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“Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop.” – Ansel Adams

It is that time of the year once again, for me to share with you my Top Twelve Photographs of the Year 2020. This is the 8th edition of a tradition that began in 2013, inspired by Ansel Adams’ quote above. Ansel Easton Adams (February 20, 1902 – April 22, 1984), is one of the most recognizable names in American landscape photography. His black-and-white landscape photographs of the American West, especially Yosemite National Park, have been widely reproduced on calendars, posters, books and prints.

To say that 2020 was an unusual year would be a huge understatement. To begin with no one alive today has lived through a pandemic, an experience I hope no one has to go through again. It had a significant limiting affect on my photography due to the Stay at Home Orders issued by the State of California, and the resultant curtailment of domestic and international travel.

I can state here emphatically I did not travel as far and wide this year as I have done the previous many years. I would joyfully state at this point in my blog all the places I had traveled that year, and how many times I got to the local venues that I love to visit and photograph. In 2020 I did not travel overseas at all, and only managed to traveled domestically to Yosemite National Park one time.

As in previous years, I determine my Top Twelve and the order of the selections by the amount of unsolicited responses (Likes) the images received on my social media Facebook page. One new element that I added this year - I have included images captured from previous years shoots that I developed and published for the first time this year.

Considering the significant lack of travel due to COVID-19, I spent time culling through previous years shoots and finding images that caught my eye, developing them, and publishing the resultant images on Facebook and are included in this years countdown. I will begin with Number 12, its title, some background about each image, and some basic EXIF data.

#12 - ‘Little Red Canoe’ – one from the archives. The most beautiful site I saw in Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada, was Moraine Lake. We were lucky to have an early snowfall for the region in mid-September, 2018, which added a whole other interesting dimension to this beautiful area. I had never in my life before seen the bright turquoise color of this lake, and situated in the Valley of the Peaks that surrounds it, I felt so grateful to be exposed to this level of beauty and serenity.!

*September 17, 2018, Moraine Lake, Banff National Park, Canada, exposure 1/40 sec @ f/11; 16-35mm lens @ 16mm; ISO 100*

#11 - ‘Stormy Monday’ – a Monday evening’s sunset. When storms go through NorCal in the spring and fall, the resultant clouds can be dramatic and beautiful. I have lived close to this location for some 17 plus years and only just discovered this spot that is spectacular at sunset! So much fun as a photographer to have local ‘go-to places’, especially when you are limited to staying at home to survive a deadly pandemic.

*May 18, 2020, El Dorado Hills, CA, exposure 1/8 @ f/11; 24-105mm lens @ 24mm; ISO 250*

#10 - ‘On Golden Pond’ – another from the archives, I captured this image just after some heavy snowfall during the month of February, 2019, in Yosemite National Park. A sunset shot from Sentinel Bridge with the glow from the setting sun on Half Dome, reflected in a very still Merced River. Yosemite is a magical place to visit and photograph, but winter with lots of snow on the ground just maybe my favorite!

“Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity”. ― John Muir

*February 11, 2019, Sentinel Bridge, Yosemite National Park, CA, exposure 0.8 secs@ f/11; 24-105mm lens @ 31 mm; ISO 125*

#9 - ‘Stuck in the Middle…’ – the Harvest Moon from September, 2019. Shot locally where I lived, I blended two shots to make this image. One focused on the branches of the tree, and the other on the moon since the disparity in focal length would have resulted in one of the key element of this composition being out of focus, and I wanted both to be sharp.

“It is a beautiful and delightful sight to behold the body of the Moon.” – Galileo Galilei

*September 12, 2019, El Dorado Hills, CA, exposure 1/8 sec @ f/6.3; 150-600 mm lens @ 600mm; ISO 800*

#8 - ‘Imagine’ – another from the archive. The story behind this image is, I have always loved this black and white image of Mount Fitzroy, a mountain range in Patagonia on the border between Argentina and Chile. It is located in the Southern Patagonian Ice Field near El Chaltén village, where I visited in 2016. I recently began using a software named Luminar 4, mainly for two features that they offer - an easy way to replace a bald blue sky with one of my own skies and the ability to add objects into an image, like for instance a full moon. In this image I dropped in the full moon, which I had shot earlier in the year when we were experiencing terrible air quality due to the many wildfires that burned in record amounts this year in California. In my opinion, the addition of the reddish colored full moon into the black and white landscape, made a good image quite spectacular and special. A salute to imagination!

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. Imagination is the language of the soul. Pay attention to your imagination and you will discover all you need to be fulfilled.” Albert Einstein

*October 26, 2016, Mount Fitzroy, El Charlton, Argentina, exposure 6.0 sec @ f/11; 70-200mm lens @ 70mm, ISO 200*

#7 - ‘Hallelujah’ – sunrise at Church Rock, a pillar in Navajo County, Arizona. It is located near the mouth of Church Rock Valley with a summit elevation of 5,862 feet (1,787 m). I got to this location via a workshop that I attended run by Arizona Highways Photoscapes. This is a group that I would highly recommend to anyone wanting to learn how to improve your landscape photography skills, or if you simply want to be taken to the best locations at the best times, especially to capture images in iconic Arizona locations. I also want to commend the man who led the group I attended, no better workshop leader to have in this region of Arizona than Navajoland Native Son, and photographer extraordinaire LeRoy De Jolie.

*April, 28, 2017, Church Rock, Kayenta, Navajo County, AZ, exposure 0.5 sec @ f/16; 24-105mm @ 55mm; ISO 400*

#6 - ‘Sunset Sailing’ – another from the archives. This is an image from 2014, when I first went back to visit the country of my birth, Sri Lanka, after an absence of some 55 years. This is a catamaran sailing at sunset in Negombo, a coastal city I consider to be my ‘hometown’. I had planned to lead a photo workshop into Sri Lanka, in the June/August 2020, which got postponed due to CORVID-19. Sri Lanka is truly a magical island in the Indian Ocean, with sights, sounds, and tastes unique to this tropical paradise. With the rollout of the COVID vaccines just beginning, I am now ‘audaciously hoping’ that I will be able lead the same Workshop with revised dates in mid-August, 2021. We still have some seats available and if you are interested in attending my 2021 Sri Lanka Workshop & Tour, all details of the journey and the revised itinerary are available here: https://www.davidjgrenier.com/srilanka2021

“Hope lies in dreams, in imagination, and in the courage of those who dare to make dreams into reality.” – Jonas Salk

*March 22, 2014, Negombo, Sri Lanka, exposure 1/80 sec @ f/8; 24-105mm lens @ 45mm; ISO 100*

#5 - ‘Meet My Neighbor, the Moon’ – this was shot on my 75th birthday, just after the Stay at Home order in California was first put in place. After a virtual celebration of my birthday via Zoom & Skype, I walked into my backyard and set up to capture April's full moon. Dubbed the "Super Pink Moon". This full moon appeared larger and brighter than usual because it was at the closest point to Earth in its elliptical orbit. It is a stunning sight to see a full moon rising at the horizon, where it appears to be the largest, especially when it can be placed next to trees and/or houses for some relativity.

*April 7, 2020, El Dorado Hills, CA, exposure 1/30 @ f/6.3; 150-600 lens @ 600mm; 1600 ISO*

#4 - ‘Once in a Blue Moon’ – this full moon, set against the bell tower of the Holy Trinity Church, El Dorado Hills, is named a Blue Moon (AKA Halloween Moon because it happened to fall on Halloween Day), and it was the 2nd full moon in the month of October! Why is it called the Blue Moon? Every 2.7 years, two full moons are squeezed into one month, as it was this month, which accounts for the most commonly used meaning of the term, “once in a blue moon,” referring to something that happens on a very infrequent basis. On a personal note, this was also an end of an era for me of being able to shoot most of these rising moons from my backyard in the home I lived in for 17 plus years!

*October 30, 2020, El Dorado Hills, CA, exposure 1/60 @f/6.3; 150-600mm lens @ 600mm; ISO 1000*

#3 - ‘A Snow Moon Rising’ – as you may have noticed, during these lockdown times of the pandemic, the one thing I did shoot ofter were images of a full moon rising. This is an image shot in Yosemite National Park of the spectacular Snow Moon rising above Clouds Rest (9,931 feet). It’s worth noting that as a photographer, the best time to photograph the full moon is the day before, when it is 98% full. More importantly, it provides the best lighting because the sky is still blue when the moon appears just above the horizon, which enables you to capture some of the foreground as well. Typically, on the night of the full moon, it rises when the sky is black, so the moon is incredibly bright and the rest of the composition is very black. According to the Farmers' Almanac, northeastern Native American tribes referred to the second full moon of winter as the Snow Moon because of February's heavy snow.

*February 8, 2020, Clouds Rest, Yosemite National Park, exposure 1/2000 @ f/8; 150-600 lens @ 600mm; ISO 160*

#2 - 'The Lady in Red' – alpenglow on the magnificent El Capitan, Valley View, Yosemite National Park, reflected in a still Merced River at sunset. Alpenglow is an optical phenomenon that appears as a reddish glow near the horizon opposite to the Sun when the solar disk is just below the horizon. I only made one trip into Yosemite in 2020, due to Stay at Home restrictions in California, and was fortunate to get the image above and this one during a short two nights visit to the Park!

#1 - ‘In Memoriam’ – as a photographer, conditions aren’t always ideal especially when you are a long way from home as it was when I shot this image of the magnificent Taj Mahal, Agra, India, in 2018. So, with a lot of time on my hands I began to imagine what those ideal conditions could have actually looked like. First thing I did was replace the sky I had shot in the original image, using Luminar 4, with a sunset sky I had shot locally. Then using an IOS App, I created the reflection in the area that was an almost dry river bed when I shot the image originally. Finally, I would like to say here that I could not have done this trip without the planning and guidance from Ken Lee & Harsh Agarwal, who together offer the best photo tour of India, and gave me a journey of a lifetime filled with unforgettable memories and a gallery of stunning images!

And there you have it, my Top Twelve Photographs for the 2020 year. Also, a continuing tradition, a few observations in closing: 1) five of the Top Twelve images voted on this year were shot in 2020, and seven were shot at other times, and published for the first time in 2020.

I’d also like to express a big thank you to all those who expressed their support of my photography on my Facebook page, and for taking the time to do so – it is greatly appreciated! As always, I owe a great deal of gratitude to the many people who support me by purchasing my images in print form, and attending my workshops.

2021 is the year that as mankind, we are looking forward to in the hopes of gradually getting back to being able to enjoy being social again, travel both domestically and internationally without the fear of being infected by COVID, and brining an end to the tragic loss of lives, that as of this writing has reached the staggering number of 1.8 million deaths worldwide, and of those, some 350,000 plus deaths in the United States of America.

I would also like to see the economies around the world gradually get back to a place where the unemployed get back to work, restaurants become places of social gatherings and enjoyment again, places of worship open for their congregations to gather safely, and the thousands of brave, courages, frontline workers get their lives back to normal.

The availability of vaccines, brought to the market in record times, is the chief reason and basis for these hopes, and a great deal will hinge on the ability of governments around the globe being able to roll out these vaccinations to people in an efficient and timely manner. Therefore, as this historically difficult year comes to an end I approach 2021 with the ‘audacity of hope’ alive and well deep within me!

Happy New Year!

DECEMBER 30, 2020

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2020 Top Twelve Photographs