Some end-of-the-year remarks about my favorite and most-viewed photos of 2024.
The Favorites
A “right place at the right time” photo of an anhinga bird with a fish at the Orlando Wetlands Park in November.
Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS in the western sky seen from beach parking at Marineland, Fla. I didn’t know this photo was successful until days later when I happened to open the Camera Raw file in Photoshop on a 32″ 4K monitor.
This comet was an interesting photo challenge to get a picture of something barely (or not even) visible to the unaided eye. The process was (1) use a stargazing app on a phone to find where it should be, (2) take a 15-or-so-second exposure of the area with your phone on a tripod, (3) find the comet in the phone photo and use that to line up a higher-end camera for the shot.
The above photo wasn’t taken that way, though, it was “point-and-pray” with Live View on my Olympus TG-6. It’s also worth noting that this location is regarded as one of the darkest places on the east coast of Florida.
The Popular
For some reason, Flickr likes to serve this 2006 photo of the Hancock Building in Chicago when viewers search for “building.” It’s been my most-viewed photo in my stats most days this year. It’s currently ranked 21st for all-time views in my photostream on the site.
The Instagram version of this photo from FANFARES & FIREWORKS seems to get a lot of random likes. Maybe because I don’t post there often and it’s currently still my most-recent post there.
Honorable Mention – Flickr in its year-in-review of my uploads says this photo taken while testing gear was my most-liked on the platform this year.
