Our favorite photographs of 2009

One of my favorites from 2009.Check out what we consider our favorite photographs of 2009. As we wrote in our story in Sunday's Currents section, we are often greeted with amazement when we tell people how many frames we shoot at an assignment. Of course, it varies depending on assignment, but in an attempt to average things out, I figured we shoot more than 100,000 frames a year between John and I.

That's a lot of shutter movement!

But I'm a firm believer that if you want to make an omelet, you have to break a couple of eggs. I would prefer that no one sees the broken eggs, so to speak, so I often delete, or at least not download from the digital camera's card, all of those out of focus, overexposed, or just plain rotten photos that won't ever see the light of day anyway. Thanks to modern technology editing through all those frames is much easier than it used to be. The modern equivalent of the light table we use is a program called Photo Mechanic made by Camera Bits. It makes working with that kind of volume easier.

Some photos, like the ones John and I picked as our favorites this year, just stand out in our minds from the moment we see them. They get filed away, set aside for contest entries and our annual photographers' favorites section.
The photo gallery below includes the six photographs (three from each of us) that were published in the paper and an additional three apiece that didn't make the cut in the paper, but were still among our favorites.

Enjoy!

So what if the weather's bad

GAC student.I find it ironic that when Mother Nature really throws her worst at us, it's often the photographers who end up venturing out to find a picture. Let's face it, when the wind chill is -40F and the snow is coming down in flakes the size of Volkswagons there are good photos to be found.

Usually our first accumulating snowfall of the year is a couple of inches. Just enough to cover the grass. Ease us into winter. Not this year. An 8-inch blast of white stuff, followed by single-digit temps and some wind to boot, shoves us into winter. Usually these are the last conditions anyone wants to venture out in. But this is the stuff I'm compelled to venture out in regularly.

Mike Endreson blows his way through a drift in front of his Mankato home Thursday morning.

A day off from school made for a full house Thursday at a sledding hill in Mankato's Sibley Park.

As storytellers and newsmen at heart, John and I have headed out into conditions that make most people curl up inside with a good movie and wait for the snow to let up. In our case, people want to see just how bad it is outside. They want to see whether or not they should venture out to work or church. What's been canceled due to the weather?

A pair of City of Mankato snowplows work their way down Riverfront Drive during Wednesday's snowstorm.

Don't take me wrong, I respect the weather. I take "no unnecessary travel" warnings seriously. As a sailor and a former pilot I have seen what bad things the weather can do to people. But when the weather gets ugly, that's unusual, and it's news. And I'm probably out in it somewhere.