As we come to the end of a very busy and exciting year, it’s time to look back over some favorite photos and photography moments from the past twelve months. Throughout 2011 I shot somewhere around 25 000 images, logged 8 flights, 3 magazine covers, a couple of award mentions, fulfilled a dream or two and met a bunch of great people. All in all, I can say that it was a great year.

Before I get into things, I’ll quickly take this opportunity to remind you about the recently announced China workshop I’ll be leading with John Batdorff, in Guiln next May.

The year kicked off with a visit to the Greenpeace flagship boat, Rainbow Warrior. I had had a couple of meetings with Greenpeace, Taiwan in late 2010 to discuss doing some work for them and the first opportunity proved to be the arrival of the boat. We headed down to Keelung Harbor to see it arrive, then were invited on board for a tour by the captain. I also had the opportunity to make a short video interview with him.

Almost straight after that I headed off for a week on assignment for Monocle magazine shooting part of a travel feature on Taiwan for an upcoming supplement. From rural, coastal scenes in Eastern Taiwan to a couple of days shooting in high-end luxury resorts, it was a whirlwind week of interviews, food and travel. Along the way I was able to photograph a traditional Chinese cultural dance in Taipei’s Confucius Temple. Due to the 100th birthday of Taiwan they were staging some special early morning performances of the ritual that is usually only seen once a year.

Taiwan had one of its longest, coldest and wettest winters on record and most of the first couple of months featured gray, rainy days. Not exactly inspiring weather so I didn’t do a lot shooting outdoors. Spent some time in the studio which is not really my favorite type of photography. Just before the sakura (cherry blossom) season kicked off, we did get a rare blue sky day and Selina and I headed up to the Tian Yuan temple to see if there were any early blossoms about. If the weather is good, this is one of the most colorful times of year but the season started late this year and there wasn’t much to see. I did manage to find one decent angle that allowed me to capture the flowers, temple and sky in the same shot.

One of the highlights of March was discovering the location of another pod-style abandoned resort development. I’ve long had an interest in this kind of abandoned structure photography and it appears that many others do too – my most licensed / sold photographs are from a now-demolished development, so finding a new site was exciting. It’s not as atmospheric as the San-zhr pods were yet still offers up some photographic treats.

April was mostly assignment work photographing and writing an article on surfing in Taiwan, covering an anti-nuclear demonstration and shooting the initial images for a story on yoga that ultimately didn’t end up running. During times between the work-related images I was able to experiment a bit with some artistic long exposure photography that was captured with the intention of being worked over in post-processing. I ended up with a couple of images that I was happy with, especially in that they represented a change from what I normally shoot.

As the weather warmed up I found myself shooting editorial work on traditional puppetry, taking a trip out to a village known for its pottery, making my first visit to one of Northern Taiwan’s tourist hot spots, shooting a series for a local gym and testing new flash triggers for the team at Phottix. In order to put the triggers through their paces, I set up a shoot featuring a model clad in a traditional Chinese qipao and we headed to a couple of Taipei’s older temples to get some portraits and see how the triggers worked in a real world situation. The answer to that was flawlessly. Here’s a photograph from the session.

One of my favorite local festivals took place in June, the Taipei City God festival. This kicks off with a week or so of performances of traditional Taiwanese and Chinese opera which is always a joy to photograph although some people may want to wear earplugs for it. Quiet it ain’t. I started off with a few backstage images but spent most of the 4 days I was there concentrating on the performance itself as well as the audience. However it was the backstage work that resonated the most, with the image below being selected as an editors pick in the National Geographic Traveler photo contest.

Often as a working photographer you find yourself on location with nothing to do but wait until whatever or whoever it is you’re assigned to shoot is ready. Such was the case with my chosen favorite of this month. I was out shooting two assignments and had a few hours in between them. I found myself in one of the older areas of Taipei so decided to venture into the Longshan temple partly to get a few photos and partly to escape the rain.

August in Taiwan means Ghost Month, when the spirits come out to play for four weeks. It features lots of ritual, burning of offerings, parades and sacrifice, and is a joy for a travel and cultural photographer. Suffice to say, most of the month was spent engaged in photography related to the festival although I also took the time to visit the annual tattoo festival which is always a fun experience, especially for someone like me who has no tattoos.

This year September brought what was probably the best weather of the year for photography. Clear blue skies, gorgeous sunsets and comfortable temperatures. I was able to spend a few evenings out shooting from some new locations which is always nice, especially after you hike uphill and find yourself with a great viewpoint.

The good weather didn’t last however, and the annual Scott Kelby Photowalk that I led took place in absolutely atrocious weather. As leader, I had to head out to the location in case anyone turned up but most people wisely decided to stay home. Two did turn up though, and as the rain eased off for a short time, we decided to make the most of it and got in 30 minutes or so of photography. The funny thing was that I shot what may be my favorite shot of the year during this. I’d had an intention to photograph something specific during this years photowalk and the weather actually may have made it slightly easier to do so. I was very happy to see that Scott Kelby later selected it for mention in his leader’s gallery.

October also saw me off to Nepal for a couple of weeks for a mixture of NGO assignments, personal work and vacation. At this stage, I’m still sitting on most of the photographs from that trip, although you can see a few highlights scattered throughout this blog and in my winter 2011 newsletter. Of the personal work I have processed, the photograph below is one of my favorites.

November and December have seen me shoot a lot of corporate work. I’m not sure why as it’s not something I usually concentrate on but I had 4 different assignments in a very short space of time. For each of them I did know the people involved beforehand so that may have had something to do with why I got offered the jobs. In addition to this, a lot of planning and research has been going into the 2012 China workshop as well as pre-production for a promo shoot that’s scheduled for early January. I did manage to get in a little bit of beach photography before the weather changed – the last 2 months have been rainy almost every day.

So that just about wraps up my year. Happy Holidays everyone.