Ed Rosack Photography

44 of my favorite images from 2009

I decided to join the growing tradition where photo blogs post a collection of their favorite photos from the year. To accomplish this, I've gone through the photos I made in 2009 and used Lightroom to rate them from 0 through 5 stars. The rating system I've adopted is as follows: 1 star - The photo is interesting; 2 stars - The photo is worth showing to others; 3 stars - The photo is the best of (or one of the best of ) a given shoot; 4 stars - My favorite photo of a year; 5 stars - My favorite photo (ever); Photos without stars are seconds or not so good versions of other photos. I'll keep them, but they probably won't get any more attention.  Since adopting this rating system, I've tried to use it consistently.  Before this I would rate images, but the meaning of the ratings would vary.  As far as what they mean now, it's all subjective and my opinion only.  Feel free to disagree, but I hope you'll enjoy looking at the ones I've chosen. I was really blessed in 2009 with a huge number of photo opportunities.  On my hard drive in my 2009 folder, I have about 16,000 images, taking up 164GB of space (I shoot mostly in RAW).  Of these: 3804 of the images have been cataloged in Lightroom.  Many of the remainder are source images for multi-shot panoramas or HDRs, or high rate bursts that I selected from; 1084 are rated 1 star or higher; 692 are 2 star or higher; 75 are 3 star or higher; 1 is 4 star; and None are 5 star (I'm not done taking photos yet!). Of the 692 that are 2 star or higher, I've selected 44 (mostly 3 star) images to include in this gallery of my favorite 2009 photos.  You've seen many of these photos in this blog, already.  But where it made sense, I re-processed them to try and improve them.  Here are the top ten. You can click on each of these to see a larger version.

Blackpoint Wildlife Drive: Wide angle, winter dawn- On this particular morning, it was hard coming up with any good photo inspiration for the sunrise. There were no clouds, not much color in the sky, not a lot of interesting landscape detail, no cooperating wildlife, the wind was blowing pretty hard, etc. This palm tree had an interesting vine growing in it that was pointing back toward the road, so I made it the subject of the picture and violated all the composition rules by putting it way off too one side. To me, the road leading past the tree could represent the last part of the long journey of exploration and learning that led to being able to make this photo in this place at this time. The road is empty because each person's journey is unique. Oh, and BPWD just happens to be a one way road - toward the photographer. The somewhat surreal colors come from a program called "Photomatix" that will "tone map" multiple, bracketed exposures. Anyway, I liked it too.
Blackpoint Wildlife Drive: Wide angle, winter dawn- On this particular morning, it was hard coming up with any good photo inspiration for the sunrise. There were no clouds, not much color in the sky, not a lot of interesting landscape detail, no cooperating wildlife, the wind was blowing pretty hard, etc. This palm tree had an interesting vine growing in it that was pointing back toward the road, so I made it the subject of the picture and violated all the composition rules by putting it way off too one side. To me, the road leading past the tree could represent the last part of the long journey of exploration and learning that led to being able to make this photo in this place at this time. The road is empty because each person's journey is unique. Oh, and BPWD just happens to be a one way road - toward the photographer. The somewhat surreal colors come from a program called
return to www.ed.rosack.com