An unusually large portion of my best photos from 2008-- eight of 20-- were shot as "hail marys". In other words, I wasn't looking through the viewfinder when they were taken.

The classic "hail mary" is when the photog is in a crowd and can't see the subject well, so he or she holds the camera overhead and guesses where to point it. None of mine were taken in that kind of circumstance. Here are some other reasons to use some type of hail mary technique:

Need to get low

Even lying on the water-covered sand wouldn't have gotten me low enough for this shot-- to get the lowest possible angle with my wide lens, the camera was upside-down with the viewfinder only inches above the sand.

Lying down would've been possible here, but I wanted to shoot quickly and move on. No time for careful composition. This style is sometimes called a "hail mary from hell".

In the above shot the camera is being held upside down below the rim of the pool as I kneel at the edge. Sitting on the edge of the pool and looking through the viewfinder just would've been too high.

My body would be in the way

As the zookeeper clambered among the kids on the floor holding the cockroach close to their noses, I would've had to push kids out of my way to keep up with the zookeeper's hand, all the while sitting on the floor to look through the viewfinder. Instead I set the focus at about one foot, then held the camera at my arm's length, reaching it into the clusters of kids.

I knew my favorite angle would require the camera to be just behind and below the fish tosser's forearm, in front of the tosser's pelvis. So it would've been awkward to put my body approximately where the tosser's knees were.

My body is too slow

This was a hail mary because I can't run very fast while looking through the viewfinder, although I'd like to learn to do it. (We were actually stopped at this moment, but we had been running during most of the other hundred frames I shot of the kid and dog.) And since I was holding the camera at arm's length, I was able to get it closer to the fangs without risking a leg.

My body is a tip-off

This woman's umbrella had once previously blown inside-out, so I wanted to position myself in front of her and be ready in case it happened again. But I didn't want her to be aware of me in advance-- she might have a reaction to the camera. So I walked in front of her, facing mostly away from her while the camera was held out to my side already pointing backwards at her (since I can't hold it behind me with good aim). I walked, looking over my shoulder, ready to shoot even before my body would be able to turn fully around to face her.

I'm not sure why I shot this one hail-mary-style. It was shot from chest level with a tiny point-n-shoot camera which has a big bright viewing screen and no viewfinder, yet I didn't even look at the screen. Even if I had been "on duty" with the usual SLR, I probably would've shot without crouching and putting my face up to the camera. I suppose it's because I didn't want to get the attention of the little girl, and it's easy to compose the shot without even looking at the camera.

Another unusual thing about my faves from '08: six of them never made it into the paper. Hmmm....

The News Tribune's photos of the year have been posted here.
Happy New Year!

Write a comment on which image you like the best and why you like it.

To see each photographer's selects check out the Year in Photos page.

When shooting a story about the retail biz and Xmas shopping I got this lucky shot of a shopper picking up her bag of purchases. I find it to be quirky and amusing. I was tempted to push for using it in the paper, but another shot was probably a little more on-target, story-wise:

So the shot of lone pedestrian passing the show window is what ran. I was happy with it, but still sorta wish that the arty-er, "moment" shot had run instead.

But that would've just been a photographer's indulgence.

This recent feature picture with pretty light also has lots of lens flare. But rather than degrading the photo and requiring lots of photoshop work to overcome it, the flare, to me, is aesthetically pleasing.

It's a wide-angle shot, so it has the common string of "ghosts"-- those colored spots in are usually in a line from the light source through the center of the uncropped photo. Besides the ghosts, it also what look like rays emanating from the sun (which is out of the frame).

This shot got me thinking about other examples of flare that looks good. Such as this old shot:

The flare in this wide angle shot of an avalanche canon (a recoilless rifle in military parlance) washes out the parts of the canon next to the fireball and the guy on the left. Should I try to compensate for that in photoshop? Not at all.

Also note that the shadows throughout the shot are red, which is caused by the wash of stray light flooding the rest of the image from the fireball.

This shot also has little ghosts, which are not lined up as they were in the previous example. They're from tiny droplets on the front of the lens. Their shape shows that the lens has a seven-bladed aperture. In the old days it could have been taken as evidence that I was a Nikon shooter, not Canon, whose lenses usually had 6 or 8 blades.

An aside: this is one the few shots that couldn't be done well with a digital camera. The tremendous dynamic range of color negative film was essential.

In this shot of a tall ship was with an 80-200 zoom. Any telephoto would produce similar flare, which is primarily a wash of reddish light that shows up mostly in the shadows. Notice that the far trees, which were dark, have been overwhelmed with the red light from the flare, but the water at left and right is bright enough that its blue color isn't overcome by the flare.

In this old shot of a worker on a log boom, taken with a 600mm telephoto looking toward a sunset, has that similar reddish effect, but added to it is the flare from that familiar string of ghosts.

Ghosts? What ghosts? Why don't we see them, you ask? These ghosts are so large that they more-than-fill the frame, so we don't see their edges.

The size of ghosts is determined by the curvature and spacing of the elements within the lens, but even more by the size of the aperture. The actual size of the aperture-- not just the f-number. The actual size is determined by the focal length and what f-number the lens is set to. The ghosts in wide angle shot, especially with a high f-number, are small. In a long telephoto, they're huge, even at f16.

Let's also note that the pastel effect isn't solely from flare. If you looked through a long black tube at the scene, the atmosphere itself would also show a warm glow.

This last shot-- a telephoto shot which happened to be taken a minute before the first shot at top-- demonstrates how the huge ghosts are created. The wash of color is green, not because the sun near the horizon was green, but because the collection of more-than-filling-the-frame ghosts are of various colors, they are overlapping, and, in this case, they add up to green.

And it sure doesn't look like what my eye balls saw.

Dean J. Koepfler/The News Tribune

A series of wave clouds, part of a standing lenticular cloud formation over Mount Rainier, catches the waning rays of light last in this photo taken from the Gig Harbor side of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge.

Drew Perine/The News Tribune

A brief break in the cloud cover allows Monday’s setting sun to bathe Anderson Island ferry traffic in golden light off the shore of Steilacoom. But as poet Robert Frost famously wrote, “nothing gold can stay.”

Janet Jensen/The News Tribune

Clouds form over Mount Rainier while others float over the Puyallup Valley on a typical fall day Wednesday, December 3, 2008.