Brent's 2018 Self-Aggrandizement Photography Post
Back with probably no demand whatsoever, it has become my yearly tradition early in the year to look back at all of my photos and crunch the numbers to see how everything did. In years past, I've written all the boring stat stuff first. This year, I'll show the year's top photos first and then you can skip over the boring numbers at the end.
Brent's top 10 favorite photos of 2018:
There are several reasons why I might include a photo here. Some of the photos may look they don't belong in a "best of the year" post, but they may be important to me for other reasons. Some of these are my favorite composed shots of my favorite subjects. Some of these are interesting effects while overcoming challenges to get a usable photo. Here we go in no particular order:
1) Bartholomew County Courthouse (North Side) - Columbus, IN
In 2018, I had noticeably fewer opportunities to go on photo taking day trips. Many of these photos are taken on a couple of the business trips I went on during the year.
The bigger business trip was for a conference in Indianapolis. On the drive there, I visited several small towns in southern Indiana. While I was walking this small town, I heard someone calling my name. It turns out that Charlie, who goes to church with me, also was on a business trip. He was eating dinner outside and I walked right past him.
2) Jesse Owens Olympic Champion Statue
Jesse Owens was the hero of the 1936 Olympics. There is a museum in his honor near where he grew up in the middle of nowhere in Alabama. The museum is a nice place, and this statue was the highlight for me. The lady who operated the museum must not get many visitors and kept making conversation, probably hoping that I wouldn't leave.
When I told my mom about visiting this museum, she mentioned that my grandfather, who died when I was 4, was also a big fan of Jesse Owens. My grandfather was also a competitive jogger in Dallas.
3) Central of Georgia #223 Steam Locomotive
My wife and I went on vacation to Savannah, GA. I like trains and my wife loves steam trains. On the day we were there, they were supposed to have their train run that day. However, the property had just been used by a Hollywood Movie and they couldn't run the trains on this day. We were both disappointed. Instead, we took the roundhouse tour and got a good look at this beauty. I like the colors and tones in this photo even though there was no direct sunlight.
4) Washington County Courthouse - Springfield, KY
On the way to a business trip in Louisville, I stopped by several small towns in Kentucky. With a little daylight left, I went to Springfield with no notes on what to look for. I had passed through this town back in 2006 when I was a photography novice. Back then, this building was the town Courthouse. Now, a new courthouse opened across the street and this building is now a Lincoln Museum.
I love the way the sun hits the front of this building with the storm clouds in the background. I'm using a 10mm wide angle lens and am close as I can get.
5) Cockspur Island Lighthouse at Sunset
When my wife and I went to Savannah, we also took a Tybee Island Dolphin Cruise. For the sunset cruise, they get close to the old Cockspur Island Lighthouse around sunset.
6) Churchill Downs Race: Coming down the home stretch
My business trip to Louisville was held at Churchill Downs, after a day of lectures, we were treated to a night of races. While most of the other attendees were interested in wagering, I was interested in getting action photos. As it turns out, it is no trouble at all to get right up to the track on the ground level, probably because that's far from wagering and comforts. This was quite a soggy day, but the sun was out for this one race.
7) Indianapolis Motor Speedway Gate 1
My trip to Indy just happened to be the week of the Indianapolis 500. Race cars were everywhere, including our hotel. Downtown was quite festive as I walked about. On the Thursday before the race, I actually ventured out to the Speedway. I'm not an auto racing fan, but my mother-in-law is. I was hoping to see some sort of action, but there was none. I did like this photo of the entrance gate.
8) Hot Wheels Legends Tour Nashville: 1950 Mercury Diablo
The people who make Hot Wheels sponsored a series of car shows all around the country where the winner would have their car turned into a toy car. They had a stop in Nashville, and I liked the look of this Merc.
9) Skateland - Memphis, TN
Every so often I find something fantastic that wasn't on my list. This massive neon sign is one of them.
I was passing through Memphis on my way to something else when I was getting hungry. I considered eating at the Panchos here - just as my family used to do quite often as we would pass through town. But I was in a hurry and looking for something quicker.
My GPS told me to take White Station Rd. to get to my next destination. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a massive neon sign, but didn't get a good look at it. All I really saw were two red wings, so my first thought was it was a large neon Pegasus like the one which my dad told me lit up the Dallas skyline when he was a kid.
10) See 7 States from Rock City
My first love in Photography was finding all of the remaining Rock City barns. I was inspired to do this with a book I found in their gift shop around 2004. In the years since then, I've been able to get in contact with the creator of the book and my photographic inspiration. On my trip to Indiana, I've been able to add another three to my total, which now stands at 90. Half of the barns in his book from 1996 are now gone. Many of the ones which remain are faded and tough to read like this one. We had a phone call a couple months after this photo was taken.
If I remember correctly, The first Rock City barn he ever photographed, also in Indiana, fell down a couple of years ago. I still visited and photographed it anyway, even though it is a collapsed pile of wood. I guess I've seen 91.
I had three photos make Flickr's Explore, which is one of the top photos posted to the site each day. It seems like it's never the ones I think should be tops.
Panama City Publishing Co.
Hancock County Courthouse - Hawesville, KY
Southern Kitchen Restaurant - New Market, VA
Other 2017 accomplishments:
I had a couple of published photos this year. My photo of the controversial N.B. Forrest photo along I-65 in Brentwood seems to show up somewhere every year. This year, that photo, along with a photo of a waterfall inside Opryland Hotel appears in the new book "Secret Nashville" by Mason Douglas.
Also, my photo of the Town Clock Church in New Albany, IN appeared in the May 2018 issue of Indiana Preservation Magazine.
There is a website which lets you track how many counties in America you have visited. Someday, I'd like to visit every county in America, but at the end of 2018, I have been to 529 counties, which makes up 16.84% of America. I visited 32 new counties from GA, IN, KY & AL this year.
Now that the best photos are out of the way, what can Brent bore everyone with?
This may be the part where you stop reading. I am a professional number cruncher, so this kind of thing is my cup of tea and probably not yours. I record it for posterity sake.
In 2018, I took more than 17,800 photos. About 16,000 were of my son. (Not really.)
Most of my publishing-worthy photos are uploaded to flickr. I now have a total of 9,947 of which about 300 were uploaded in 2018. These photos have been viewed collectively 12,891,420 times. During 2013, Flickr changed what's considered a "view" making more things count than what used to. As a number cruncher, this irritates me, so 1.2 million views in 2018 doesn't mean as much as it used to. (By comparison, in 2012 I had about 500,000 views.)
2010 was the first year of my website, SeeMidTN.com. My webhost's stats show last year I had 21,214 unique visitors who made 47,900 visits viewing a total of 129,008 page views with 438,594 total hits (the stats exclude the 100,000 hits by robots / spiders / crawlers). the website used 12.92 GB of bandwidth. 41.3% of visitors used Windows which is going down a little every year. 47.8% people browsed with Chrome and 2 people used the older Opera, which is more than MS Edge. I set up a Facebook account which now has 103 followers and a twitter feed with 79 followers. These were set up as a set-it-and-forget-it tools that re-post my other content, but still has room for growth.
In 2015, I set up a Pinterest page which for the most part pins my popular flickr photos. I also have a couple of boards where I pin my favorite photos taken by others, so this is going to skew the data of my original content. Pinterest tells me I have 1002 pins on 15 boards. My most popular pin was the Acme Feed & Seed neon sign. I don't fully understang Pinterest stats but they tell me I now average 16,942 monthly viewers with 443 are engaged.
The highlight of my website is the daily blog. Although in mid 2017 my day job started to take too much of my time and I no longer am able to update it. Blogger.com's count of page views reports I had 325,927 page views in 8 years at the end of 2017, but the counter appears broken now. I wish I could find the page where Google lists the searches people typed in to find me. Mostly, so I could look at the weird ones. once a person typed in "olive pit allergy" to get to my site.
I also have a YouTube channel. Most of my good videos are recordings of my dad's early music groups. All-time, I have 669,400 views with about 15,000 in 2018. A new stat they offer: In 2018, My videos have been watched for 23,600 minutes, making an all-time total of 240,900 minutes. The longest watched video is a recording of "Salvation has been Brought Down" recorded at the Diana Singing, at 45,200 minutes.
This year, I'm adding info about MariLynn's youtube channel, which blows mine away. Especially since she gets enough views to have ads in her videos. She has a lot of fun with her Tarantulas on it. As of the end of 2017, she has 3,255 subscribers, a gain of 600 in 2018! She has 570,800 views for a total of 2.6 Million minutes.
Brent's top 10 favorite photos of 2018:
There are several reasons why I might include a photo here. Some of the photos may look they don't belong in a "best of the year" post, but they may be important to me for other reasons. Some of these are my favorite composed shots of my favorite subjects. Some of these are interesting effects while overcoming challenges to get a usable photo. Here we go in no particular order:
1) Bartholomew County Courthouse (North Side) - Columbus, IN
In 2018, I had noticeably fewer opportunities to go on photo taking day trips. Many of these photos are taken on a couple of the business trips I went on during the year.
The bigger business trip was for a conference in Indianapolis. On the drive there, I visited several small towns in southern Indiana. While I was walking this small town, I heard someone calling my name. It turns out that Charlie, who goes to church with me, also was on a business trip. He was eating dinner outside and I walked right past him.
2) Jesse Owens Olympic Champion Statue
Jesse Owens was the hero of the 1936 Olympics. There is a museum in his honor near where he grew up in the middle of nowhere in Alabama. The museum is a nice place, and this statue was the highlight for me. The lady who operated the museum must not get many visitors and kept making conversation, probably hoping that I wouldn't leave.
When I told my mom about visiting this museum, she mentioned that my grandfather, who died when I was 4, was also a big fan of Jesse Owens. My grandfather was also a competitive jogger in Dallas.
3) Central of Georgia #223 Steam Locomotive
My wife and I went on vacation to Savannah, GA. I like trains and my wife loves steam trains. On the day we were there, they were supposed to have their train run that day. However, the property had just been used by a Hollywood Movie and they couldn't run the trains on this day. We were both disappointed. Instead, we took the roundhouse tour and got a good look at this beauty. I like the colors and tones in this photo even though there was no direct sunlight.
4) Washington County Courthouse - Springfield, KY
On the way to a business trip in Louisville, I stopped by several small towns in Kentucky. With a little daylight left, I went to Springfield with no notes on what to look for. I had passed through this town back in 2006 when I was a photography novice. Back then, this building was the town Courthouse. Now, a new courthouse opened across the street and this building is now a Lincoln Museum.
I love the way the sun hits the front of this building with the storm clouds in the background. I'm using a 10mm wide angle lens and am close as I can get.
5) Cockspur Island Lighthouse at Sunset
When my wife and I went to Savannah, we also took a Tybee Island Dolphin Cruise. For the sunset cruise, they get close to the old Cockspur Island Lighthouse around sunset.
6) Churchill Downs Race: Coming down the home stretch
My business trip to Louisville was held at Churchill Downs, after a day of lectures, we were treated to a night of races. While most of the other attendees were interested in wagering, I was interested in getting action photos. As it turns out, it is no trouble at all to get right up to the track on the ground level, probably because that's far from wagering and comforts. This was quite a soggy day, but the sun was out for this one race.
7) Indianapolis Motor Speedway Gate 1
My trip to Indy just happened to be the week of the Indianapolis 500. Race cars were everywhere, including our hotel. Downtown was quite festive as I walked about. On the Thursday before the race, I actually ventured out to the Speedway. I'm not an auto racing fan, but my mother-in-law is. I was hoping to see some sort of action, but there was none. I did like this photo of the entrance gate.
8) Hot Wheels Legends Tour Nashville: 1950 Mercury Diablo
The people who make Hot Wheels sponsored a series of car shows all around the country where the winner would have their car turned into a toy car. They had a stop in Nashville, and I liked the look of this Merc.
9) Skateland - Memphis, TN
Every so often I find something fantastic that wasn't on my list. This massive neon sign is one of them.
I was passing through Memphis on my way to something else when I was getting hungry. I considered eating at the Panchos here - just as my family used to do quite often as we would pass through town. But I was in a hurry and looking for something quicker.
My GPS told me to take White Station Rd. to get to my next destination. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a massive neon sign, but didn't get a good look at it. All I really saw were two red wings, so my first thought was it was a large neon Pegasus like the one which my dad told me lit up the Dallas skyline when he was a kid.
10) See 7 States from Rock City
My first love in Photography was finding all of the remaining Rock City barns. I was inspired to do this with a book I found in their gift shop around 2004. In the years since then, I've been able to get in contact with the creator of the book and my photographic inspiration. On my trip to Indiana, I've been able to add another three to my total, which now stands at 90. Half of the barns in his book from 1996 are now gone. Many of the ones which remain are faded and tough to read like this one. We had a phone call a couple months after this photo was taken.
If I remember correctly, The first Rock City barn he ever photographed, also in Indiana, fell down a couple of years ago. I still visited and photographed it anyway, even though it is a collapsed pile of wood. I guess I've seen 91.
I had three photos make Flickr's Explore, which is one of the top photos posted to the site each day. It seems like it's never the ones I think should be tops.
Panama City Publishing Co.
Hancock County Courthouse - Hawesville, KY
Southern Kitchen Restaurant - New Market, VA
Other 2017 accomplishments:
I had a couple of published photos this year. My photo of the controversial N.B. Forrest photo along I-65 in Brentwood seems to show up somewhere every year. This year, that photo, along with a photo of a waterfall inside Opryland Hotel appears in the new book "Secret Nashville" by Mason Douglas.
Also, my photo of the Town Clock Church in New Albany, IN appeared in the May 2018 issue of Indiana Preservation Magazine.
There is a website which lets you track how many counties in America you have visited. Someday, I'd like to visit every county in America, but at the end of 2018, I have been to 529 counties, which makes up 16.84% of America. I visited 32 new counties from GA, IN, KY & AL this year.
Now that the best photos are out of the way, what can Brent bore everyone with?
This may be the part where you stop reading. I am a professional number cruncher, so this kind of thing is my cup of tea and probably not yours. I record it for posterity sake.
In 2018, I took more than 17,800 photos. About 16,000 were of my son. (Not really.)
Most of my publishing-worthy photos are uploaded to flickr. I now have a total of 9,947 of which about 300 were uploaded in 2018. These photos have been viewed collectively 12,891,420 times. During 2013, Flickr changed what's considered a "view" making more things count than what used to. As a number cruncher, this irritates me, so 1.2 million views in 2018 doesn't mean as much as it used to. (By comparison, in 2012 I had about 500,000 views.)
2010 was the first year of my website, SeeMidTN.com. My webhost's stats show last year I had 21,214 unique visitors who made 47,900 visits viewing a total of 129,008 page views with 438,594 total hits (the stats exclude the 100,000 hits by robots / spiders / crawlers). the website used 12.92 GB of bandwidth. 41.3% of visitors used Windows which is going down a little every year. 47.8% people browsed with Chrome and 2 people used the older Opera, which is more than MS Edge. I set up a Facebook account which now has 103 followers and a twitter feed with 79 followers. These were set up as a set-it-and-forget-it tools that re-post my other content, but still has room for growth.
In 2015, I set up a Pinterest page which for the most part pins my popular flickr photos. I also have a couple of boards where I pin my favorite photos taken by others, so this is going to skew the data of my original content. Pinterest tells me I have 1002 pins on 15 boards. My most popular pin was the Acme Feed & Seed neon sign. I don't fully understang Pinterest stats but they tell me I now average 16,942 monthly viewers with 443 are engaged.
The highlight of my website is the daily blog. Although in mid 2017 my day job started to take too much of my time and I no longer am able to update it. Blogger.com's count of page views reports I had 325,927 page views in 8 years at the end of 2017, but the counter appears broken now. I wish I could find the page where Google lists the searches people typed in to find me. Mostly, so I could look at the weird ones. once a person typed in "olive pit allergy" to get to my site.
I also have a YouTube channel. Most of my good videos are recordings of my dad's early music groups. All-time, I have 669,400 views with about 15,000 in 2018. A new stat they offer: In 2018, My videos have been watched for 23,600 minutes, making an all-time total of 240,900 minutes. The longest watched video is a recording of "Salvation has been Brought Down" recorded at the Diana Singing, at 45,200 minutes.
This year, I'm adding info about MariLynn's youtube channel, which blows mine away. Especially since she gets enough views to have ads in her videos. She has a lot of fun with her Tarantulas on it. As of the end of 2017, she has 3,255 subscribers, a gain of 600 in 2018! She has 570,800 views for a total of 2.6 Million minutes.
posted by BrentKMoore | 10:09 PM
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