2008 Round-Up

I can't help myself from hopping on the nostalgia bandwagon and reflect on the year that was. Without further ado here are snippets that struck me as photographic highlights taken from my blog over the past year.

Looking back to last January I didn't post many photos for some reason. But there was one post about the United States Library of Congress which uploaded a small chunk of its photo collection onto flickr.com. There's only 5000 + images out of 14 million... It got me thinking that the Portrait Gallery of Canada should do the same thing. I still believe it would be a great idea.

February was cool because I did some freelance work and photographed some Winterlude concerts. April Wine was one of them! It was also very cool, as in freezing, too, as the concerts were outdoors. I also had a photo published on the cover of a college text book, The Little Brown Reader. I didn't get a sample copy as the going rates of college texts are astronomical, like $60 or $70. Wow! ...and they didn't want to send one either.

March. What I can I say about March 2008? It was all about the freaken snow. Tons of it. In photo related posts, I liked my photos of Mike Blouin, Rhonda Douglas, and the Tibetan Protester in Ottawa. By the time March was over I posted a great tune by The Breeders and was looking forward to warmer temperatures.

I think April was a great month for me this year. I did an author photo of Stephen Brockwell on his latest book, which was one of the best books of poetry I have read in a long time. Call me biased but it is a great read. The comedic photo of Steve Zytveld turned out really nice. I haven't printed off a copy yet but it would really look good printed large, I think. Pearl's photo in the mirror really has a crisp look to it as well that I like. Oh, and jwcurry's photo really left an impression on a lot of people who've seen it. So they tell me anyway.

May was much, much warmer. The 'best', as in my most enjoyable, book launch was Monty Reid's launch of The Luskville Reductions (I also contributed an author photo to the book as well) I thought so much of that evening that I wrote a post "10 Steps to a Successful Book Launch". My favourite photo of the month was of John Stiles. Perhaps it's in my top 5 favourite photos of 2008. It was a typical photo shoot for me: "Hey, can I take your photo?" Click-Click-Click and it was done. Easy-peasy.

Rolling along in June I did a lot of walk-abouts, shooting what ever was in front of me. It's hard to pick a highlight as there were so many. As for reading events, The Throwdown in O-Town was hilarious! I believe I got a great number of fun shots from that evening.

July is always a fun month for photography as it begins with Canada Day and it closes out with my son's birthday. Then, I predicted that this photo of Canada Day fans was one of my favourite photos from 2008. I still think that it's true. They were all fans of Paul Brandt who was performing at the evening show on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.

August continued to be a great time to photograph. I was hired to shoot a family reunion and had a great time. I want to do more awesome family events like these and shoot more weddings! I also stumbled onto photographing some Bike Polo games throughout the month, just for fun. My event photo of Maher Arar at Kerry Pither's book launch (Dark Days) was eventually published in Quill & Quire.

September was quite interesting as I was in Nova Scotia for a couple of days to drive back my father's car back to Ottawa. My September photo highlights for the month were of Stephanie Gibbs and Susan Olding, among several others. I really like the light in these photos. They were both ambient light photos and very different. Stephanie's photo was done outdoors in lovely light on the steps of Swizzles Bar on Queen Street, and Susan's was just inside the front door of the Library & Archives Canada on Wellington. Fluorescent lights - go figure.

October was all about the twins! Kelly and Megan were born! Yet, I continued to photograph some literary events at the Ottawa International Writers Festival. It was a busy month in this regard and I made a few photo sales to boot.

Midway through November I started posting larger photos on my blog. I think I'll keep it this way. There was a trend on the net this year which some media sites like The Big Picture published large photos for public consumption. Of course, photobloggers have been doing this for quite some time. I thought it was time for me to do it large, too.

Being quite occupied with the new twins I didn't send out any Christmas cards per se, save for a birth announcement. December is wrapping up pretty fast, isn't it? So, with getting 3 or four hours sleep each night since October, I posted some interesting photos from the past year. If I can further toot my own horn, I was interviewed on Don Denton's site, The Literary Photographer.

And that's about it for 2008. Hope to see you all soon and I want to take time to thank my readers, friends and family for all your support. That being said, support the arts and buy a photographic print... or two; go out to a literary event; buy some poetry; read a novel; go to an art opening, etc, etc. In the meantime, be safe and have a Happy New Year!