Your favorites from Wednesday Landscapes 2018

Anyone who contributed a photo to the 2018 Wednesday Landscapes threads is invited to select the photo that they’re happiest with from among the photos they submitted during 2018 and repost it here. It would be great (but not essential) to add a sentence or two about why that particular image was selected.

I selected this image from the coastal Ma-le’l Dunes in northern California (originally posted 31 January) for four reasons: (1) a lot of elements (subject, composition, texture, patterns, form) came together for me in this image to convey what I’d been trying to find in several weeks of almost daily hikes in the dunes, (2) it took a lot of work to finally get it (most of which involved figuring how to be at the right place at the right time to get the lighting I wanted); (3) I like the optical illusion that makes the ripples seem to vibrate (Glenn McC identified it as the McKay Illusion); and (4) I like the element of chance that made the image possible—I'd never seen such a nice convergence of tracks in all my dune wanderings, and given the rising wind and the rapidly changing sun angle relative to the dune face, the window of opportunity for making the image lasted only about 15 minutes.

Everything came together nicely in with paring shot of Haystack Rock, Cannon Beach< oregon.

My favorite pick was a toss up between one taken in the Ma-L'el Dunes and one from a series taken on Hunter Island, South Carolina. The boneyard beach on Hunter Island is my choice, first posted in June. We had no idea that we would stumble into this landscape. The harsh midday sun presented problems, but simply walking around, not knowing how extensive these huge ghost trees went was a bit mind numbing. It was like being on a set for some post apocalyptic movie. It's amazing how nature rips itself apart, then rebuilds. The beach was eerie with only the sound of waves lapping the shore and a few birds. I'd love to return in better light. Happy New Year to all. Thanks to Leslie for opening this thread weekly.

Possibly my favourite image, most definitley one of my favourite places. Temagami Ontario. I've been hiking these woods and paddling these lakes since I was a teenager and with any luck I'll continue to do so for some years to come.

I chose this photo kayaking and canoeing on the Kern river in 1986 as my favorite submission, largely for nostalgic reasons. I believe that it was taken on the Forks of the Kern section of the river in the Golden Trout Wilderness in the Southern Sierra Mountains, a 13 or 14 mile, class 4+ run (or class 5, if you run everything, which I never did), with a one or two mile hike to the put-in. Back then, we sometimes ran it twice in a weekend, and it was rare to see anyone else on the river. I still kayak but, with age, have backed off considerably in the difficulty and risk that I willingly pursue.

The photo was taken with a Nikonos II underwater camera with a 35mm lens on Kodachrome film.

I selected this photograph which I took along one of Bar Harbor, Maine's shorelines. Most of the other shorelines are much rockier and much more dramatic. In this instance, the ocean floor's slope to the shore is much gentler. I was drawn to its subtlety.