Favourite Photos of 2011

Inspired by Jim Goldstein's annual "photos of the year" blog posting, I've come up with my own list of my favourite photos from the past year. It has been a tough selection, given the massive number of shots to sift through, but I have managed to narrow the list down to ten photos. In alphabetical order they are:

1. Failing with Flair. This photo of a salmon was taken during the fall salmon run on the Ganaraska River in Port Hope, Ontario. The fish flung itself with abandon at the dam, without a hope of getting up the fish ladder (well to the left of the shot).
2. Frozen Lakeshore. Back in January, when the temperature had plummeted to around -12 C, ice was beginning to build up along the shore of Lake Ontario. It was too funky to pass up.
3. Lighthouse at Peggy's Cove. In May, I was out in Halifax, Nova Scotia for a few days. On one of those days, I drove out to nearby Peggy's Cove, one of the few remaining lighthouses on the Nova Scotia coastline (most were decommissioned a few years ago by the federal government as unnecessary). The shot was originally intended as a study for a sunset photo, but the weather turned and the shot was not possible. I still like this study, though.
4. Orchard in the Mist. In early December, there was a particularly misty morning on which I decided to go out into farm country on an extended photo shoot. Near the end of the trip, I did some shots of a fog-shrouded orchard on a hill. This shot was one which I processed as a pseudo-HDR, in order to impart a bit of an eerie glow to the image.
5. Out of the Bath. During the summer, I took a little trip to the Toronto Zoo to take some shots of the animals (okay, mainly just the tigers). This particular Amur tiger was wallowing in his bath tub for a while on the rather hot day, and suddenly jumped out before resuming his patrol of the perimeter of the enclosure.
6. Sun Rising over Waning Season. On a morning in November, I drove around farm country to see what shots there were. In Perrytown, Ontario, I came across this vista of the early morning light against fog, clouds, and a this tree on the roadside. Since the dynamic range was far too much for my camera's sensor, I did a bracketed exposure to convert into an HDR image.
7. Sun Rising through Distant Trees. Earlier on the same morning as Orchard in the Mist, I shot this image in the farm country between Port Hope and Cobourg, Ontario.
8. Town Hall Through the Trees. This is a false colour infrared shot of the town hall of Port Hope, Ontario, through the trees of the park across the street. Given the nature of the nearly black lens filter, I needed to shoot a long exposure, which imparted an even more dreamlike quality to the scene than usual.
9. View of Old Quebec. Last month, I was on holiday in Quebec City, mostly to eat and shoot (and, eventually, leave). I used my tilt-shift lens when shooting a bracketed exposure, which I then converted into an HDR image.
10. Wave Hitting Icy Short at Dusk. Back in February, I tried to shoot some of the wave action against the ice on the shore of Lake Ontario. By that point, the ice had accumulated to the point where it effectively extended the shoreline a few dozen metres into the lake. Getting out that far was rather difficult (it was, after all, ice), and I had to make sure I stayed out of the spray zone; note all the accumulated ice shards in the foreground.

Got your own set of favourites for the year? Put them into a blog entry or a Flickr or 500px gallery, and post the URL in the comments!