My Top Pictures of 2023
006-PanoramaThree frame panorama of the Arlington Guard
Each year since 2013, I reflect on my year by going through all my photos to pick out my favorite 100. 2023 involved some extensive travel, especially for June through September. I visited 21 states and Canada. The travels involved marching arts opportunities, work and general photography. I continued with my weekly photography challenges with the Ricky Tims critique group, finishing out my ninth straight year – 468 weekly challenges without missing a single one.
This blog post will give an overview of my year of photography with a focus on my top 100 photos. I reviewed about 245,500 photos from the year to identify the best ones to tell the story of my year.
Equipment
I continued with the Sony mirrorless system. I picked up a few new lenses including a second 70-200 f/2.8 GMii to have as a backup. I also added the new Sony 20-70 f/4 and the updated Sony 16-35 f/2.8 GMii. I really wanted to get a good walk around zoom for my Alaska trip, so I bought the Tamron 28-200 which has the advantage of being a great performer for infrared photography. I also bought two non-Sony cameras and had them converted to full spectrum so I could get to know Nikon (Z5) and Canon (R) mirrorless systems a little better.
Top 100 by the numbers
By Camera - Most of the photos were taken with the Sony A1. Five infrared shots were taken with my Sony AIV which was converted to full spectrum and six photos were taken with the Sony A7RV. One infrared photo was taken with the Canon R.
By Lens - 13 lenses were used for the top 100. The lens with the most photos (24) was the Sony 400mm f/2.8 GM followed closely by the Sony 70-200 f/2.8 GMii (21). The only other lenses in double digits were the Sony 100-400 GM (19) and the Sony 200-600 (12).
By Location - 32 locations are represented in the top 100. The location with the most (12) and only location in double digits was Hershey where I photographed the Tournament of Bands championships. Six photos in the top 100 were taken on my Alaska trip.
Activity - 24 Indoor Guard/Drumline, 31 Drum Corps, 28 Marching Band, 3 at the Conowingo Dam and 3 from a photography workshop. The rest were general photography.
Indoor Guard, Drumline, Dance and Twirlers
From mid-January through the first weekend in May, the regular weekend shows provided many opportunities to experience incredible performances. I had the pleasure of photographing championship events for Mid-Atlantic Percussion Society (MAPS), Mid-Atlantic Indoor Network (MAIN) and Tournament Indoor Association (TIA). The indoor season is the longest part of my year and includes a lot of variety and opportunities for individuals to really show their talents.
One of my favorite photos was this shot of Natalie Tarman playing the role of Alice in AMP's amazing Wonderland themed presentation. The backdrops provided great photo opportunities all season long.
002-Alice in Wonderland (Natalie Tarman)AMP World Guard
The athleticism exhibited by the performers provides opportunities to capture exciting action. I caught this flip from Kutztown Dance in both prelims and finals.
Both MAPS and TIA have individual and ensemble events that allow even more ways for these talented musicians and dancers to be showcased. This is Reed Nocera from Old Bridge HS competing in individual snare drum at MAPS. Snare drum I&E provides an opportunity to really slow the shutter to highlight the stick movement.
012-Fast SticksReed Nocera - Old Bridge
Alaska
This summer afforded me the opportunity to visit my 49th state as I spent two weeks in Alaska. I flew to Anchorage and rented a car. My stops included Denali National Park, Fairbanks, Seward and Homer. The weather was chilly and damp, mostly overcast or light rain, throughout the trip except for a day in Denali. I booked several tours, all of which were excellent.
- Photo Tour from Anchorage to Whitter by Scott Stansbury (SSP Studio & Gallery). This was scheduled as a group tour but I was the only participant. Scott took me to a number of great locations. He was a wonderful tour guide and a fun person to spend a day with.
- Photo Tour around Denali (outside the park) with Denali Photo Guides. As I was trying to decide on whether to do this tour, I saw that my good friend and fellow marching arts photographer Russ Tanakaya was in Alaska and just completed this same photo tour. His positive experience gave me confidence to book the tour. As it turned out, I ended up with Tyler Yates as my guide, the same person who led Russ's tour. Originally I was supposed to be with another guide but the other people who were supposed to be with me didn't show up, so they switched me to Tyler who had an empty seat in his vehicle. He was an excellent guide and provided me with some great feedback after the tour as I sent him some of my images.
- Tundra Wilderness Tour at Denali National Park. This was a last minute decision to do and so worthwhile. The park is closed to private vehicles at mile 16, so the only way to venture further into the park is by bus. We had a 4:40am report time for the bus. Fortunately, the pickup was at my hotel and I was still mostly on Eastern Time. We saw a lot of wildlife - bears, caribou, dall's sheep, ground squirrels, moose and Willow Ptarmigan the state bird of Alaska.
- Boat tour in Seward. There are two main companies that run boat tours in Seward. The boats are large and they book a lot of people. At the recommendation of a local guide, I went with a small company with a 22 passenger boat. Captain Tanya and the first mate at Seacor Tours couldn't have been more enthusiastic. We had 14 passengers. The boat made frequent stops as we saw a lot of marine wildlife - orcas, humpbacks, Dall's porpoise, sea otters, sea lions and puffins. It rained for the 6.5 hour whole trip, so the passengers spent our time in the cabin and would go out to the deck when the boat stopped. Our group had another Sony shooter also using the 100-400 lens. He was very curious about my ThinkTank Hydrophobia rain cover which did a great job of keeping my gear dry.
I hoped to do a lot of infrared photography on the Alaska trip which was made more challenging by the generally cloudy skies. This is an 850nm panorama taken on my Denali Photo Guides excursion, about the only time I had really abundant sunshine. This photo worked well for our It was a Dark and Stormy Night challenge.
I only had two days in Homer and didn't schedule any tours. I stayed at Lands End Resort, which is on the very tip of Homer Spit. The spit is a 4.5-mile long piece of land jutting out into Kachemak Bay. This is a 590nm infrared shot of the Spit taken from Skyline Drive.
032-Homer SpitAn infrared image of Homer Spit. I stayed in a hotel at the very tip. (590nm)
On the trip back, I spent two days in Seattle to avoid a red-eye flight through Chicago or a really early morning flight through Dallas. It also gave me a chance to work on my Alaska photos and to explore Tacoma where I did some street photography and caught a great view of Mount Rainier.
Drum Corps
The focus of my summer drum corps was the All Age circuit Drum Corps Associates (DCA) and the Open Class division of Drum Corps International (DCI). While most of the DCA shows are in the Northeast, I traveled to the Midwest and South to see the DCA corps there who were competing in DCI shows. My season started in Connecticut, then to Ohio. From there, I went to Batavia NY for a Friends and Family event with White Sabers. On the way from Ohio to New York I cut through Canada to see a work colleague and make a stop at the Falls. The day after returning home from NY, I left for Minnesota for an employee dinner and a show the next night. I flew to Memphis and then drove through Mississippi, Alabama and reached Atlanta. I had three shows, two employee visits and a client visit along the way. The second week in August I drove to Indianapolis with my daughter Amanda for the DCI Championships. Amanda has been my regular DCI finals companion for most years since 2009. The last two years we decided that driving gave us more flexibility and is made easier because we can share the driving. The weekend after driving home on I-70 and the PA Turnpike, I made a return trip to Ohio with my wife Donna for a DCA show in Columbus. The season concluded in Rochester, NY, for the DCA Championships.
My Year Word was Value, chosen in part to encourage me to take more black and white photos. The marching arts doesn't provide many opportunities to go monochrome because I'm either selling photos or providing them to publications and people expect color but I decided to go black and white for the DCI Open Class finals, since I saw all of those corps the day before in prelims. Because I shoot JPEG and not RAW, having my camera in monochrome mode means I see the show in black and white and there's no recovering the color. Five of these images made the top 100.
051-Snare sextetRiver City Rhythm
The Open Class shows were so much fun this year. In addition to the five photos from finals, there are six other Open Class color images in the Top 100. The corps with the most photos in the top 100 is the Raiders with four including this photo from the end of their performance in Fairfield CT in July.
Photography Summit
For the third year in a row, Ricky Tims hosted a photography summit in La Veta CO. Ricky runs the weekly challenge group I've participated in for the past nine years. The group includes people from all over the world. The summit gives us a chance for some to meet in person. For this year's summit, I offered to teach a class on infrared photography. I shipped out ten infrared cameras and a bunch of lenses and filters ahead of the trip. The equipment gave everyone the opportunity to try out infrared photography. The summit includes a scavenger hunt where we had different themes to find. I tried to do nearly all of mine in infrared.
Being more comfortable in the city than the country, I'm often a little hesitant to drive to some of the recommended photo locations, so I never made the trip to Uptop CO in my previous two visits to La Veta. This year, I caught a ride with my friend Warren Lee. Uptop is considered a ghost town. Among the few structures there are this chapel. (Infrared 850nm)
068-Uptop ChapelA small chapel outside of La Veta CO - infrared 850nm
One of the highlights of the summit was a session on star trails by Warren Lee. Warren is an amazing astro photographer and very committed to his art. He held a few night sessions where we could give the trails a try, though we had a lot of clouds so it was challenging. I was pleased with my success. For this photo I took 62 thirty second exposures and stacked them in Photoshop, so that was a half hour of photos.
Star TrailsStar trails on a cloudy night overlooking Daigre Reservoir
Marching Band
The dominant theme of the marching band season was rain and four rain photos made the Top 100. It seemed to rain nearly every Saturday. After the Photo Summit, I drove through Kansas to Oklahoma to visit a client. Then I drove to Texas to visit clients and caught a USBands show in the Houston area. That weekend every show back home was canceled due to the weather, so it was a good week to be in Texas although we had temperatures in the upper 90s.
After a stop in Austin to see another client, I returned home where I had two weekends with rainy shows. Despite the weather, the shows at MetLife Stadium and the Navy Marine Corps Stadium were held, even as other shows were canceled. The second half of October had dryer weather as the regional and state championships for USBands and Tournament of Bands took place. The last weekend in October I was in Connecticut for the USBands New England States Championships. The season closed out with a two day event in Hershey for the Tournament of Bands Atlantic Coast Championship.
One week in October we had a challenge topic of Wet which was perfect as I had a very rainy show in Annapolis. I had my full rain suit on all day and my cameras were all covered in my ThinkTank Hydrophobia 3 covers. This is the photo I submitted for the challenge.
The very next day I had a show in Deptford NJ and the weather was perfect.
078-After the StormHaddonfield Memorial the day after a really rainy Saturday
Value
As mentioned above, I chose the word Value for my year word. My weekly photography group always starts the year with a challenge to pick a “year word” which will define our year and to illustrate that with a photo. I chose Value for its applicability to many areas of my life. The word helped me focus on the people and things I value in my family, church, work and marching arts photography. The term Value in art refers to the darkness or lightness of the tones in an image. There's an expression that value does all the work but color gets the credit. I hoped that my year would include more black and white photography, including infrared 850nm which includes no visible light and, therefore, no color. Opportunities to focus on black and white photography were somewhat limited but for my birthday Donna and I went to the Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton NJ and I shot in black and white.
004-American GothicDonna with the American Gothic farmers at the Grounds for Sculpture
The Top 100
So, those are some of the photos I took this year and a bit about this year's photography journey. You can see all of the Top 100 in the gallery.
Favorite Photo
Our final photography challenge for the year was to pick our Favorite Photo. I narrowed the top 100 down to 20 candidates, but really I knew all along which photo I would select. One of my black and white marching arts photo opportunities happened at the WGI Regional in Bethlehem. I was not the official photographer and our weekly challenge topic was "Free For All" so we could submit any photo taken that week. I decided to shoot the show with one camera (in single shot mode - no bursting), one prime lens (135mm) and all black and white. I was really happy connecting with this moment. I cleaned up the background to remove distractions and convey the energy of the moment.
005-Free For All ChallengeWe had a "free for all" challenge, which meant we could take a photo of anything we wanted. I decided to put some limits on myself that I couldn't do normally since I was not the official photographer for the event. My limits were to put my 30 fps camera in single shot mode, shoot only in B&W (since it is mirrorless I basically watched the show in B&W which was a cool experience), and use one prime lens - the 135 f/1.8. I caught this shot pretty early in the event and it turned out to be my favorite. My year word is Value selected, in part, to encourage me to do more black and white photography, so this was the perfect opportunity.
2024?
As of now, I have no plans for any big trips, so it is unlikely I'll make it to Hawaii which is the last state I have to visit. I will continue with my marching arts photography. This year I will be the official photographer for three Winter Guard International (WGI) regionals. I will be at the Holland PA and Bethlehem PA guard regionals. I'll also be at the two day percussion regional in Toms River NJ. There is a chance that I'll mix things up a bit with the drum corps season and catch a few shows in California or maybe other places I haven't been to in a while. I am continuing with the Ricky Tims Critique Group for year number 10. The weekly photo challenges are a way of life now and motivate me to explore other kinds of photography and new locations. Donna will be starting with the first year challenge course and I hope we'll have a chance for some photo outings even though we'll have different challenge topics. I hope to do more infrared and black & white photography.