2010 | The Year in Pictures

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The Year in Pictures: 2010 - Images by Travis Rowan

This past year has been has been one of the most unusual and unexpected journeys that I can remember. (Both photographically and in life) It's been a year of firsts and hopefully some lasts.

A quick review: I've endured a miserably cold winter, lived and worked on a megayacht again, survived a perilous river journey through America's bible belt where I encountered hostile natives (hillbillies) and 'Apocalypse Now' like moments at every mysterious, foggy bend, transited the Panama Canal for the third time in my life, hung out on the west coast and ventured up to the Pacific Northwest for the summer where I observed Seattle hippies, whales and the Oregon coast before abandoning ship, returning to the South, then popping off to Hawaii for a week to see the Pipeline Masters. WTF? That's what it felt like, one big run on sentence. It's a good thing I've got pictures.

No theme, no project, no specializing, I was pretty much all over the place. At the mercy of where ever the yacht was. The point is: I discovered, experienced and captured some amazing things in some unlikely places. Happy New Year!

See the individual images below with anecdotes and technical details for the photo-geeks among us.
Warning: this is a long one, but so is a year.

Chattanooga, Tennessee, I never thought I'd end up here. The Tennessee Aquarium (the pointy building) is easily one of the best aquariums I've ever been to. A really impressive setup and the outside architecture is striking too.

Camera: Nikon D300 | Nikkor 80-200mm 2.8 | 200ISO | F 11  | 1/80th

Here's my mom, a talented photographer herself, shooting the jellyfish room inside the Tennessee Aquarium. From certain angles, the mirrors in the place create a confusing illusion of endless depth and here I tried to play on that idea even more by using the shiny wall (left). 

It was dark (low light) so I chose my widest aperture (f 4), braced my camera against the wall to help eliminate any camera shake and upped my ISO to get a shutter speed that I thought I could handle. In this case it was 2 seconds. Oh yeah, and I experimented until I got it, but that was my approach.

Camera: Nikon D300 | Nikkor 12-24mm 2.8 | 800ISO | F 4  | 2.0 Seconds

This is the Navy's latest version of a high speed warship. After making a return journey down the aforementioned river, I ended up in Mobile, Alabama one night and docked across the river from this futuristic not-so-top-secret war machine.

I took the opportunity to photograph it, not shoot it. (you have to be careful what you say around these things, it's classified but I think they will shoot back). I waited for evening when the deck lights would come on and make this ship a little more pleasing to a common observer.

I included the flowing river in the foreground to catch some reflections and add a more surreal vibe. The concrete ramp adds to the industrial feel and leads the eye into the scene.

Camera: Nikon D300 | Nikkor 17-55mm 2.8 | 200ISO | F 16  | 1/2 second | on a tripod.


I stumbled upon an article on strobist about water droplet photography that linked to a DIY article. I was inspired to try it myself. It's challenging and fun. Timing is everything but you have control of that.

The water is the variable here and that's the really fun part of it. So many different shapes, textures and reflections reveal themselves in every slice of time.  I will be doing more water drop photography in the future.

Camera: Nikon D300 | Nikkor Macro 60mm 2.8 | 200ISO | F 13  | 1/250th second | Red and Blue gels on Nikon SB-800 and SB600 Speedlights manually triggered by pocket wizards.


The massive towers of this nuclear power plant in Alabama loomed in the distance along the Tennessee River. The first time I saw this place was after days of non-stop cruising up the winding river in dense fog. With only 6 hours of sleep in four days,  the apocalyptic glow of this complex was troubling.

The above photo was a more serene view (on a different day) that I thought would be a useful subject for my stock image library. Energy, industry, pollution, nuclear power etc.

Camera: Nikon D300 | Nikkor 300mm 2.8 | 400ISO | F 8  | 1/1000th second

Transiting the Panama Canal is a fascinating process. You are literally climbing mountains in a boat through a series of locks. This was my third time transiting the canal and I wanted to try some time-lapse photography and shoot a little video of the process.

The weather on the eastern side didn't cooperate initially with 200% humidity and rain but it eventually cleared enough for me to shoot a time-lapse sequence of the Miraflores locks. Oh and another thing, we had to make the transit at night which added to the challenge of the photography.

 I posted the video on this blog previously here and since then was awarded a second place prize in the "Best documentary" at the 2010 Fort Yachtie-da Annual Film Festival. An event put on by people in the yachting industry. It was nice to have my work recognized.

Then there was Seattle, what a beautiful city. I thoroughly enjoyed this place. In the summer time anyway. Apparently it rains for several months of the year. Seattle is home to some exceedingly friendly people, but doom and gloom is the word from the locals as far as weather goes, so I was fortunate to find myself here for the clear summer months. The city is a diverse and photogenic place. This skyline image is from the west Seattle area.

The juxtaposition of old weathered dock pilings in the foreground kind of matched the shape of the high rise modernity of the skyline in the distance.

I used a simple light painting technique on the pilings to give them a warm glow and pull out some of their distressed details. This technique of course, required a fairly long exposure and plenty of experimentation with a flashlight to get it right.

The trick with light painting is to rehearse the movement of the flashlight a few times before snapping the shutter and to keep the light moving throughout the exposure time so you don't end up with hot spots. It's a like painting with a can of spray paint, only with light. If you stay in one spot too long, you'll end up with too much paint there and a bunch of drips. You just have to experiment with it until you get what you want.

Camera: Nikon D300 | Nikkor 17-55mm 2.8 | 400ISO | F 16  | 25 seconds | Manfrotto Tripod | Large D-cell Mag-lite


Fourth of July on Lake Union in Seattle.
Fireworks photography is like getting into a fight. You go into it with a specific plan of action until you get hit and your plan flies out the window. From that point on, you're just scrapping for survival. That's was my experience on this night in July.

My plan: get set up on a tripod and compose the shot, estimate where the fireworks will be relative to my foreground subject (check), do some test shots without fireworks for exposure (check), aim for a shutter speed long enough to "collect" multiple fireworks explosions=5-15 seconds, (check) Sounds easy.

The reality: the first explosions occur and I realize that I haven't left enough sky in the frame to capture the whole spread of the blasts. Next, the long exposure is way too long. The fireworks look deformed and un-firework like. And the brightness variations are so extreme that the exposure is all over the place. When it's wrong, it's way off. When it's right, it's not really.

In addition, the long exposure noise reduction process extended the time of each exposure by 1.5x. So a 10 second shutter means I can't review the shot and make changes for 15 seconds. This feels like an eternity under the "rockets red glare and bombs bursting in air." All of a sudden, this is stressful. Self-doubt and panic set in.

Survival: The first step is to realize that my plan is flawed. (fatally perhaps) Like most fights, a fireworks display doesn't usually last long. So I knew I had to get it together quickly or get my a** kicked. I changed to a wider lens, switched to manual metering mode and started taking test exposures. I dialed the shutter down to a less time consuming 2 seconds and found an aperture to find an average exposure and stuck with it. I took control and thought,"I should have expected this, what was I thinking?" More questions, and a possible answer...or not.

Still, I continued to tweak the exposure manually for the remaining minutes of the show before going back to TV mode (shutter priority) and just letting the camera figure it out again. It seems that in scenes as varied as this, its best to just let the camera figure it out. So I'm left looking at my images and studying the exposure data to understand what I can do better next time. I have a plenty of experience, this shouldn't be that complicated for me. But that's how it went.

If this were a fight, I'd call it a DRAW. It wasn't pretty. Despite suffering "shock and awe" from the initial blows,  I did get a some decent shots in before walking away dazed and confused from the twelve minute episode. I don't really like fights or fireworks anyway.

Camera: Nikon D300 | Nikkor 12-24mm f4 | 500ISO | F 8  | 2.5 seconds | Manfrotto Tripod


I had no idea that people could be professional hula hoop instructors. Not until I wandered over to Gasworks Park in Seattle one evening and met Taylor Daynes-Professional Hooper.

Gasworks is an old industrial site on the shore of Lake Union that was transformed into a cool urban recreation area. The industrial buildings and equipment are still there and give it the "Dead Tech" vibe. It's also a great spot to view the skyline and is a popular hang out for artists, hippies, photographers, kite fliers and other free spirits. This is where I ran into a group of fire dancers and hula hoopers. They are a friendly tribe who seemed genuinely honored to be photographed. I felt privileged to photograph them. It was a veritable "nice fest." I seemed to have several moments like this in Seattle, everyone is just nice.

I was out that evening to photograph whatever I found and luckily I had a few flashes with me. The light in the sky had gone dark so I set up my Nikon SB 800 and SB 600 to light the performer on a platform where I could use the glowing skyline as a background rather than a black hole of a sky. I chose an 80-200mm telephoto lens to help compress Taylor against the skyline background. I knew I could get this effect by backing off and zooming in. I controlled my flash power individually in manual mode with the Nikon CLS system.

Initially, I set the ambient exposure manually to capture the background correctly. Then I had another performer, a fire dancer named Jeremy, stand in the space while I took some test shots to get my flash exposure worked out. I knew that the skyline brightness wasn't going to change at all, I also knew I had the performer lit correctly with my flashes so I could forget about exposure at this point and just deal with composition and focus.

Focus was challenging in the low foreground light. Auto focus was left hunting in the dim, flat light, so I resorted to manual focus. I used a tripod to minimize camera shake and keep the the non-moving objects sharp with my 1/3 second shutter speed. The short flash pulse froze Taylor in the frame and it all came together in several frames.

I photographed a few other performers in this way until my flash batteries were wiped out. This was a good setup because it enabled me to place anybody onto the platform and just fire away without any exposure changes. Like a studio.

Not bad for a random meeting in the park. I shared the shots with Taylor and the others and through them the above image was selected as photo of the day at hooping.org.  A little exposure for him and a little exposure for me. Thanks to all for the fun opportunity.

Camera: Nikon D300 | Nikkor 80-200mm 2.8 | 200ISO | F 4  | 1/3 second |  Nikon SB-800 and SB600 Speedlights manual control by CLS | Manfrotto Tripod


As previously mentioned, Seattle has a lot of interesting architecture and so many ways to see it. Here's my take on the the Space Needle and the adjacent Science Fiction Museum. Sometimes it's simple, just like this one. I did the black and white conversion in with Nik Silver Efex Pro.

Camera: Nikon D300 | Nikkor 12-24mm 4.0 | 200ISO | F 8  | 1/50th second


Seattle has many distinct neighborhoods. They all have their own character(s). The odd sculptures in the Fremont area was of interest to me. In particular, this giant Troll under the Aurora bridge. Yes, that's a full size volkswagen beetle in his left hand.

I photographed the Fremont Troll one night using a couple of gelled flashes and used a flashlight to make the eye glow. I wanted to try something funky. No matter how strange it ended up looking, it would likely work. I mean it's a giant troll under a bridge. Right?  Photograph it like that.

So here's the setup: Nikon SB800 and SB600 speedlights on either side gelled with blue and red. The small gold glow on his eye is from a large D-cell Maglite (flashlight). The yellow light is ambient from the light fixture on the underpass. Normal RAW processing followed by some fun stuff in Nik Color Efex Pro 3.0.

Camera: Nikon D300 | Nikkor 17-55mm 2.8 | 800ISO | F 4  | 1/6th second | Manfrotto Tripod | Nikon SB800 and SB600 Speedlights control manually by Nikon CLS.


Canadian Geese have always seemed common to me. Like sparrows and crows. I don't generally look at them as an interesting subject.

There's interesting stuff everywhere though. That's what photographers do, see things differently. You hear it in every beginner photography course or article read, "...photograph in your own neighborhood. You don't have to travel thousands of miles to some exotic location....blah, blah, blah..."

I still prefer 'exoticness' when I have a choice. However, in this case, I can recognize the possibilities of staying closer to home. It's not what you shoot, but how you shoot it. This is a prime example of photographing in your own backyard.

Anyway, these geese came paddling by just after sunset and I saw an opportunity to practice my panning technique. I used a tripod with light tension on the ball head so I could still follow the geese with more control. This has become one of my favorite animal shots now. Go figure.

Camera: Nikon D300 | Nikkor 80-200mm 2.8 | 200ISO | F 11  | 1.3 seconds | Manfrotto Tripod

The annual Sea Fair on Seattle's Lake Washington is a a major summer event. The US Navy's Blue Angels perform and I saw this as an opportunity not necessarily to see the Blue Angels, but to see the Blue Angels among Seattle's scenic skyline.

I had a chance to watch the Blue Angels practice and get an idea of their flight path for their aerobatic display. Although the air show was centered on Lake Washington, a few miles north of downtown, I determined that I would have a couple of brief opportunities to catch the jets with the sky scrapers as they set up for high speed passes over the lake.

It was a gamble. I could completely miss the whole thing but I thought it was worth it. I've seen the Blue Angels plenty of other times and have my share of tight jet shots that could be anywhere on earth. I felt like I didn't really have anything to lose by trying something different.

I stationed myself up at Kerry Park, a popular hilltop viewpoint and waited. With only a few brief  opportunities, I lucked out with this shot. I knew I got it as soon as it happened. I love that feeling.

It was an overcast, rainy day so a simple black and white conversion in Nik Silver Efex Pro seemed like a logical choice in post-processing.

Camera: Nikon D300 | Nikkor 300mm 2.8 | 400ISO | F 5.6  | 1/1250th second


This beautiful japanese maple tree lives in the Portland Japanese Garden. One of the most authentic gardens of its kind outside of Japan.

There's no scale in this image but the viewer should know that this tree is only about 8 feet tall or smaller. Kind of makes you want one in your living room, doesn't it? I photographed this tree using a tripod low on the ground and one flash (camera left) as a little fill and side light on the twisting branches. You can spot the flash effect if you look closely, but it is subtle.

This is a straight image processed normally and then converted in Nik Silver Efex Pro. I also tried some HDR versions but always ended up coming back to this one.

Camera: Nikon D300 | Nikkor 12-24mm 4.0 | 400ISO | F 14  | 2 seconds | Nikon SB800 speedlight off-camera.


Here's a image of the Flat Garden in the Portland Japanese Garden.

Camera: Nikon D300 | Nikkor 12-24mm 4.0| 400ISO | F 16  | 1/8th second | + 0.67 Exp. compensation | Polarizing filter | Manfrotto tripod


The storied Oregon Coast. It's a photographer's mecca and I had a few days to explore the dramatic coastline for the first time. The above image is in the Ecola State Park at sunset.

Camera: Nikon D300 | Nikkor 17-55mm 2.8 | 400ISO | F 8  | 1/320th second

Haystack Rock and the Cannon Beach area on the Oregon Coast. I made this image just after the sunset and liked the layering of tones in the composition.

Camera: Nikon D300 | Nikkor 17-55mm 2.8 | 500ISO | F 11  | 10 seconds |  - 0.67 Exp. Compensation | Manfrotto Tripod

The Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah, Georgia is an interesting place. It is eerily beautiful place with its angelic statuary, historic graves and the curtains of spanish moss drooping from the trees. I tried to capture it from both viewpoints. Beautiful (above) and Creepy (below)

above: Camera: Nikon D300 | Nikkor 17-55mm 2.8 | 200ISO | F 4  | 1/200th second

I think this composition asks more questions than it answers.

The meter was basing the exposure on the bright sky so overrode it with some + exposure compensation which resulted in the sky blowing out a little, but my subject (statue) was exposed correctly. 

Camera: Nikon D300 | Nikkor 17-55mm 2.8 | 200ISO | F 5.6  | 1/125th second | + 0.67 Exp. compensation

I spent most of 2010 far from any warm ocean with waves to ride so it was a relief to get to Hawaii's North Shore for the Billabong Pipeline Masters. I've been talking about it for the past two years and was determined to be there this year to photograph the world's best surfers in the some of the world's best waves.

This last group of surfing photos are a few of my favorites from my trip to the North Shore.

above: Camera: Nikon D300 | Nikkor 80-200mm 2.8 | 400ISO | F 5 | 1/800th second

Surfer: Matt Archbold. North Shore, Hawaii

Camera: Nikon D300 | Nikkor 80-200mm 2.8 | 400ISO | F 4  | 1/2500th second

Surfer: Taylor Knox. Free surf session on Oahu's North Shore

Camera: Nikon D300 | Nikkor 300mm 2.8 | 400ISO | F 5  | 1/1250th second

Surfer: Chippa Wilson. Rocky Point on Oahu's North Shore.

Camera: Nikon D300 | Nikkor 300mm 2.8 + 1.4x Nikon Teleconverter | 400ISO | F 5  | 1/1250th second