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Why these are my 10 favorite photos of 2019 (and my memories when capturing them)
2019 was one of the best years for my photography. In this video, I go through my favorite photos and talk about the memories when capturing them. They might not be my most liked pictures of the year but it's important to remember that photography is about capturing memories and the feelings you had during that moment, not about creating the picture that gets the most likes online. I also think it's important to review your pictures every year (or multiple times a year in my case) to learn what was great and what wasn't.
WATCH NEXT:
- Tofino Roadtrip: https://youtu.be/q9hWIuUUW_w
- Waking Up To Get The Shot: https://youtu.be/Rnkuiob3dCw
Best of 2019 album: https://lbaphotographie.ca/best-of-2019
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[Music] [Music] [Music] good morning everybody so today I want to talk about my favorite shot I got this year and the memories that go with them let's go [Music] this year was filled of adventures so i started by moving for eight months in Vancouver and from there I could go to Whistler a few times I visited Rockies and went down to the u.s. west coast and much more all of this meant that had more opportunities to take better shots this year for those who don't know me yet I'm Lloyd Benoit Alfred a young photographer and filmmaker on a journey to become better at this art so if you want to follow this adventure be sure to hit the big subscribe button right below so I got my first shot only a few days after getting to Vancouver and I remember walking around with my friend and seeing this nice bright yellow building on Granville Island with the harbor in front and the cityscape in the background so decided to test my new and the filter and the thousand filter to get this nice smooth water in the foreground of the picture and also the buildings in the background and I think it really came out nice with the nice reflection of this city in the water and the boats being perfectly sharp so for the second shot it's a shot of science world at night with fog all around and I remembered at night being in my living room and just running outside when I saw that fog came out on the street and it's always actually really hard to tell how special this scene was without showing how it looked like during the day so here's a video of what it looked like during the knee and you can see it's already pretty nice with fall squeak around in science world there but it's nothing as special as the fog all around so if you look at another video of the same place but at night you can see it's completely different it's not at all the same scene as during dating I don't know if you can see right now but it's to me crazy there's fog everywhere usually you can pretty well see to downtown right down me yes false Creek and we should have a good view on the safe state line but right now just just dark fog everywhere it's really really easy I decided to go with this a little bit more blue look because when I was there I felt like it was a sit out of something like Blade Runner not allowed your normal just Vancouver cityscape at night so I wanted to give this look a little bit more futuristic and that's why I decided to use a split tone line for the first time and to bring out the blue which is not the natural color of the picture for sure my fruit shot is a shot up to quino's Harbor and I should have it on the wall right here so let me take it down and as you can see I think it really shows what tiffin is all about so Tiffany is surrounded by water so for sure we have the water here and this is a nice little Harbor right beside Tiffany and the Mears Islands which are one of the main attractions around Tiffany so I think it really shows a lot of things that we would see in the female in this job and one she was really scared it's a long exposure and I was scared at the dock here that's moving a little bit would not come out nice but I think in the end it's a good thing that's moving a little bit because it shows that a water has movement in it and that's one thing that sometimes you lose with a long exposure one thing that's missing in this shot is surfing but I actually did a video about it so and their trip there with my sister so if you want to see that there like is me right here in the corner so my fourth shot is a shot of the Golden Gate Bridge and I knew this would be a highlight of my trip but it didn't know I would be taking so many shots there I actually took something like 250 shots during two days which is totally crazy but the bridge was just nice from whatever angle I was so I took a few the night before and then she came out not too bad it's actually pretty cool and the one with the cars passing by with a long exposure of the cars passing by is actually pretty good looking but these are not the ones that I preferred I should have a few printed out so one of the first one is this one I decided to put the the bridge a little bit smaller in the center here and at the bottom of the shot just because we're not used to having it there because the rocks in the bottom were a bit too distracting and I want to type a lot of white space around to really bring your eye on the bridge right here so this is a first one and after I have a second one here with the rocks that we can actually see so this one is pretty nice with the rocks here the water that's a little bit more smooth with the long exposure and debris cheek and not that big not huge I always wanted to take it a little bit smaller because I want to bring your eyes to the bridge and show the surroundings not just a bridge but these are not my two preferred shots in the end my shot that I prefer is actually a very simple one so if we look at this one right here it's actually out of luck that I got this one so we were walking back I was done I already took like something 200 shot that morning so I was like I'm done for the day but when walking back I just turned around and I saw the bridge perfectly centered between these two rocks so this really brings your eyes on the on the bridge and what I think is really interesting here is that you don't need to see the whole bridge for you to know that's the Golden Gate Bridge because it's such an iconic place that anybody knows that this is the bridge the Golden Gate Bridge without having to see the whole shot so this is a nice simple shot that really brings your eye into the subject which is here the Golden Gate Bridge my fifth picture is a shot of Vancouver at night and actually went out that night to take pictures of the fireworks but when coming back home I decided to stop along Falls Creek to take different shots of the city and I and most of them came out pretty well but the one that I prefer is the one that just as before with the yellow building the city in the background and the harbor in the front so this is one of my preferred location to take pictures in Vancouver and if you want to learn about the other ones and we'll have a video that's gonna come out soon so be sure to subscribe to this channel to be notified when it comes out so picture number six is a picture from my trip in the Rockies it's actually not my best one or this year because a clouds a little bit weird the light is not as best as it could be on the mountains but it's still a really nice one because the location is just amazing but it's actually really hard in pictures and that's when finger realize this here is it's really really hard to show a scale up these mountains instead of pictures because when you look at a shot like this one you think okay they do look like big mountains you don't really realize that these are 2000 meter high and they're really really impressive when you get right in front of them I also have a video with this coming up about this trip so stay tuned for that one shot number seven is a picture of the forest on fire and this is actually crazy because it was the last day of our trip and we're telling yourselves how lucky were not to have any wildfires during the whole trip and then we were approaching when we're approaching our B&B we realized there was a fire and we're telling herself it's not gonna be close to where we stay but I actually ended up being right in front of our B&B we were pretty lucky because there was a river between us and the fire and the fire was already under control so it wasn't a problem for us to stay there but actually made really cool shots and my preferred one is the one at night because it was actually really impressive it's hard to send a picture but it was actually really impressive to see the light in the burning forest at night so a picture in the brain is actually one of the craziest days I had last year because we decided to go to Whistler and buy a $78 ticket to go up the gondola to the top to see the views and realize when getting to the top we didn't see anything at all it was completely covered with fog and the clouds so we just couldn't see anything and the beanie were a little disappointed but ended up being one of the best days for me to take pictures so I actually got these really nice shots that we can see here of the gondolas normally it's a pretty boring shot with the forest in the background but here the fog just adds so much the shot I really makes it nice I also got this one a forest and of the forest and I miss in-between and I really like miss in this context because I really adds depth to the picture so he was only the forest I would see we wouldn't get this sense of death and these layers of forest that we can see with the fog or the clouds being inside of the forest so this is a really nice shot that I really like but then there's also this one so this one really shows what was happening that day so we were going up the chairs and not even knowing where we were going we had no idea what was around and I really like this one we don't even know if we're going up and down which really shows what we were feeling that thing my pre freak shot is actually the most simple of one that I capturing it's just a fog here on the bridge so really shows what we were feeling that day that it was that when we were walking around we wouldn't see anything in front of us or around us and here you just see the path going forward our eyes so far following the path when you look at this picture and it just disappears there's nothing and that's exactly what we had trained today and that's exactly what we were feeling when we were looking around that thing so I really think this really shows the emotions we were getting during that day and the feelings we had when walking around at the top of Whistler in clouds so also a fun thing to learn is that even if the weather is terrible never decided to not go out and shoot because of what is terrible because these meet some of my coolest shots of the whole year and the signing to still go up in the clouds and taking shots my fingers were full of [ __ ] my name shot is actually one I took back when I came back here and on my college it's one that I took early in the morning because I knew there were gonna be missed and I really liked this shot because the miss really helps separating the trees was the nice cover in the background the rock in the middle ground and the water in the foreground I also really liked here the calm water but it's just not come enough to have a nice little wrinkles that really helps show that there's actually one in a friend it's not just a mirror or something like that that's doing the reflection so I really like this nice simple shot of the autumn and if you want to learn more about these shots and how it took them I actually have a whole video that talks about it so gonna put the link right up top here so this is my tenth and last shot here it's actually one that I took a few weeks after the previous one and it's again a shot I took early in the morning because I wanted to get the mist around but I went out taking landscapes I wasn't planning to take this shot at all actually canoe just came out of nowhere and I just took my camera grabbed a few shots and this turned out pretty well I'm actually really happy here with the fog because I made the whole background disappear so you don't see the cottages you don't see the trees too much you don't see all this distraction and your eye is drawn directly onto the canoe in the middle of the mist one thing I did change on this picture that actually made a huge difference is that the color here if we go back to the original one or she pretty blueish some more colder temperature of the picture but I liked the more warmer ones because that's what actually what I was feeling in the morning so when they're always that side the Sun was rising so all the clothes around were more yellow and warmer and that's what I was feeling so that's what I tried to replicate here I think it's time to end this video it's already dark outside and I realized it was going down so quickly so Frankford listening at this video I hope you learned that the best shots are the ones that bring back memories not unless or the one with the perfect composition with less noise or whatever every technical aspect in photographing if you want to see my best shots this year I'm gonna have a link below with an album with about hundred pictures that are the best ones I took this year and also if you want to learn more about filmmaking or photography be sure to subscribe below and hit the like button to let me know that you liked this video see you next year for more videos
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What is this video about?
2019 was an incredible year for photography. I moved to Vancouver for eight months, which opened up so many opportunities to explore new places and capture moments I wouldn't have gotten otherwise. In this video, I'm sharing my ten favorite photos from the year and talking about the memories attached to each one.
What I want to emphasize is that these aren't necessarily my most technically perfect shots, or the ones that got the most likes online. They're the ones that matter to me because they capture a feeling, a moment, a memory. That's what photography is really about—preserving how you felt when you pressed the shutter.
The photos span some pretty different places and conditions. There's a bright yellow building on Granville Island in Vancouver, Science World shrouded in fog at night (which genuinely felt like a Blade Runner scene), the Tofino harbor with its characteristic long exposure smoothness, multiple takes on the Golden Gate Bridge from different angles, and some moody forest and mountain shots from the Rockies. There's even a photo of an actual wildfire near our accommodation—a crazy moment that turned into some of my best work of the year.
One of my favorite lessons from this year is that bad weather doesn't mean bad shots. Some of my coolest images came from days when I almost decided not to shoot because of fog, clouds, or poor light. The fog at Whistler, for instance, which completely obscured the view, ended up creating this beautiful sense of depth and mystery that you just wouldn't get on a clear day. The lesson is simple: always go out and shoot, even when conditions seem difficult.
I also realized how important it is to review your work regularly—whether that's monthly, yearly, or multiple times throughout the year. Looking back at what resonated with me, what I reached for again and again, helps me understand what kind of photography I'm drawn to and what I want to keep improving on.
If you want to see the full selection of my best 2019 work, I've put together an album with about 100 photos on my website. And if you're interested in the stories behind some of these places—like the Tofino trip or the Rockies adventure—I have videos exploring those locations in more depth.
Thanks for watching. I hope this reminds you that the best photos are the ones that mean something to you, not the ones that perform best on social media.
Related Videos:
- Tofino Roadtrip
- Waking Up To Get The Shot
- Best of 2019 album
- Instagram: @loic.bellemare.alford ()
- My online store
- Affiliate link for Epidemic Sound
- DJI OSMO Pocket with accessories
- Canon 6D Mk II
- Canon ZOOM LENS EF24-105mm F4L IS II USM
- Canon EF 70-200mm f/4.0L-IS II USM Lens
- VANGUARD VEO 2 265CB CARBON FIBER TRIPOD
- DJI MAVIC AIR