Even if I didn't look for a specific subject for POTD, I attended enough events and travelled enough to capture lots of images.
Obviously, not every picture I took was great, or even good. Naturally, however, having taken more than 365 distinct photos, I have more favourites than I usually do.
But there are more photos that I shot, that I never showed, that weren't used for my POTD project, that I also really liked, and those tended to be overlooked.
If you want to see my POTD project, you can see them in my Flickr album. This year, instead of sharing my favourite photos of 2017, I'm going to share the other photos that made up this year. The ones that, for the most part, didn't see the light of day, this year.
There are, however, a few that made it into blog posts or were featured in my Flickr album, but not as a POTD post.
I sorted through 360 days of photos. The final five days were not yet taken or were used as a POTD. From those 360 days, I narrowed it down to 78 photos. And from those 78 photos, I picked the 20 that you see in this post.
Let's take a look at the photos that weren't used as my POTD but made an impression of my year.
Warning: one is not safe for work.
When I headed out for my first POTD shot, on January 1, I had one objective: to find a school bus that was parked in a farmer's field. DW and I had seen it many times on our bike rides out to Richmond, and I had always wanted to photograph this lonely vehicle. I hoped it was surrounded by an untouched blanket of fresh snow and when I found it, I wasn't disappointed.
The afternoon sun, coming low on the horizon, cast an orange glow that saturated the bus. I wished that I could have gotten closer, but the side of the road, with my long zoom lens, would have to do.
On my return to my end of town, I passed a farm where I could see hundreds of crows flying eastward, away from the setting sun. I've noticed this trend and have wondered what caused such a mass-murder of crows to make such flights. I pulled over and photographed the birds in flight, but what took my attention even more were the crows that had stopped to rest and had filled a tree by the farmhouse.
If anyone knows why crows behave this way, I'd love to hear about it.
Over the winter, my family tried to get outdoors whenever the weather permitted. In previous winters, DW and I would take the kids skiing but because we were anxiously waiting for me to meet with a surgeon to investigate problems with my feet, I decided that I would skip the slopes for the season.
But that didn't stop us from going to Mont Tremblant.
While DW and DD14 skied, DD16 (who didn't want to ski) and I explored the village and took the gondola to the peak, where I saw the trees and poles that were encrusted in snow and ice.
My camera, of course, was there to capture it.
One of my favourite spots in Ottawa, for photography, is where the Rideau River meets the Ottawa River, at Rideau Falls. It was easy to stop along Sussex Drive on my way home from work, and I did so several times over the year.
But on one day, as I made my way to one of the lookouts, I saw the Canadian flag reflected off a window by one of the facilities nearby. The wind would periodically unfurl the flag, which would reflect off the glass. When I saw one glimpse of a perfectly flying flag reflected, I had to take a shot.
Unfortunately, as I waited and shot until my arms grew tired, I never caught a perfect reflection. But I came close.
The blue of the sky, at least, contrasted with the red in the flag, made for an interesting composition.
For those who have followed my blog over the years, you know that I take lots of pictures of another Ottawa waterfall, at Hog's Back. My previous photo project was a year-long, weekly visit to the falls. For my POTD, I knew that I would be back over the year.
I did include various angles of the falls for my POTD project, but one shot that I didn't use was a wide angle at a far corner, looking down the falls. The shot gives a unique perspective of the attraction, and makes me look at the falls in a new way.
My next shot is one of the most colourful of the year. It hardly needs an introduction. If you've never been to Ottawa in the spring, you have to come to the annual Tulip Festival.
Enough said.
Other colours that I saw, this year, were those that were painted on the walls of Morón, in Cuba. While this small town is economically poor, it is rich in life.
I shot a lot of sunsets over the years but surprisingly, this year, not a single one that I captured made me go "Wow!" Instead, I tried to place subjects in my photos, with the sunset only as a background. While my best sunset shots became my POTD, there was one shot of the foot bridge at the Britannia Yacht Club that also made me reflect on how it's hard to take a bad sunset photo along the Ottawa River.
In searching for a worthwhile POTD, I drove around a lot of neighbourhoods in the cities of Ottawa and Gatineau. For years, I wanted to stop at a small park along the Ruisseau de la Brasserie (Brewer's River) and my project gave me that opportunity. Not only is the park lovely, with flowers and artwork, but the river itself is full of little treasures.
Several times through the year, I tried nabbing a good sunset photo at the Champlain Lookout, in Gatineau Park, without success. I would have even settled for a sky with interesting clouds, but every time I made my way up this winding and rolling parkway, the sky gave me nothing that I felt was POTD-worthy.
So, instead, I resorted to selfies. Just so that my time wasn't completely wasted.
If you're Canadian, you know that 2017 was our nation's 150th anniversary. Across the country, celebrations took place that brought people together. Being in the nation's capital, we had our fair share of events, and I tried to get to as many of them as I could.
I visited the Byward Market countless times, and on several occations I tried to capture the giant Ottawa letters in the York Street square, which had been converted into an inspiration exhibit. Naturally, other visitors flocked to the letters for group pictures. It became a challenge to capture the Ottawa display without including a random passer-by, but it wasn't impossible.
This year, I visited my home city of Montreal on several occasions, to find where I lived as a young child and to reacquaint myself with family. In my explorations of this fabulous, world-class metropolis, I discovered some fascinating neighbourhoods, including Griffintown and the redevelopment around the Peel Basin.
If you've ever taken the train from Ottawa to Montreal, you could only miss this view if you weren't looking out the window.
We've now passed the halfway point of this post, and have now reached the spot where my NSFW photo appears. Consider this to be fair warning.
Because I spent every day thinking about places to explore for my daily photo, I didn't put a lot of time into my photo club: specifically, my model-meetup group. But I did attend one shoot.
One of our group's models, Sienna Hayes, announced that she was moving to San Francisco and would be attending one final shoot in Ottawa, before she left. She said that she was not planning to return to Ottawa for some time, so I signed up for the shoot.
I've worked with Sienna at a couple of shoots in the past, and she's great to work with. All of her photos display grace and elegance, regardless of the setting.
This final shoot was at an abandoned farmhouse, south of Ottawa, and included a run-down barn. We set up in the farmhouse kitchen and what might have been a living room. We also took photos outside, in the overgrown bushes, as well as in the barn loft. It was a beautifully hot and humid day, and I have to give Sienna credit for maintaining poise despite the onslaught of mosquitoes.
My favourite shots of her were in the empty living room, where we swept the dust and dirt from the floor and used natural light through a window to illuminate her. I used both Snapseed for some filter effects and PaintShop Pro for others, including one of my favourites.
If you want to see more of my photos from this shoot, you can visit my 500px gallery. But, again, I warn you: these photos are definitely not safe for viewing at work.
Over the year, I made mental notes of subjects that I wanted to include for my POTD project, and one of those subjects was sunflowers.
I found a few in a garden, just off Prince of Wales Drive, near the Experimental Farm. This garden was another Canada 150 exhibit, and it took wandering the course that was mowed through the field to find the sunflowers.
I overexposed this shot to create the white background, where there was originally blue sky.
Earlier in the year, I had passed the Canadensis garden and had observed a series of wooden posts, emerging from the snow-covered field. Not knowing what it was, I strudged through the knee-deep snow and captured these posts, with their tops each painted in a different colour, and used that for a POTD.
I wish I had waited until the summer to get the proper effect.
I don't usually attend auto shows. I do like to attend the Italian Festival, on Preston Street, and I always drool over the Ferraris. But when a bunch of classic cars showed up at my father-in-law's residence, I couldn't resist checking out these pristine machines with him.
One of the old beauties that was on display was a 1941 Chrysler. With its contours and curves, it was screaming for some closeups with a very wide-angle lens.
Andrew Hayden Park is a popular destination for photo buffs, and I visited many times in 2017. I went on both cloudy and sunny days, in the afternoons and at sunset.
On of my favourite spots is the pond, where you can get stunning silhouettes and reflections, particularly if the sunset is just right.
I've already mentioned Montreal. On my most-recent visit, at the end of October, my mother joined me and DW as we revisited her old home, and she led us on a beautiful drive along the river, where she lived in many places before I was born. We capped that wonderful day off with a visit from her youngest sister, her husband, and one of their daughters and her family.
We wandered the streets of Old Montreal, and it was on this day that I was tempted to leave Ottawa and return to where I was born.
It didn't happen.
I had already taken my POTD and was heading downtown to meet a friend for a pint and to catch up, when I saw the sun, setting on the horizon, fighting to show itself through heavy cloud cover. I had already included the Museum of Nature in an earlier POTD, but just because I had my shot for the day didn't mean I couldn't keep capturing images.
In December, I began to think about the end of my POTD project, and how it seemed to make the year pass quickly. I had a limited number of days to capture the images that I had envisioned. And as I knocked each location or subject off my list, I started feeling more and more of a sense of accomplishment. I had given myself a challenge and I seemed to have been able to meet the challenge without it seeming like work. I was able to explore my city and find new discoveries and appreciate what I had already become familiar with.
While I did stay in areas that I knew very well, I also went to places that were new to me. Some, I didn't know existed until I stumbled upon them. And when I decided on capturing a particular image for my POTD, I still captured other subjects around me. The shooting didn't stop.
The processing of the photos could also be a challenge, as sometimes my inspiration came late in the day, when I was pressed for time, and had to get the appearance of the image just right, and I had to publish the photo on social media. Sometimes, I failed, but in doing so, I learned a great deal.
I don't know what I'm going to do for a new photo challenge, but when I do, I'm going to make sure that I continue to turn my camera to other things around me, to capture as much as I can to represent my life, in the year, in photos.
Thanks for following my blog. I wish you and your loved ones peace and prosperity in 2018.
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