My Top 10 Pictures

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Inspired by this article at The Online Photographer, I set up my own Top 10 pictures as a SmugMug gallery. Many of the pictures are the same as in my Reify and Redact project and all are included in my Blurb book, "My Best and My Favorites".

The basis for selection is simply that this is my best work. That is, an editor – not myself – would make the same choices. If I take a better picture tomorrow, it will replace one of these selections.

Of these ten pictures, 3 are B/W and 2 are the polar opposite High Dynamic Range (HDR). Six pictures were taken with film cameras and four with digital cameras. All of the B/W pictures were taken on film. Of the film cameras, four were 35mm format and two were medium format. The four digital pictures were taken with a DSLR (Canon 20D). The film cameras were Konica T2 for 35mm and Yashica 12 for medium format.

A self editing project like this is a very useful exercise. Try it.
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Back to Reify and Redact: Still More Selections

After a short deviation to write about my efforts in PopPhoto’s 2007 Shootout, I’ve returned to the Reify and Redact Project. Here are my latest selections.

The honors for most frequent representation in my selected best efforts go to my niece. This B/W shot was made with that same Yashica 12 TLR when the camera was not quite so old. The color shot, an Ektrachrome slide, was made with the Konica T2 just a year or so later and in about the same location on the beach.

The great thing about the Yashica 12 was the large (as compared to 35mm) negative. I could get enlargements from those negatives without having too many dust spots. The difficulty in

using the Yashica was composition and focusing. The ground glass viewer showed a reversed image that gave me a really tough time. For this picture, I was almost certainly using the "sports finder" instead of the screen.

In comparison to the Yashica, using the Konica T2 was easy until the enlarging process in the darkroom. My preferences quickly became the Konica for color slides and the Yashica for B/W.

Reify and Redact: More Selections

The paper and interleave tissue has arrived but the portfolio box was backordered. Those first selections have been printed and a few more selected to be printed.








In 1997, beginning a return to photography, I picked up my old Yashica 12 for a walk around the beach near sunset. The Yashica 12 is a twin lens reflex camera using 120 film (2-1/4 x 2-1/4 inches) – a medium format camera from the 1960s. This child’s bicycle caught my eye and I took a few shots of it against the sunset sky. The prints were terrible but I always thought that there was a good photo in them. A few years later I was able to scan the negative myself, process it in Photoshop and finally got the picture I wanted.







In 1999, while on a Popular Photography Mentor Series workshop on the Mississippi Queen paddlewheeler, I woke early as we approached Natchez. With my 1972 Konica T2, I was able to get this shot. Later that day, I dropped the T2 and it jammed. Fortunately, I was able to borrow a more modern Canon SLR and complete the workshop. I had the T2 repaired but also bought a Canon SLR.