which helps bring out the shadows in the rocks.

I remember a Travel documentary I saw about 5 years ago on the BBC and it was asking people if they had one word to describe the Grand Canyon, what would that word be?

Most people’s choice? “Awesome”

It’s very true. Every time I visit the Grand Canyon I will always overhear people who wonder to the edge, take a moment to look over the vast canon and then exclaim, “Awesome.” I admit that I have done the same thing.

But my favorite thing about this place is it’s color. Like many of the famous wonders of the world, the Taj Mahal in Agra, India, the Pyramids in Giza, Egypt, etc, every hour in the Grand Canyon is a different experience as it is always changing color depending on where the sun is. The colors in the Grand Canyon are incredibly unique especially at the ‘magic hours’ for Photography. I prefer the sunrise over the sunset in the Grand Canyon. It has this magical feel to it and everyone who has braved the cold and early hour to see it will just sit in silence and watch this great event. In fact I think it’s the only time the Grand Canyon’s tourists are quiet!

I have put together a collection of some of my favorite photographs I have taken from the Grand Canyon from a recent trip. President Theodore Roosevelt called Grand Canyon “the one great sight which every American should see,” and I fully agree. Anyone with the opportunity to see this wonder, should.  

Click here to see my collection of photos from the Grand Canyon.

Grand Canyon Lightning

Sun Set at Yavapai Point

The Sun at Desert View

Sun Set at Desert View

Sun Set at Desert View - Photograph by Tony Eckersley

The Colorado River

The Colorado River

Dusk colors at Desert View

Sun rise at Mather Point

On Friday the 31st July my wife and I take off on a 17 day ambitious road trip from Virginia to Utah and back. We have some family in Utah that we have been meaning to visit for a long time as seeing as we both have 17 days off we figured we should make a trip out of it. Personally I am taking this a business trip to take some photographs to hopefully sell in the fall and continue my collection of American National Park photographs. I am a huge fan of the US park system and fully support it every year.

The map above is the ideal 17 state trip for us. Like I said, it’s ambitious, but we are no strangers to mega driving hikes. In 2006 we drove from Utah to Virginia in 2 days. It was approximately 2100 miles. Our ideal destinations are:

• Great Smoky Mountains National Park
• Carlsbad Caverns National Park
• Canyon de Chelly National Monument
• Grand Canyon National Park
• Monument Valley
• Canyonlands National Park
• Arches National Park
• Zion National Park
• Rocky Mountain National Park

Obviously we wont be visiting all of these, as we have seem many before, and I would like some decent time at each to get some photographs. So during the week we will be finalizing the destinations and really nail down the final itinerary. We have a busy week ahead preparing our car for the trip (she has had an oil change and new brake pads installed, however the gas gauge just stopped working…) and working on some personal projects, but all going well, we’ll be on our way to Tennessee on Friday evening.

Stay tuned for more information and of course with my iPhone, I will be updating throughout the road trip!

If any of you readers out there have some suggestions of things to see on the way please leave a comment. Thanks!

VOTE: Today is the day America…, originally uploaded by tony.eckersley.

Today is a very important day. Barack Obama made history.

What a great day.

That’s all I want to say right now

MTAF, originally uploaded by tonyeckersley.

I remember having a tough time getting a 5* on this song on the original Guitar Hero, now I just sightread FC’d it in Rock Band, which, bar the HO-PO’s, is a touch harder. Oh how my GH skills have changed!

I’m hardly what you call a Boston fan, but this is an ok song. It actually made me miss Huddersfield, Chris and Pete and all those hours playing GH1. What amazing nights we had jamming away! Good times!

My trouble is that I hold on to things for too long and I find I am far too sentimental, and it puts me in the mood I am in right now. So what am I feeling sentimental about? I miss being in Huddersfield. I really miss hanging out with Dannie Chris and Pete in the flat, playing guitar hero, cooking with Dannie, taking a trip to Sainsburys, having a weekly meal in the New Wharf, watching Raw at 2am, staying up to hardcore hour with Pete, rushing our projects. What an awesome year it was! I guess sometimes I feel it ended so abruptly, that I never really got chance to say a good goodbye to that lifestyle (6am to 1pm, not 12-8am) and goodbye to hanging out all night long. Being in the environment where we were al in the same boat work wise, trying to beat those deadlines, printing our work at 5am catching a galaxy bar from the vending machine on the way to our secluded flat. I think I speak for both me and Dannie when I say that year went by too fast. What a brilliant time we had though – it was perfect.

So I feel all weird about this. And like I said, it’s usually triggered by having my ‘new’ friends around. 3 weeks ago, me and Dannie hung out with Kim and Andrew all weekend, Friday till 1am Sunday, and after it was all done and everyone had gone home, I sunk, sunk real deep. I guess it made me miss the old days with the flat and having that similar environment around triggered these reminiscing thoughts. And now with Neil leaving, I am getting the same feelings.But really, what the hell do I have to feel down about? My life is going real swell right now. Amazing wife, great job, great friends, great ambitions, great car. I am convinced that it’s not bad having these nostalgic moments though – I don’t consider myself to be selfish. I appreciate everything thats happened to me. I sat for 2 hours tonight viewing my photos over the year in Huddersfield, laughing, remembering that great year me and Dannie had. I am incredibly lucky to have lived the life I have lived so far. I have met some great people along the way, all helping me get to where I am today and I have no hard feelings with feeling lost from time to time missing these people. Like someone said, “it’s not goodbye, it’s cya later” – I know I will do all these things with my great friends again – one day.

Mini Interior, originally uploaded by tony.eckersley.

I love my new Mini.

That’s right! I am highly impressed with it. Drove over 400 miles this weekend through various trips visiting friends. Needless to say, the seats you see above you got some sitting in!

Dannie and I went to see Kim and Andrew for a surprise visit for Andrew’s 20th Birthday in Fredrickberg on Friday. It was great catch up with them again while we enjoyed pizza, some drinks, and a few games of pool. We also got the chance to properly meet their friends who were nice and accepting to us.

On Saturday morning we headed down to the University of Virginia to see Casey and Dorothy and to see a show that Dor was partaking in (Desdemona). The drive down was quite fun – Route 29 has some great fast sections of road where I was able to unleash a bit of power from my Cooper S, but of course not too much as I am still ‘driving it in.’ We spent the day catching up with Casey (Dorothy was hitting up a matinée showing) with some FIVE GUYS burgers which are always a pleasure to devour. Later we hung out at Dorothy’s place where we met her flat mates (including another Mini owner). I helped prepare some jello shots with Casey headed out to the show which I quite enjoyed. I’m hardly a theatre critique so I will spare you the details, but as the tagline said – “6 girls in corsets, can’t be bad.” Guess that was right. This was their last show too, as tradition has it’s way, following such an event usually comes an after party! This was quite fun, and met some cool people (and some annoying people – “Aweosme” comes to mind for one person). Later the party turned quite wild! Not quite what I was expecting, but quite an insight to the American College party life – not that I was complaining. Unfortunately I have no photographic evidence of any events that happened – sorry!

Unfortunately, Dannie, throughout the night, was deteriorating with the illness that has been doing the rounds. I purposefully didn’t drink as I suspected I may have to take her home at any point as she got worse and worse throughout the night. Basically we went from itchy eyes to full out death! Come 2 am I threw her and a blanket into the Mini and drove 140 miles home. She needed to sleep in her own bed that night. And rightly so – she was still full of death in the morning.

Regardless, we both had a lot of fun and can’t wait to go back!

Happy 21st Kim, originally uploaded by tony.eckersley.

Our Friend turned 21 this weekend (ish) so we threw her a surprise party. The surprise was mainly because it was 3 weeks early – Her birthday is on March 9th!

Dannie and Margie (sister in law) planned a luau themed party that included many tropical drinks, island wear and awesome finger food, so all was good on that front. Of course Rock Band was played and was a post midnight game of pictionary/charades. Fun was had by all, and a very successful party for Kim. Happy Birthday!

Me and the Mrs…, originally uploaded by tony.eckersley.

Hey – My name is Tony Eckersleyy. Ok, this is my blog. The idea for this blog is kind of like most blogs I guess, however, I am using it as a way of keeping track of my life and history, and hell, I am rubbish at handwriting a diary and considering I spend half my day on a computer I thought I would have more success keeping a ‘log’ using the internet as an excuse/resource.

So, in a nutshell, my aim for this blog is for me to keep up with me and my life, remember what I have done, where and what etc. The fact it’s public on the intertubes means that anyone can see it but that doesn’t matter to me – it will always be here for future generations to see (maybe?!). When I am old I can tell my grandkids to look me up and they can see how I lived as a 24 year old UK citizen, married to a US Citizen (who from here on will be named Dannie) living in the USA in 2008.

So, more about me? Ok, well as we have established, I am married. This ‘event’ happened on September 15th 2007 and it was to a beautiful girl named Danielle who I met 2 years prior. We met playing Mini Golf through two mutual friends, (Casey and Dorothy) and we pretty much instantly hit it off (at least I think so anyway). I was in the US doing an internship as a graphic designer and would be staying there until my J1 visa ran out 15 months later.

We moved in together quite quickly (and it had nothing to do with her living 1 mile away from where I worked as apposed to me living 3 miles away – honest!) and then decided to move to England together for a year as I had one more year of studies left at University and this was a great excuse for Dannie to study theatre in the UK at my University. So, that all happened and worked out great in our flat that we shared with 2 great friends. We later got engaged and started the rigorous journey of obtaining a marriage visa for the US. Luckily we started early enough and got through all the interviews, medical, paperwork in time to leave the UK in July after a big send of at Glastonbury Festival 2007.

After arriving back in the US, I applied for a work permit and started back at Mediastudio where I had my internship. Here I enjoy work as a Graphic Designer for a small branding agency in Falls Church VA. It’s quite nice to be paid to enjoy what you do!

I have many hobbies based around a whole different array of things. I guess photography is my main hobby. I shoot with a Canon 40D with various lenses focusing mainly on landscapes. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to travel as much recently due to other commitments, so while I am proud of some of my landscapes shots, I am aware they are hardly original. However, this is something I am actively working on. My other main hobby is based around cinema and films. I have built my own home theater which I am very happy with.

…To be completed over time…