Your favorite photo of 2011

[JustJoe]

Guess

 

[Amicus]

Guess

It looks like the famous view of Chocorua and its SE (Bald Mtn./Hammond Tr.) ridge, from the south shore of Chocorua Lake.

 

[JustJoe]

It looks like the famous view of Chocorua and its SE (Bald Mtn./Hammond Tr.) ridge, from the south shore of Chocorua Lake.

Wrong. It's from the south shore of Little Lake.

 

[nartreb]

Just one?? But 2011's not even over!

Fine. It even shows mountains in the background (they happen to be cloudy and blurry).

Edit: since two people have asked, the flower-spike shown belongs to a bromeliad, I think in genus Puya. The plant looks a lot like an agave. Leaves are blade-shaped, thick and succulent, with thorns along the edges, and form a roughly spherical rosette - about two feet tall in this case. The flower spike sticks up from the center and is much taller - about six feet in this case, but this was a small one.

 

[Amicus]

Wrong. It's from the south shore of Little Lake.

Jeez. Those two Lakes are connected, aren't they? They are about 5 yards apart.

 

[w7xman]

One is just too limiting...I'll vote for a top ten thread as we get closer to the new year...but...

This shot from long pond in benton is my favorite of the year...

Morning Stretch... by Jim Salge, on Flickr

 

[Paradox]

I take a lot of photos, unfortunately not many good ones. Hence, I had an easy time this year.

I caught this little guy on top of Mt. Field, in late February.

 

[The Unstrung Harp]

These are all amazing. Sheesh. Looking forward to a Top Ten from each of you in another thread! I think I might be too intimidated to post...

 

[DSettahr]

Above treeline on Mt. Marcy:

 

[ksearl]

I don't have a whole lot of photos to choose from this year due to my lack of getting outside. This was Chocorua from South Moat this past April. I'd say it is one of my favorites...but still a run of the mill photo. I think everyone else's photos are great, though!

Karl

 

[Tom Rankin]

Above treeline on Mt. Marcy:

Wow, I like that composition. The hiker looks so big compared to the Mountain!

I have a pic from near there, (and it hangs from the walls at IBM, a photo contest winner), but I actually think I like yours more!

 

[DSettahr]

I don't have a whole lot of photos to choose from this year due to my lack of getting outside. This was Chocorua from South Moat this past April. I'd say it is one of my favorites...but still a run of the mill photo. I think everyone else's photos are great, though!

Your photo definitely has potential if you're willing to edit it a little bit in an image editing program.

A lot of the "greatness" of everyone elses photo has to do with how most of the photos in this thread are cropped. Try cropping out the sky on your photo so that the focus is on the mountains instead (the human eye tends to get drawn towards big open blank spots in pictures). This will also make it more panoramic, which emphasizes the height of the mountains more. Showing so much sky makes the mountains seem puny in comparison.

Another thing you can do is crop out some of one of the edges... with nature photography, you often don't want the focus of your photo centered, but 1/3 of the way from either side. Since Chocorua is the focus of your photo, I'd try cropping off a little bit of the left side of the photo so that the peak is 1/3 the width from the left side of the photo, and 2/3 the width from the right side.

I hope you don't mind, I took your photo and made both of these changes to give you an idea of how it would look. I also adjusted the contrast and saturation slightly (I'd wager that very few of the above photos haven't had either adjusted at least a little bit!). With only about a minute's worth of work, it looks like this:

Give both of these a try if/when you get a chance, and see how it looks (I use picasa for my image editing- it's a great program for making adjustments to photos quickly and easily, with plenty of automatic options that do the work for you)... After you do so, you'll also be able to upload a higher resolution photo without it being huge, which will make it easier to see detail.

 

[DSettahr]

Found one more and couldn't resist...

Adirondack Campsite... somewhere in the wilderness...

 

[Buffalo]

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,. And sorry I could not travel both.

 

[chipc]

enjoying local hike:

 

[Becca M]

this is my favorite BAD photo: bad composition/tilt and more importantly, a terrifying concept!!!!

 

[Paul_Bear]

Choosing only one photo is hard. How about one of my fuzzy brothers in Alaska? He's not really charging the photographer, he's actually hurrying to his favorite fishing spot!

 

[John in NH]

I need more time and more than 1 photo too. Lets start a top 10!

For now I will post this one from a trip this October up the Hell Brook trail on Mount Mansfield, VT coming from Smugglers Notch.

Why? I guess its because I was just working on editing this batch. And with the downed tree in the middle of the falls, the shot seemed to capture the essence of the year in hiking in light of Tropical Storm Irene; water's power amid natures peace and constancy. The seasons marched on after it.

 

[Kevin Judy and Emma]

Snowy in Salisbury...

Just shot this one the other day...

KDT

 

[David Metsky]

Katahdin from Sandy Stream Pond.