Category: Photography

Photos of the Year 2025

2025 was not an extremely productive year behind the camera and lenses. The best places to see what I’ve been up to closer to realtime are pixelfed and Flickr.

The Popular

Tiger Swallowtail on Mexican Sunflower, III

#MyFlickrYear25 says this was my most-popular photo this year. The interesting thing about this photo is it was taken while testing out a ca. 1970s screw-mount Soligor 80-200 zoom via a mount adapter on my E-M5ii. The lens was in the bag with a Pentax Spotmatic acquired in an estate sale.

The Favorites

Diana of the Hunt

2024-25 had some dabbling with film photography with estate sale cameras. “Diana of the Hunt” is in the gardens at the Cummer Museum in Jacksonville, Fla. Photo from my little Olympus Pen-EE that is about the same age as I am.

Sooza Brass Band - Austin, Brian, Bianca, Ryan

Sooza Brass Band on stage at Fanfares & Fireworks 2025. I worked social media and photography for the event via my work affiliation with WUFT.

Most Gruesome

This alligator eating smaller alligator photo won’t embed here because of the safety level I set on Flickr.

Most Unique

Gray Catbird and Black-and-White Warbler

A gray catbird and a black-and-white warbler in a tree next to the deck in the backyard. “Most Unique” because both are fairly camera shy.

Honorable Mentions

Flag and Buckets

Photo from Fanfares & Fireworks 2024 taken on film with the Olympus Pen-EE, but not developed until mid-2025.

Annisquam, Mass. - Winter 1984

I acquired a film scanner in 2025 and one of the first scans was this memorable photo from winter 1984 in Annisquam, Mass.

A slide/film scanner joins my photo gear toolkit

I recently acquired a Magnasonic FS71 film/slide scanner at a local estate sale. It was apparently purchased in early 2021 and never fully unwrapped or used. I paid $22 for it!

I didn’t expect the first in my planned series on “Garage Sale Tech” to be about this.

I recently acquired this Magnasonic FS71 film/slide scanner at a local estate sale. It was apparently purchased in early 2021 and never fully unwrapped or used. I paid $22 for it!

It’s been a fun couple of weeks occasionally grabbing a slide or negative out of cold storage for a trip down memory lane.

Things I like:

  • Convenience. It’s nice to not have to get out the laptop, cable things together, worry about whether the scanning software will “see” it, etc.
  • It’s powered by USB. It’s not new enough to have a type C connector, but it’s nice to know I can grab my phone booster to power it anywhere if I need to.
  • It records to an SD memory card. And it stores the images in a folder structure that photo import software sees as a camera, making super easy image transfers.
  • The quality is very good for the money.

Things I think could be done better.

  • There doesn’t appear to be a way to set the date on it so all the images were “created” on July 1, 2017.
  • I didn’t see in the instructions anywhere that it said “emulsion side down” or “This Side Toward Screen” down. You can flip and rotate with buttons on the front, but the quality should be better if the emulsion does not have film stock between it and the sensor.

And now, some photos:

Sailing - Fall 1975

My brother and I sailing in 1975. Scanned from a 126 “Instamatic” format Ektachrome slide. Must have been my camera because no one else in the family would put slide film in their Instamatic.

At Work - January 1984

Me at work at The Orlando Sentinel in Jan. 1984. Photo by a co-worker with my original Pentax MX. Scanned from black-and-white film–probably FP4, but maybe Tri-X.

Annisquam, Mass. - Winter 1984

A winter scene from Annisquam, Mass. during my spring break of 1984. Photo by me with my uncle’s camera moments after I slipped on the ice, fell, and destroyed my Pentax MX. I actually still have the pieces in a box somewhere. Scanned from color negative film.

Addendum (16 June 2025): I have some previous experience with slide/film scanning using a Nikon Coolscan III LS-30 and an Epson Perfection 1640SU. The Nikon belonged to a lab I once worked in and I regret not grabbing it for my office when the lab director retired. I personally own the Epson and still have it. It’s old and you really need 3rd party software like VueScan to make it work. I have an album on my Flickr called “Scans of old slides and photos” if you’d like to check out scans from all of the above (and possibly others).

Photos of the Year 2024

Some end-of-the-year remarks about my favorite and most-viewed photos of 2024.

The Favorites

Anhinga with fish and sky reflections 1

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 (Oct. 16)

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

Hancock Building

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 Late Night Losers

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.

Nikon Lens + Fotasy + Olympus E-M5II + Orchid

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.

Evening commute distraction

https://www.flickr.com/photos/cell911/43897556702/in/dateposted-public/

Spotted it coming in for a landing about 10 minutes from home in a field where a Christmas tree stand resides in that season. Pulled over into the driveway, took a few photos, and then relocated to the spot on a side street where this was taken. A moment later, it took off and landed atop a light pole next to Little Black Creek.

Happy Holidays 2011

Craig and Dana - May 2011, Miami

I guess I didn’t do a very good job last year of blowing the dust off of this site or my work blog. One big reason for that has been the sheer busy-ness at work this year. And working here is a lot like work, even more so this year, and I want to unwind from work when I’m at home. I hit my 10-year anniversary at UF last March and it’s still my dream job. Two other reasons for inactivity here are called  Facebook and Twitter, which make sharing brief updates very convenient.

But the biggest reason is that I’ve been working on something very big offline and it’s shown wonderful progress. I’m happy.

Here are some photo albums from the past year:

Some older stuff not linked here previously:

Find me elsewhere online:

Check back. I might not be done yet.

Happy Holidays 2009

Here are some links to stories and photo sets from my adventures of 2009:

Kayaking

Travel

Miscellany

Find me elsewhere online: