POTW: Best Of

First of possibly two best of photos. The rules for this was quite simply any photo taken in 2010 and not already posted as one of the featured photos is up for grabs.

First some stats. As of posting I've taken a total of 3080 photos (going by the incrementing file names). Of those I've kept 1761 photos. Of those I've made about 600 photos public (going by the photos I starred in picasa but I didn't start starring public photos till around march or so). There are also some photos that I still plan on making public but never got around to it.

When it came time to decide what would be my number one favorite picture of the year, this is it. Taken from a photo shoot at anime punch (an anime convention) in April, the event was featured already. The picture I used was a "throwaway" picture that I liked for it's creativity but not much else.

This was also one of the first times with the Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 lens that I've grown to love. It's what made this picture possible. I noticed when composing this that you could see a car parked on the street. To solve this I opened the aperture all the way knowing that would throw it out of focus. And then I think by accident I focused exactly on the eye which is in the center of the frame and that's usually what you want to be in focus. If I actually had a portfolio, this would go in it.

The only technical issue I could see someone pointing out is that her eyes are centered in the photo. Technically, it may have looked better if she was further to the right of the frame so she looked towards the center. Her left eye is the exact center of the photo. It still creates the illusion that she's off center because of the extra space you see on the left. This could be solved easily by cropping things but for being straight out of the camera I'm pretty impressed.

All three anime conventions I went to--(links go to their POTW article) Ohayocon, Anime Punch, and Colossalcon--were probably both the most nerve-racking and educational photo shoots I did, which is evident by all the articles being fairly long. Working with people has always been the thing that both interests me and scares the crap out of me. Even after doing a few of these it feels like I get good pictures on accident. I plan on going to some more conventions next year and plan on doing some more photo shoots since it's become one of the many things I enjoy about conventions.