I don’t normally do blog posts with 30+ pictures, but I also haven’t done a “Best Of” post in a long time. Actually, I didn’t even do one for 2011, so it’s been quite a while. Anyway, since my Adobe Lightroom tells me that I took approximately 10,000 photos in 2012, I’ll be splitting up my Best of 2012 blog post into 3 entries: “Places,” “Artistic,” and “People.”  It was too hard to put them all in one post, especially since my wife and I got the opportunity to travel to Europe last March (we left a year ago today).  The below images were hand selected for the “Places” category – as you’ll see, a lot of them are from England or France, which was expected!  I never even really did any blog posts about our trip to Europe – there were just too many pictures and too many stories.  Overwhelming.  Maybe I’ll still do that in the future, but not right now.  A few pictures from Austin also made the cut at the bottom, but unfortunately none from Chicago – still my favorite place to photograph, but I didn’t get back there with my camera very much last year.  Alright, enough words – enjoy the pictures.  I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that I took the equivalent of 416 rolls of film last year.  Crazy.

Tower of London

Tower Bridge – London, England

Tower Bridge – London, England

View of downtown London from Tower Bridge

The London Eye

Big Ben (and bus)

Big Ben and Parliament

The Radcliffe Camera – Oxford, England

The Radcliffe Camera – Oxford, England

Notre Dame – Paris, France

Ceiling of Notre Dame – Paris, France

Inside Notre Dame – Paris, France

Ceiling of the basement chapel in Saint-Chapelle – Paris, France

Main cathedral in Sainte-Chapelle – Paris, France

Sainte-Chapelle – Paris, France

The Eiffel Tower

The Palace of Versailles

The grounds behind the Palace of Versailles

The Arc de Triomphe

Sacre Coeur – Paris, France

Bohemian Market – Paris, France

St. James Park – London, England

The National Gallery – London, England

Millennium Bridge & St. Paul’s Cathedral – London, England

The London Eye (foreground) & Big Ben and Parliament (background) – London, England

The London Eye

The London Eye

The Texas State Capitol – Austin, Texas

The Texas State Capitol – Austin, Texas

Fourth of July fireworks over Austin, Texas

Downtown Austin, Texas