When I first saw the Photography Lovers End of Year Contest Announcement post over on Hive, I knew two things – I’d have to enter my favorite shots from 2021, and given how many photos I’ve taken over the past twelve months, it would be tough to pick my favorites. I decided to do like many others have done, and choose one picture for each month (much like I did back in 2017 when I put together a calendar on Zazzle).
A few days ago, I started looking back through my posts, and discovered I was right – it was hard coming up with favorites because I didn’t have nearly as many awesome shots as I thought. Talk about a humbling experience.
In fact, my entire year of shutterbugging pretty much came down to, “tons of trees and many moons.” 😵😂
However, I’m actually glad because I have been feeling a bit in a rut and now that I know that I truly am, I’m going to make a plan to go places other than our backyard and get a better variety of captures so I don’t have this problem again next year (plus, it will be fun…lol).
As for these photos, as per my usual FYI – these were all taken in the yard of my Durham, NH home with my Nikon, firmly affixed to my my tripod. All were resized, then cleaned up a bit with PicMonkey – mostly the exposure and sharpness.
Last January, I spent some time taking pictures of all the different birds that showed up at the feeders I had right outside our bedroom window. This shot of a Male Red-breasted Nuthatch is my favorite of the bunch – especially since I have very few photos of this beauty (but a bazillion of his cousin the White-breasted Nuthatch). Pretty sure my feeders only lasted about a month before I neglected them – I might try to get them set up again now, before the ground completely freezes.
Technically, this is actually a January shot, since I took it during the Full Wolf Moon on January 29th, 2021. But since I didn’t post them until February 8th, I’m calling this one my Feb Fave.
On March 11th, I went for a wander in the woods with my hubby, to get some captures for my blogging friend Parul’s bi-monthly bloghop. I got so many that day that I ended up doing two posts with the photos – this is my favorite from the second batch. And as I said in the original caption, when I first saw this shot, I was disappointed that the sun wasn’t more defined. However now I kind of like how moody and atmospheric it turned out.
I might be a bit biased, but our Freddie is ridiculously photogenic. For next year, I think I need to take a page out of @derangedvisions book and work on taking better pet photos, as most of mine are quick snaps with my camera phone because he, Pumpkin (our newer cat), and/or Sandy (our dog) are being adorable. When I’m not lazy and use my Nikon (like I did for this one), it almost shows exactly how gorgeous he is.
Back in May, my mother was having some health issues again, and I was looking for ways to cheer her up. I originally planned to do a post devoted to Goldfinches (one of her favorite birds), but earlier that day I managed a few shots of the one lady slippers that showed up in the yard this year (compared to dozens in years past).
This photo was actually a last minute addition to the post, and is my favorite not in a technical aspect (because that is honestly a bit meh) but because this little tree, which was planted in memory of our landlord’s son a short time after we moved in, has been through some rough times, but still manages to come back to life each spring. I want to make a point this coming spring to get some better shots of it.
Again, not a technically great shot, but it brings me right back to the weird encounter we had it our yard with a crayfish that appeared out of nowhere. In this photo, my husband put his foot near the crayfish to give a better sense of its size, and a short time later it scuttled away. And in a weird followup, a few weeks later we found another crayfish trying to walk through the front door of our local Walmart. My husband got a couple photos on his phone (and of course he’s not home now that I’m doing this post – I might edit one in later), and I showed this picture to the people watching the crustacean shenanigans. Still hurts my brain trying to figure out how he ended up in our yard.
Just realized this shot was taking not too far from our place, not actually in our yard. This is the tree that always turns red first, letting us know that fall is very close at hand. And I didn’t realize the cool optical delusion illusion in this capture until I saw it on my computer – to me, this rather striking shadow looks like a young fae girl and boy, sitting face to face high up in the tree.
Sometimes I got lucky and cool things would come to visit me in the yard – like the aforementioned crayfish, as well as this beauty – a Great Blue Heron. He wandered around the driveway long enough for me to get some good shots – he didn’t even flinch when I went outside with my camera (this is one of the first half dozen shots I got that wasn’t through the not-so-clean front door window).
While I love taking pictures of the full moon, there are times that La Luna comes out to play at other times, and surprises me with some cool poses. Like this First Quarter Moon on November 11th (which incidentally, was also the two year anniversary of Freddie showing up at our front door).
This year, we ended up with snow that stayed through Christmas, and is still on the ground as we speak. While I wasn’t happy with the timing of the storm on the 19th, after wandering the yard and getting a bunch of cool (HA! see what I did there) looking shots, I was a bit happier with Mother Nature doing her holiday decorating.
October was nice enough to give me a Blue Heron and a blue, red, yellow, and green prism in the sky…lol! So nstead of choosing between the two, I figured I’d end this post with a lucky double rainbow (so intense!) in the hopes that good luck finds us all in the coming year.
Hope you enjoyed my favorite shots from 2021 and Happy New Year, everyone!
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Beautiful! What kind of camera did you use?
Your January shot was amazing! Wow.