Best of 2018

My favorite 10 photos of the year

By Rebecca

December 31^st, 2018

Welcome to this year's top 10! You can find last year's here.

March: Ice Fishing

This year I got a drone! I did a bunch of flying right away out of excitement and to get used to it. Of course it was a bit of an inconvenient time to be standing still with your hands uncovered for fine-motor dexterity, due to it being winter in Wisconsin and all. But I soldiered on.

One unseasonably warm day (I remember wearing only a green army jacket for outerwear and not even bringing gloves), I headed to the lake and took a few flights above some folks ice fishing. The ice was of course quite solid, and crowded due to the lovely weather. I did get a few funny looks, standing on the concrete boat launch crouched over a buzzing machine and then staring at the sky, but it wouldn't be the last time.

I love this picture because of the colorfulness of everyone's garb and gear in contrast to the ice. To me, the surface of the lake looks like that of a pock-marked, cratered area of the moon.

March: Hello Copenhagen

This year I also moved to Denmark! I arrived towards the end of March, but wouldn't be able to move in to my apartment until just before my lease began on the first of April. So I stayed for a week with Felicity, my close friend also living in Denmark and working out of our Copenhagen office.

At this time of year, the sun rose at the same time we did. While most of my belongings were in the storage unit in the basement of my future apartment building, I luckily had my camera with me at Felicity's. When I looked out the window of her kitchen and saw the sun emerging over the skyline, I ducked back into the spare bedroom to grab it for a few shots through her kitchen windows. This was my favorite.

April: Saksun

I was fortunate enough to be able to travel a lot this year. By far my favorite place I visited was the Faroe Islands, where I spent a week traveling and taking photographs with F8 Workshops and a lovely bunch of people on their Faroe Islands photography workshop. It was such a blast getting to know everyone, driving and hiking around the breathtaking landscapes of these islands. This might be my favorite place I have ever traveled to in the world, and I fully intend to go back.

It was also a bit of an inflection point in my photographic life, for a variety of reasons. I learned some tips and deep lessons from our guides, who also happen to be professional photographers, and it was really motivating to get to hang out with them while editing and processing. But perhaps the most dramatic happening for me occurred at Saksun, the location pictured below.

The previous day had been rainy and gross, and we'd spent the first half of it shooting a waterfall. I hadn't done a great job of keeping my camera or lens dry, and had been disheartened with my lack of patience and my results from the morning's shooting. The afternoon was a bit better, so I was determined to have a good next day. That night I cleaned my lens and camera completely and even snagged a hotel showercap (pro tip: pack one to keep your camera and lens dry until you begin shooting when you're at a wet location!) to start the day out right the next day.

So at Saksun, I was feeling pretty good. Another waterfall, but no rain, so the only water was from the falls. As we walked up, my heart skipped a beat as my camera just...fell out of its tripod mount (with the shoe still on it)! I was fortunate that it was still tethered to me, so I caught it, and tightened everything up before stepping out onto the rocks in the middle of the falls. I got everything set up, removed my wrist from the wrist strap, and as I went to remove the shower cap, my camera tumbled out of the tripod again, into the falls, hitting a rock before it hit the water.

I immediately snatched it out and hustled to the car to stick it in a bag with a bunch of silica gel packets. Later I buried it in a bag of rice. But the damage had been done. My Canon 70D, which had served me so well, was no more.

Everyone on the trip was so kind to me about it, and many generously lent me cameras so that I had something to shoot with for every remaining day of the trip. But the photo below was taken on my iPhone, minutes after I dunked my camera, as I walked back from the car up to the falls to rejoin the group. I think it turned out ok, all things considered :)

April: Sakura

The Faroe Islands was an amazing trip and learning experience, but also the beginning of a branching-out point for me: I had to buy a new camera. The world was my oyster, and I was paralyzed by indecision, exacerbated by the fact that I didn't want spend thousands of dollars for a camera in Denmark where I'd have to pay a 50-100% markup.

To somewhat mitigate my angst and relieve the pressure, I decided I didn't need to limit myself to having just one camera in my life. So I acquired a Fujifilm X100F (a camera I had bought and returned in the US previously) to use in the meantime.

I got up very early to visit Bispebjerg Cemetary one morning before work, to capture the pink cherry blossoms in their full glory before the crowds, as my first outing with the camera. I got a few snaps I liked, but this one of white blossoms, captured in Kongens Have on my walk home from the bus stop a few days later, is my favorite from sakura in Copenhagen this year.

May: Kongens Have

Of course, my walk home through Kongens Have was picturesque all summer, especially in the gloriously warm and sunny summer Denmark, and all of Europe, experienced (a.k.a. the heat wave) in 2018. I have numerous series of photos from those few months, and can't say I was especially timely at arriving anyplace after work because of how frequently I took these detours.

On this particular day, it was about a half hour or hour before sunset, so the light wasn't golden yet, but was getting there. I snapped this picture to start off a lovely and time-consuming meandering off course, and immediately knew I'd get some lovely pictures but that this one would be my favorite.

May: Helsinki

Denmark has a few one-day holidays peppered through the spring, often making for convenient three-day weekends. I was a bit late in planning this one so decided to take it easy and go somewhere close, while still adding a new country to my list of places visited.

Helsinki was, like Copenhagen, on the verge of an unusually warm summer. Even in mid-may, I was able to wear shorts during the day and only a light jacket at night; everyone I talked to commented on how unusual this is.

On my first night there, I decided to wander the city all evening, and spent the most golden part of that pre-dusk at Helsinki Cathedral, a lovely white building with multiple domes sitting atop a big set of stone steps. The columns closest to me as well as the golden ones in the photo below are all the same color in real life; the ones farther away from me have just been enveloped by the light of the setting sun first.

May: the Prince’s birthday

In the morning, I encountered a marching band. In the afternoon, platforms with TV cameras along my street. So I knew something was up. As I prepared to make dinner, I heard a commotion in the street, so I grabbed my new little camera and headed outside. Turns out it was a parade for the 50th birthday of Frederik André Henrik Christian, the Crown Prince of Denmark!

A few notable things about the pictures I took on this day:

After shooting with it in a few different places, I was starting to feel at home using my new Fujifilm X100F. Though as it turns out, I had accidentally set it to shoot jpg instead of raw, and didn't realize it for weeks after this. But on the plus side...

I had recently bought myself a birthday present of the Porta preset pack from Mastin Labs, and these were the first photos upon which I tried them out; I think it really worked!

Finally, the photo story featuring this photo got me featured on Exposure, the platform upon which my web site is hosted and where you're reading this right now!

So all in all, quite a memorable day, photography-wise :)

August: Rainbow Panorama

I woke up bright and early one Sunday in late August, excited for a day trip to Aarhus to explore and visit ARoS, the modern art museum there. It was evidently a bit too early for me, however, as instead of studying Danish and doing homework for Danish class I fell asleep on the train. I hadn't realized I was on the portion of the train heading south, not north, once it reached Jutland. Luckily I awoke a ways before Germany (!).

I made my way back north as soon as I realized my error, but it shortened my day by about 3 hours. In the end, though, I had enough time to visit the art museum and walk some of the charming old streets, as well as along the canal.

This picture was my favorite that I took at the art museum. The roof of the museum is home to the Rainbow Panorama, a circular enclosed hallway of glass that gradually changes color as you make your way around, while still offering you a lovely view of Denmark's second-largest city. I waited patiently for this particular shot to be vacant of passers-by.

September: Matterhorn

Subtitle: Felicity is a good friend.

Felicity lives in Copenhagen and works with me on our Danish customer, but also works with a Swiss customer, meaning she occasionally finds herself in Switzerland at the end of the week. At the end of September, I joined her for a weekend in Zermatt. We're generally pretty organized travelers who like to plan, but we went a bit overboard and packed this particular trip completely full with specially-selected hikes and activities, even going so far as to determine which scheduled departure we'd catch when we rode Europe's oldest cog-wheel railway up the mountain towards the Matterhorn peak.

Though we'd gotten sunset shots the night before, Felicity gamely awoke early with me so we could catch the first train up the mountain in hopes of seeing the alpine glow as the sun rose above the horizon. By the time we'd gotten there, it was gone, but we nabbed some nice shots like the one below from the train on the way up, and the hike back down provided some other spectacular views.

October: Dolomites

I decided in late October to take a solo road trip to the Dolomites in Italy during what ended up being the worst wind and rain storms the region had seen in a hundred years. Obviously it's an unusual trip to this region in which you get only a few glimpses of mountain but I learned a lot about myself and the vertical capabilities of the Fiat 500 on gravel.

One thing I've gotten into lately is landscape pictures taken in a portrait orientation; it strikes me as a nice change-up, so I took quite a few on this trip. Overall, I took fewer photos than I normally would on a 5-day journey, but what I did capture I ended up liking, in retrospect, for its moodiness. Oh, and the churches all had this onion-shaped topper on their towers which was quite a delight.

I don't have any recollection of where I shot this particular photo; I don't think it struck me as a stand-out image at the time. It's nice to make these sort of happy discoveries later as you're culling and processing your images.