2023 Through My Images

So 2023 just came to an end and it already feels like months ago! I hope 2023 was a good year for you all…it sure was a good one for me! It was a year of many new projects, a beautiful new website, many photography trips and many new awesome friends to share my passion for photography with!

As humans, we tend to develop feelings towards material…for example: This is my favorite pair of shoes or that is my favorite jacket…women will have a favorite purse and so on… In 2023, I created a lot of new images and among them all, I developed some strong feelings! This article will be dedicated to my favorite images of 2023 and why I feel that way about these in particular. I will not only share the technical aspects of each of these images...some of them represent more to me than just an image. For some of them, it's all about the experience behind the scene! So in no particular order, here is 2023 Through My Images!

JUST LIKE A FAIRYTALE

This is an image taken in a Pennsylvania State Park I have wanted to visit for a long time…actually, years in the making of! And it finally happened in 2023! We often talk about social media as being a bunch of algorithm crap and a toxic environment in general. But social media has brought me a lot of wonderful new people in my life! And that specific moment I captured this image, I was with many of those Instagram friends! We organized a trip in which we could meet and shoot together, share some great stories, tell funny jokes…this actually gave me faith on social media because if used correctly, it is a great place to be!

RISING FLAMES

So this one is very special to me because I have tried countless times to get an image I was happy with…years in the making for this one! I visited Mount Kidd every season and the conditions simply wouldn’t cooperate! We could say that the stars never aligned correctly…

During last summer season, it was a real chaos…the foreground was filled with a million of undesirable plants…then every time I went during winter in the past, the sky was as boring as it can be. Don’t get me wrong, I truly love a moody grey sky but could I get a decent colourful one for once? And I think this time I got it right…the stars did align! I had a beautiful pristine foreground, steam raising over the river, gentle frost on every tree, a warm glowy light hitting the peaks and an epic sky to top it all off! Now we are talking!

QUANTUM OF BEAUTY

That image of Sunwapta means a lot to me…we always see the same image of Sunwapta Falls. All we see is an image of the waterfall and the tree island in the middle of the river which makes for a great image! Don’t get me wrong! But there is just more than that there and I challenged myself to do something different. My timing was perfect because the Dogwood, also known as Cornus Canadensis, were in full fresh bloom! I am a big fan of gardening and I bought Dogwood to grow them in my personal garden in Quebec but seeing them in their natural habitat really made me smile! So I made sure to include some in my foreground as they represent the summer in the Rockies for me!

DANCING ON MY OWN

My January trip to Norway was a dream come true but also a nightmare at the same time because the weather was something I wasn’t expecting. Temperatures were way too mild, I had rain, I had wind storms, extremely cloudy skies…this was one of the only times we actually had a clear sky and boy was it pretty! The sun had just gone down so I waited to capture a few images of the blue hour and waited a little longer for the aurora to finally show up and dance with me for a couple hours! It was magical!

BLAZING BEAUTY

Over the years, I have travelled to some of the most beautiful places on Earth. I have also travelled many times in my own country and the Canadian Rockies just feel like my home away from home. There is one place in particular that I cherish more than all others: Mount Chester! The hike itself is absolutely breathtaking. It is approximately 9km long if you count the way in and out together and the elevation gain is around 400 meters so there is some dedication involved in that one! Bringing a heavy camera bag, a tripod, waders, extra clothing, snacks…all of this in order to capture just a few images? YES, that is 100% correct! And it is also 100% worth it!

FROZEN MOMENTUM

Capturing landscape images can be quite challenging and especially in today’s social media era! We see images everywhere! Every location has been photographed! Right? Wrong…this is one of those pictures that I was extremely proud to find and capture. As far as I can remember, I don’t recall seeing an image of that mountain. I was driving the Icefield Parkway with my friend Gina Yeo and we saw a couple of creeks so we parked in a safe spot and hiked up one of those creeks! I really loved the S shape created by the water cascading from one rock to the next which leads our eyes farther onto those lovely peaks catching some sun during a storm break…what a moment that was!

TOGETHER WE LIVE

Together We Live was captured on a very cold winter morning just after sunrise. Sunrise was beautiful! I had some time to burn while waiting for a friend so I decided to drive around when all of a sudden, a thick layer of fog drifted into the valley and temporarily hid the mountain only to unveil the peak for a couple minutes then it was gone again. The light on the foreground was so soft and diffused and since the sun never gets really high during the winter season, the tree shadows were about half a kilometer long…nah, maybe not that long! But they were really long!

DIVINE

I mean, the beauty of photography is to look at normal scenes and to find elements, lines, shapes that all work together. This wasn’t a shot that would literally jump in lots of people’s eyes. But as soon as I got there, I immediately saw those zig zagging lines and I knew I wanted to capture something. That specific location is in Senja, Norway and we saw a few locals hanging around there on that specific morning. Were they there to capture some images? Nope! They were there simply to enjoy a sunrise after not seeing the sun for almost two months! That part of Norway is so far up north that at its highest, the sun won’t even come above the horizon. It was a cold crisp winter morning but the atmosphere sure was present!

EPHEMERAL INSTANT

This image represents a lot to me…first of all, I love that mountain! Mount Chephren truly is one amazing piece of rock! I spent a lot of time near it in the past…but why does that specific morning mean so much to me? It was the image I captured on November 9th 2023 which is the day I started co-hosting my very first photography workshop! I was talking about 2023 being a year of many new projects…hosting my own workshops was one of them! I did work in other photography workshops as a collaborator in the past…but the November 2023 one was my first one under the name DantyArt Photography and it was a fantastic adventure! The testimonials speak for themselves.

…IN CONCLUSION

So in conclusion, since 2023 was a very very positive year as a whole, I was seriously sad to see it end. But I am also super hyped for the new year to come! I will do my best to make 2024 an even better one! And I sincerely wish that you all have a wonderful New Year!

And if you would like to read more useful content about image composition tips, you should have a look at FINDING GREAT LEADING LINES FOR YOUR IMAGES! Not only do I share images of other favorite places of mine, I guide you through how I used every element of the scene to guide the viewers’ eyes to the main subject!