Yellowstone Pools and Streams
I seriously cannot wait to go back to Yellowstone this year (hopefully it won't blow up before then, like in the movie "2012" :)). Jokes aside, Yellowstone is one of the most magical places on Earth and I truly fell in love with it. Here are some of my favorites pictures of pools and streams from the park in large resolution.
- Deep Pool 1920x1200 Widescreen Wallpaper
- Hot Stream 1920x1200 Widescreen Wallpaper
- Mammoth Hot Springs
- Colorful Springs
Best of 2009 – Landscapes (Part 3)
This is part three of the "Best of 2009 Landscapes" series. A couple of things that I wanted to mention here:
- The "Double Rainbow" image is a little soft, because it was still raining when I took the picture
- Although the composition is pretty much absent, I still went ahead and decided to post the "Fall" photograph as one of the best of 2009, because it has a special value to me. I took the image with a very long lens after an unsuccessful attempt to chase a bird and fired about 8 horizontal shots hand-held. I was sure that those images would end up in being deleted, but after I came home, I tried to stitch them together for the heck of it and ended up having this picture :)
And here are the images:
- Aged Colors 1920x1200 Widescreen Wallpaper
- Arches 1920x1200 Widescreen Wallpaper
- Crystallized Leaf 1920x1200 Widescreen Wallpaper
- Curved River 1920x1200 Widescreen Wallpaper
- Double Rainbow 1920x1200 Widescreen Wallpaper
- Fall 1920x1200 Widescreen Wallpaper
- Frozen Dunes 1920x1200 Widescreen Wallpaper
- Indian Writings 1920x1200 Widescreen Wallpaper
- Mammoth Hot Springs 1920x1200 Widescreen Wallpaper
- Water Explosion 1920x1200 Widescreen Wallpaper
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Best of 2009 – Landscapes (Part 2)
This is part two of the "Best of 2009 Landscapes" series. Although I'm not an expert on building panoramic shots by any means, I believe these ones came out all right from what I shot last year. One thing for sure - I need to get a good panoramic head, because I enjoyed the process of shooting, then stitching panoramas. The largest panorama I have done so far is composed of over 250 images and it was so darn big, that I had to downsize it to 25,000 pixels. Not sure if I want to do that again, since it took forever to stitch the damn thing, but I think up to fifteen vertical images on a panorama is quite workable :)
Oh by the way, all of the shots below with the exception of "Zabriskie Point" were shot hand-held.
- Dune Sunset 1920x948 Panoramic Wallpaper
- Zabriskie Point 1920x675 Panoramic Wallpaper
- Golden Dunes 1920x687 Panoramic Wallpaper
- Snow, Dunes and Water 1920x638 Panoramic Wallpaper
- Cloudy Day in Mountains 1920x773 Panoramic Wallpaper
Dune Sunset
Best of 2009 – Landscapes (Part 1)
Looks like I will be posting the "Best of 2009" pictures till the end of the year! Kidding :) In all seriousness though, it did take me a long time to go through all of the pictures, pick the ones I liked the most, then have Lola look at them and give her opinion, after which I would repeat the process multiple times until I got to a reasonable number of pictures.
This year has been a landscape year for me, since I do not have as many wildlife photos. Landscape photography is very different than wildlife photography in many ways (I will write an article about it within the next few days) and I've learned a great deal while taking pictures of landscapes. I have also learned quite a bit about panorama and HDR photography, which are not that hard to understand, but quite complex to master.
Anyway, I do not want to bore you with all of this - here are my picks for the best of 2009 in landscape category. This is also the "Part 1", because I have many more landscape pictures to share :)
- Antelope Canyon 1920x1200 Widescreen Wallpaper
- Badwater 1920x1200 Widescreen Wallpaper
- Lone Tree 1920x1200 Widescreen Wallpaper
- Maroon Bells 1920x1200 Widescreen Wallpaper
- Reflection 1920x945 Panoramic Wallpaper
- Sand Dunes Rising 1920x1200 Widescreen Wallpaper
- Sand Dunes 1920x1200 Widescreen Wallpaper
- Sunset 1920x825 Panoramic Wallpaper
- Trees 1920x1200 Widescreen Wallpaper
- Yosemite 1920x1131 Panoramic Wallpaper
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Best of 2009 – Animals
This is a part three to the "Best of 2009" pictures for "Animals" category. To be honest, I haven't done much wildlife photography this year, because I was busy photographing birds, landscapes and portraits. After seeing a small number of animal pics in my photo collection, I decided to try to capture more wildlife this year, if I can.
Unfortunately, one of the worst computer disasters hit me last year, when my hard drive died and I lost two very precious weeks of photographs. Those photographs were priceless - I captured a fox with 5 fox kits in their natural habitat: playing, cuddling with each other and chasing, capturing and eating mice. All of those photos were lost for good and I was only able to save a low-resolution version of a couple of pictures that I sent over email to a fox rescuer. Honestly, if there was a way to save those pics, I would have traded them over everything else I got in 2009...that's how valuable they were for me. I resized those low-res images of foxes and I'm attaching them here. Although they are not as good when it comes to quality, I still love them.
- Red Fox 1920x1200 Widescreen Wallpaper
- Red Fox Kit 1920x1200 Widescreen Wallpaper
- Mountain Pika 1920x1200 Widescreen Wallpaper
- Mountain Pika Voice 1920x1200 Widescreen Wallpaper
- Male Buffalo 1920x1200 Widescreen Wallpaper
- Female Buffalo 1920x1200 Widescreen Wallpaper
- Island Fox 1920x1200 Widescreen Wallpaper
- Coyote 1920x1200 Widescreen Wallpaper
- Dolphin Jump 1920x1200 Widescreen Wallpaper
- Channel Islands Side-Blotched Lizard 1920x1200 Widescreen Wallpaper
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Best of 2009 – Birds
I had a hard time picking my favorites and I'm sure I didn't do a good job, but anyway - here are the non-raptor bird pics that I liked from 2009:
- Tricolored Heron 1920x1200 Widescreen Wallpaper
- Mallard 1920x1200 Widescreen Wallpaper
- Great-crested Flycatcher 1920x1200 Widescreen Wallpaper
- Great Blue Heron 1920x1200 Widescreen Wallpaper
- Caspian Tern with Fish 1920x1200 Widescreen Wallpaper
- Brown Pelican 1920x1200 Widescreen Wallpaper
- Black Skimmer 1920x1200 Widescreen Wallpaper
- Pacific-slope Flycatcher triptych 1920x990 Widescreen Wallpaper
Best of 2009 – Birds of Prey
I'm starting to upload the "Best of 2009" images for your pleasure :) I apologize that it took me so long, I just didn't have much time to go back and look through all the pictures. Hopefully you will like these - I'm providing them at high resolutions, so that you can use them as your desktop wallpapers.
More to come tomorrow!
- Rough-Legged Hawk 808x1200 Vertical Wallpaper
- Hawk Eating a Mouse 1920x1200 Widescreen Wallpaper
- Harris's Hawk 1920x1200 Widescreen Wallpaper
- Great Horned Owl 1920x1200 Widescreen Wallpaper
- Ferruginous Hawk 810x1200 Vertical Wallpaper
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Continue reading 'Best of 2009 – Birds of Prey'
Best of 2009 – Introduction
Well, I'm not even a quarter of a way into selecting the best of 2009. Lots of pictures and almost no time, but I'll get there :)
For now, enjoy these two picks at 1920x1200 resolution for widescreen monitors. If you have a lower resolution widescreen monitor, the picture should scale back to fit your screen. If you have a square monitor, then you are out of luck :) Let me know if it a problem and I can make an attempt to go back and crop it.
Here are the direct links to the images:
To save the images to your computer, right-click the above links and then select "Save Target As" or "Save Link As".
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Enjoy and Happy Holidays!
