01 January 2012

A Year in Leaps

I have now officially given up on the idea of compiling a list of my favourite five songs of the year. In 2011, I added about 50 new songs to iTunes, of which only ten were released in 2011. For what it's worth, my favourite was, by a long shot, This Ain't No Hymn by Saint Saviour, which I've played over 60 times since October.

Far more worthwhile is for me to rank my top five leaps of the year. 2011 has been a great year for leaping and although I managed to whittle down my favourite leap photos down to a list of 12 fairly easily, the final cull was harder. Some of the leaps that didn't make the top five included: my current blog header, taken on Christmas Eve in Cannes; my leap-in-a-birdcage in London (best use of a supposed art installation); and my reconstruction of the original leap outside the Louvre in Paris. Now, here are the top five:

1. Highest leap -- Atlas Mountains, Morocco. This was definitely my highest leap--in terms of altitude, anyway. Our tour guide was highly amused by the fact that I would insist of jumping for the camera at every available opportunity, despite having a horrible cold.


2. Highest leap II -- New York City, USA. This photo, taken on the High Line in June, made good use of one of the benches to give me some extra height. Bonus points for retaining some of my modesty.


3. Earliest leap -- Nowheresville, UK. Not bad for six-thirty in the morning! This was taken at the very end of my college's May Ball in June. St Jocks' famous bridge was all decked out in college colours so it was too cool a photo opportunity to pass up.



4. Coldest leap -- Cannes, France. Cannes was actually very sunny and fairly warm this Christmas. However, this leap was taken shortly after a very cold and extremely brief swim in the Med, so it was lucky we got the photo in one take.


5. Narrowest leap -- Stockholm, Sweden. Mårten Trotzigs Gränd, the narrowest alley in Stockholm, provided the setting for this leap. It was quite hard to jump safely (hence the spirit fingers) but I liked the way the perspective came out.


I considered taking a leaping photo every day in this leap year but leaps are quite hard to capture well using a self-timer so I decided to can that idea but I may still highlight one leap per month. In the meantime, happy leap year, everyone!

No comments:

Post a Comment