Best of 2011

For this final post of 2011 I have chosen the best 12 photographs from the year with a few words about each image.

The year got off to a great start when we hosted a "Red & Green" theme party. These are my two friends Loz and Huw dressed appropriately. Huw donned a Mexican sombrero and complete with red painted mustache was in charge making the  the "Red & Green" colored marguerites.

I made a first time visit to Sri Lanka in late January and took the opportunity of grabbing some images from the wonderful city of Colombo. It's always good to visit somewhere new and Colombo certainly delivered some great pictures with colorful painted houses and the brightly decorated auto rickshaws.

In February I made a visit to the Kuala Lumpur railway station which is a great example of moorish architecture adopting a mixture of Eastern and Western designs. It's funny that when things are right on your doorstep you tend to ignore them so I need to make more of an effort to try and capture some "local" scenes like this. 

An early morning visit to Putrajaya to see the annual balloon festival was in vain as I had the wrong date! But at least I had the opportunity to capture the stylish Seri Wawasan Bridge and Putra Mosque in the early morning light.

In March I re-visited the atmospheric Birch Road Christian Cemetery in Kuala Lumpur. I love the old, decayed headstones and the way the tropical undergrowth and jungle slowly envelopes everything in the graveyard.

My Dad sadly passed away in March and a month later we made a pilgrimage to his favorite part of north west Scotland to lay his ashes in a very personal spot in Wester Ross. The weather was wonderful offering some great photo opportunities. At last I managed to capture a clear shot of the famous Eilean Donan Castle on Loch Duich near Dornie.

In April I finally managed a visit to New York City which I have been wanting to do for many years. I was very impressed with the art deco style architecture and the Empire State building seen here still looks very grand.

On the return trip from New York and Scotland in April we stopped in Amsterdam which is a lovely, laid back city with beautiful canals like this one pictured here, Prinsengracht which is one of the main canals.

In September we visited Penang in Malaysia, a place we had not been to for 10 years or more. The main town Georgetown has a wonderful array of heritage buildings which have been renovated and one of the more interesting ones is the Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion, or Blue Mansion.

Langkawi is another island in Malaysia we had not been to for many years so a return visit in November was arranged. This is a view over the Andaman Sea taken from the Westin Langkawi Resort & Spa.

I once again attended the One Asia Photo Festival in Singapore in early December and this time had the opportunity to meet with Steve McCurry who was one of the key speakers along with Michael Yamashita and Michael Freeman.

A visit to Phuket in late December to attend a friend's birthday party closed out the travels for the year. We visited the Blue Elephant Restaurant in Phuket town which is located in a wonderful old heritage building with this surprising modern blue bar which somehow fits well with the older decor.

This is the last post for 2011 and brings to a close a personal project of mine to post a daily photograph with some brief text on the blog. Sometimes this was tough to do with time constraints and other priorities but I achieved this and certainly think it gave my blog some exposure. It is now time to reflect on 2011 and start to make plans for 2012. I think next year I will be taking a different approach to my photographic work as well as my blog with tentative plans to redesign the site as well as focusing on more detailed photo projects. So quality rather than quantity going forward. So bear with me as I make this transition during the first part of 2012 and I hope that a redesigned and more focused site will raise the bar a little in terms of professionalism and quality. I have a large number of projects I would like to do during 2012 as long as other work does not get in the way so hopefully will be able to bring a number of these to fruition next year.

I will take this opportunity to thank everyone who follows this blog or even those who stumbled upon it by accident. It has been reassuring to see the hit rate statistics on the site improving during the year and it has been great to receieve all the comments from people all over the planet.

Happy New Year To All.