Best of 2019

My favorite 10 photos of the year

By Rebecca

December 31^st, 2019

Welcome to this year's top 10! Check out previous best-of posts for 2018 and 2017.

January: Dragør

Carl, Claus' father, is a serious hobbyist jeweler, and is known (in certain circles at least) for preparing delicious meals as well as menu cards to go along with them. One Sunday, we headed out to his house in Dragør for lunch. It was a classic winter day; weak sunlight illuminating the yellow historic houses and red-brown cobbles of the narrow streets. I brought my camera to take some new pictures for Carl's jewelry website, and some supplies to make a light box so that he would be able to take clean photos of finished work in case he decides to start up a web shop.

We made a lot of photos that both of us liked (so much so that I ended up creating a whole new web site for Carl later that day). Once all of that hard work was done, we sat down to lunch. Consulting our menu cards, I saw that we would have 3 smørrebrods, each with its own accompanying snaps. After glancing at the snaps bottles topped with owls Carl had made of silver, and seeing the way the hygge candlelight was filtering through the layers of glass, I grabbed my camera, which had been sitting on the windowsill behind me, and snapped two pictures before we began eating. This was one of them.

January: Nyhavn

I sometimes see pictures of local sights bathed in beautiful light, or seen from creative vantage points, and wish I was out there making pretty pictures like that. Occasionally the sky will be amazing as I walk to work, or while I sit on my couch after work, and I'll wish I had had the foresight to get out there and take pictures of it. Usually I tell myself, "I'll just get out there next time," and then don't. But this time I did.

It was a Saturday night and I was not up to anything special. I saw that the forecast was for clear skies the next morning, so went to bed promptly. Sunrise in Denmark in the winter is late enough that it's not a great hardship to wake up early enough to see it. But even so, the next morning I got going a bit later than I had planned. I found myself walking speedily along the few blocks from my apartment to Nyhavn, Copenhagen's famous harbor.

I needn't have worried. The light was fantastic, and once there, I took my time. I even lucked out and shared the morning with a solo kayaker, which added interest to my shots, but even more importantly, gave me a reason to work quickly to cull and process them: before leaving, I took a chance and shouted his way, asking if he would like any of the photos I had taken. He said yes, so we exchanged contact info. My best motivation to do something in a timely fashion is to promise it to someone else.

I chose this shot in particular because of the single bird in the sky in the center, and the way the light was glowing off of the buildings on both sides, stretching into the distance.

March: Delhi

I took a break from winter in Denmark for a trip to India, including visits to Delhi, Jaipur, Johdpur, Jaisalmer, and Agra. People warned me that I would be overwhelmed by the noise, the crowds, and the poverty, and these things are all notable, of course. Maybe their warnings helped, or it was the fact that I am pretty well-traveled, because in the end the biggest adjustments for me on my first day there were to the bright, harsh light and to the heat.

On that first night, I visited Humayun's Tomb. I was already enthralled with it, but when the sun began to set I became entranced. I highly recommend sunset in India - I was never disappointed. It's already a colorful country, but when the light begins to warm up, the hues just explode. On this night, as the shadows lengthened, I just walked in circles around this magnificent pink tomb, surrounded by green grass and brown dirt paths, crawling with people in flowing clothing of every color of the rainbow, taking pictures.

I took this one as I headed back towards the entrance. I waited for there to be groups of people walking by on both sides, but the man in the middle was a lucky break. I knew this would be my favorite photo from the day, and likely the entire trip.

April: Sakura

Copenhagen has numerous gardens with cherry tree groves, and two of them were within walking distance of my apartment there. During cherry blossom season, I'd often walk through one of them taking pictures until I was so cold that I could no longer feel my fingers. That's what I was up to on this day.

In the south east corner of Kongens Have there is a statue that Wikipedia tells me is called Hørup Monument. It has a low fence around it indicating to passers-by that one should not approach it too closely. I am usually a very law-abiding citizen, but less so with a camera in my hand, and I was looking for a new vantage point. So I stepped over the fence and made use of my bouldering skills to get to the top, where I stood with my feet 2 meters off the ground. On the way up, I grazed my knee on a sharp metal edge of the statue and put a hole in my favorite jeans, but I got this photo and have since patched the jeans so it was worth it.

April: Valetta

I traveled to Malta with my parents over the Easter holiday weekend. I am often frustrated with photos I take of architecture in cities, but I knew that given the hilliness of Valetta and the colorful and characteristic Maltese balconies, I had to try.

This was my favorite from that trip, and not just because it has all of those classic elements I wanted to capture. It also has two signs: BARGAIN BOOKS and VIDEO FILM RENTALS. Of all the places I have visited, Malta seemed to me to have the most interesting vernacular typography (in other words, a rich tradition of native signage, almost like a language or dialect). VIDEO FILM RENTALS exemplifies one variety of Malta's typography, seen in these light-box signs mounted on or protruding from walls. (The others were ever-present in the form of painted garages and cloth signs hung across the narrow streets.) BARGAIN BOOKS, on the other hand, calls to mind the modern, generic, cheap, invasive signage that I also saw, and that perhaps is crowding the rest out.

May: Mykines

The Faroe Islands may be my favorite place on earth, so much so that I returned for a second time, this time with Claus (just the beginning of our tour of the rest of the Danish empire, I hope!). I brought him to a few of the classic sites I'd seen before. With Thomas Vikre as our guide, we explored several places that were firsts to me too, including Mykines, the famous puffin island.

Sadly it was a bit early in the season, so on the day we were there, most of the puffins were flying out at sea. Still, it was a lovely day and a breathtaking hike, and on our way back, this little guy and his friend were waddling along close enough to the path for a few pictures, including this one.

June: Camont

One week before I moved from Copenhagen to Bristol, Felicity and I went on a one-week trip centered around a 5-day pastry workshop held by Molly and hosted by Kate at her 18th-century farmhouse near Agen in the south of France. During the workshop, we settled into a routine: wake up; walk to the local bakery for coffee and pastries; attend the workshop, where we would bake, pipe, and eat until late afternoon; briefly explore some local town; settle in to a local restaurant for dinner; consume wine and/or ice cream.

On the second-to-last day, we threw ourselves a little party. My favorite item was the chocolate financiers topped with slices of fresh apricot. Apparently financiers are so-named because they were acceptable to the suit-wearing set due to the fact that they didn't stain their fingers and were moist enough to not produce too many crumbs.

June: Gascony

Late summer in the south of France means fields of bright purple lavender and sunny yellow sunflowers. Unfortunately, we were there at a time not quite late enough in the summer for either to be showing their full glory. As we explored during our week, we found a few early lavender fields but were not lucky enough to find a blooming sunflower field (though many fields were at different stages of growth, apparently because some farms share equipment, so stagger their crops).

On our last morning, with some tips from fellow workshop participants, we left early and found a field in bloom. We explored until the distant noises of a large-seeming animal worried us enough that we returned to our car for the onward journey.

August: Proposal

I love taking pictures of people. This is quite an about-face from how I felt in 2008, when I took an intro-level photography course in college. I remember distinctly telling my teacher at the beginning of the semester that I hated taking pictures of people.

I have been taking pictures for as long as I can remember, first on 110 film, then 35 mm. Most of my photos from this time are of landscapes, buildings, forms of transportation, signs, patterns, plants. Towards the end of high school, my dad handed me a Hannukah gift wrapped only in a standard US-letter-sized envelope. I asked, jokingly, "what is it?" He replied, "it's a camera." My answer: "If this is a camera, I will be very impressed." I'm glad I didn't promise something more difficult, such as that I'd eat my hat, because it was my first digital camera, and it was the size of a credit card (much like this one). It was so small that for a case, I used the cloth holder for an Anthropologie gift card. No joke.

This camera was what got me taking pictures of my friends in the hallways at high school. It may have even led me to pursue this project, which I shot on 35 mm film. As I upgraded to another distinctly-shaped digital camera which produced higher-resolution images, I continued taking pictures of those around me in college, thinking nothing of it.

But I remember reading through my teacher's critiques of my first project in that photography class, and realizing that while I might not like taking pictures of people, I really liked the end result.

Fast-forward to 2019, and somehow the word had gotten out in our office here in Bristol that I was interested in pretending to be a photographer. Alex, a coworker of mine, was planning on proposing to his then-girlfriend Sofie, and asked another coworker if he could photograph it. The other coworker was unavailable and so recommended me.

Alex and I texted back and forth about timing and location, with him doing his best to keep it from Sofie. In the end, she wasn't surprised, but it didn't matter :)

September: Cornwall

This fall, Elizabeth came to England to visit me. After a day of binge-watching RuPaul's Drag Race (which I highly recommend as a remedy for jet lag based on Elizabeth's recovery from it), we set off for almost a week in Cornwall, where we saw breathtaking scenery, ate an unhealthy amount of cream tea and scones and Cornish pasties, and drove along roads that were from another era (seriously, read this - it does the subject far better justice than I can).

After a night in Penance, we waited for the tide to recede enough for us to walk along the stone path to St. Michael's Mount, where a stone castle sat atop cliffs and surrounded by gardens on a small island just off the coast. The light was orbiting this vase in one of the first rooms we visited.