Beauty in Focus

A new blog site for a new year.  Thanks for visiting!  Since I’ve been taken by the hobby of photography, I’ve selected my favorite ten images from the previous year.  I enjoy reflecting on my best images from the year past and recounting the experiences I had making each shot.  I also am encouraged by the improvement I’ve seen each year when I look back over the previous year’s top ten images in comparison to the most recent selection.  It was more difficult than ever this year just to get to twenty, and finally down to ten.  I hope you enjoy this brief look at what my camera lens had in front of it in 2011.  The order is only chronologically and does not reflect my top ten photo rankings.

These first two photos were from January, when my wife Traci and I were fortunate to get very close to a great blue heron feeding on small fish on a culvert at the Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge.

The famous “three trees” at the Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge

A pensive look from a tufted puffin at the Oregon Coast Aquarium (photo taken of puffin in captivity)

Blue hour, looking at my favorite of Portland’s bridges on an early summer morning

An American white pelican swimming into the early morning sunlight at Fernhill Wetlands

A water drop dangling from a red rose at the Portland International Test Rose Garden

A red dahlia taken with a flash in my kitchen

A long exposure of Portland’s Marquam Bridge (Interstate 5) taken from OHSU

Cackling geese passing by an often photographed oak tree at the Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge