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.

When I was really young, I remember taking a trip to Yosemite National Park and hearing this name over and over again that ultimately defined photography of the American West. The name ‘Ansel Adams’ stuck with me from that moment and has been an inspiration behind my vision for Landscape photography, just like so many. Recently, after entering the Ansel Adams National Park Photo Contest, I decided to go and photograph my local National Park and processing the images with a black and white techniques loosely based on old Dark Room Techniques (dodging and burning, but no chemical mixing!) to appreciate detail in the park that some may skip over with a color photograph.

There are some similar shots here, but it’s just from one visit. Expect more soon.

Click here to see my collection of photos from Great Falls National Park.

Great Falls National Park

Fall Detail

Kayakers takeoff point

Fall detail

Great Falls Overlook

Fall Detail