Posted December 30, 2015 by Gavin Hoey in Articles

My best of 2015

With the year drawing to a close, now seems like a good time to take a moment and look back at what I did with my camera during 2015. A lot (but not all) of my time goes into making videos for Adorama TV and in 2015 I made 26 of them, which have had over 1.4 million views so far.

So here are a few of my personal highlights. If you have your own, please leave me a comment.

Most watched video
At 150,000 views in just over 5 months, my “day to night” video for Adorama TV has easily been the most watched video I made in 2015. As anyone who makes YouTube videos will tell you, it’s almost impossible to predict which videos will become “popular” and often it’s not the ones you would expect, or perhaps that should be wish.

However I’m really thrilled this video has taken off. It was a sound idea that took a long time to plan but was great fun to shoot. Best of all I the final photos came out even better than I had hoped.

Most fun video
It’s tricky to choose just one as I enjoy them all in different ways. But the poker player shoot I did with Brian back in February was a very memorable one.

I know absolutely nothing about poker and as it turned out, neither did Brian. Fortunately Brian is an excellent actor as well as a model and once the technical bit was out of the way, he excelled in the role. I loved the range of emotions he produced although some of that may have come from drinking the “whisky” which was in fact cold tea!

Video I’m most proud of
usually my videos are all about taking and making a great shot but back in June I made a video that was more technical than usual. It covered how focal length can affect the compression in a photo.

For years I’ve listened to photographers go on about how they use a longer focal length lens to compress the foreground and background but that’s actually not strictly true. Yes they used a longer focal length lens but it’s camera to subject distance that does the compression and in this video I prove it… although I still get photographers telling me I’m wrong!

I had photography students firmly in mind when I made this one but I know a few “expert” photographers who learned from it too.

Most fun photo shoot
I don’t just make videos, I’m also a full time photographer. I always throw myself in to any shoot but occasionally a job comes along that really stands out. The best example of that in 2015 was a PR shoot I did with LG mobile and the Three network here in the UK.

When I got an email asking if you can photograph a medium and ghosts at a ruined church in the most haunted village in the UK, I jumped at the chance. The full brief included shooting a spooky outdoor cinema in the dead of night at a location without power… I loved it!

As you can see from the photos, things got very spooky and smoky. Our medium arrived late at night having just come from a séance but I guess my lights must have frightened away the spirts as she was unable to detect any ghosts until I was packing my gear into the car!

Best “Subscribe” ending
Do you watch my videos to the end? If you do then you’ll know I like to have fun with the “Subscribe” button. And yes I do spend far too much time on it.

This year I’ve made the subscribe button float in a balloon, appear on a London bus and ripple at the bottom of a fish bowl.

But my favourite subscribe button was at the end of my 15 minute photo challenge at the Pantheon in Rome. Chiselled on to the 2000 year old wall with just a little help from Adobe After Effects, this subscribe button took a fair bit longer to make then the rest of the video took to film!