Best of 2020

By Rebecca

December 31^st, 2020

Welcome to this year's top 10! Check out previous best-of posts for my top 10s from 2017, 2018, and 2019.

This year I'm also starting a new annual tradition of posting the year's notable pictures of my feet (h/t to Sean for the idea!). I've shared 2020 and retroactively compiled 2019 as well.

February: Kiruna

I am drawn to rugged landscapes, and since doing a school project on it when I was much younger, have always wanted to stay at the ICEHOTEL in Jukkasjärvi, a small town outside of Kiruna, Sweden where dogs outnumber people. So last winter, Claus and I made a long weekend of it. We stayed for one night in a remote cabin, then one night in a room made of ice, and then our final night in a warm room (recovering).

In February, the days are short in the Arctic circle, as you might imagine -- the sun comes up around 9 and sets at 3. On this particular day we had gone on a wildlife photography excursion, which also had the added benefit of involving some lovely drives through scenic landscapes, away from other tourists. The roads are one lane in each direction, and we were mostly alone save for the occasional pickup towing or loaded with a snowmobile going in the other direction. When we stopped for walks, it was incredibly still and quiet. The one time we encountered another human away from the road, our guide stopped to chat with him for a bit; she later told us since it was his land we were about to walk on, it was common courtesy to say hi (and of course, she knew him -- apparently he was a distant relative).

It was snowing when we had arrived 2 days prior and the weather had been overcast ever since, but while we were on the road, the sky suddenly cleared and the landscape exploded with the most beautiful delicate pale pinks, yellows, and blues.

At the end of our tour, we asked our guide to drop us in the 'town center' a few kilometers up the road from our lodgings so we could grab a late lunch and explore the church, and it did not disappoint. By this time the sun had set and it was blue hour. I'll never forget this view and the walk back as the light finally faded.

February: Hannah

Towards the end of 2019 I went to an exhibit of portraits by local Bristol photographers, and met a bunch of people I'd begun following on Instagram since my move here. I met the person behind @bristolportraits, and he and I added each other on the 'gram. When he scrolled through my feed and was like, "wow, no portraits here!" I replied, "I definitely want to get into portraits more," and I meant it.

I took this photo during my first go at meeting this goal. I had met Hannah through Joe, her sig other and a coworker of mine, back when we were both living in the US. She's done a lot of acting in the past so I pitched doing a photo shoot to her as an excuse to put together an outfit and an opportunity to build a character, in addition to something to do on a Sunday afternoon. She was game and decided to play the part of a suburban 'rebel.' We wandered a bit through the neighborhoods of Bristol enacting the storyline. By complete chance, we found this tall van basically the same color as her hair. The whole shoot was super fun and I couldn't wait to edit and process the shots afterwards. I think my favorites from the bunch were the series of photos I took where we used this van as a prop.

February: Oeteldonk

The southern part of the Netherlands, being more on the Catholic side of things, goes all out to celebrate Carnival. Den Bosch, the town where our Dutch office is based, is home to one of the three largest Carnival celebrations in the Netherlands. I had never been to Carnival, and had yet to visit Felicity since her move to Utrecht, so decided this was a good opportunity to both see Felicity and experience Carnival without needing to be in Den Bosch for the aftermath.

During Carnival, Den Bosch (full name 's-Hertogenbosch) goes through a complete transformation, including the changing of its name to Oeteldonk -- literally, a vinyl sign 30 meters wide bearing this new name for the town is hung on the outside of the town's central train station obscuring the name it holds for the rest of the year.

During Carnival, there's lots of drinking, of course. There's also a lot of dressing up. Oeteldonk's colors are red, white, and yellow, so people don hats, scarves, and other accessories bearing these colors. Oeteldonk's animal is a frog, which is reflected in the decor and accessories (pins, earrings, purses, patches, cakes, hats...). Locals keep a navy blazer that they decorate with patches from Carnival as the years go by, and that they wear for the reveling. The streets are filled with food stalls and carnival games, and live music pours out of each bar, because each bar has its own band that has been practicing for weeks in the run-up to the event.

This photo epitomizes Carnival in Oeteldonk: blue blazer covered in patches; red, white, and yellow scarf and fingerless gloves; brass instrument; cold fingers; ever-present beer.

March: Izzy

I loved taking photographs of Carl in his home jewelry studio so much that after seeing the Pacita Abad exhibit at Spike Island, I asked the exhibit representative who had showed us around if she knew of any artists at Spike Island who might like photographs taken of them and their work. One of the first volunteers (and one of the small subset with whom I had a chance to actually connect, since I had to put a pause on this due to COVID) to take me up on this was Izzy Mooney (@izmooney), studio manager and fellow at Spike Island.

Izzy paints and creates ceramics with really unlikely, organic shapes. We hung out while she worked on one of her creations and talked about art vs. craft, how important it is to create regular working hours for making art (instead of just waiting to sink into an emotional state upon which to draw), and other things I can't remember anymore. But we hit it off and the hours flew by, and recently she set up her finished work in some studio space and asked me to come by and photograph it for her to use for various things such as applications for future opportunities (and maybe some day, a web site)! This is her during our first meetup.

March: Oscar

This was my first time meeting up with someone I didn't know, a model, to take 'real portraits.' Oscar lives in Bristol and at the time of this photo shoot, was 19 years old. I took these photos of him on the same day as the ones of Izzy (above). In fact, I was supposed to take photos of a third person, Veronica Ryan, an artist in residence at Spike Island, on that same day, but that morning, she decided to return to the US, so we canceled our meetup. That day was of course 16 March, 2020. It was a Monday, and I had taken the day off of work to hang out with my parents, who were supposed to have been visiting for a long weekend as part of a larger trip. Sadly they canceled their trip at the last minute due to an epidemic. I was slightly skeptical but respected their choice.

It soon became clear that that was absolutely the best choice they could have made. Within days, the UK had begun its lockdown, a bit before the US but after both Denmark and the Netherlands. The world changed, very suddenly.

But on this day, that was unknowable, unfathomable. It was just a day I had taken off for vacation and decided to keep even though my parents' trip was canceled. Oscar and I met up in the Wapping Wharf area, then walked west along the river. This picture was among the first we took, sort of as a warm up, before meandering throughout Bedminster and Dean Lane Skatepark. By the time we were finished, it was around the time my colleagues return home from work. I know because I ran into several of them, while walking around carrying a camera, accompanied by a 19-year-old wearing makeup. I smiled and said hi, but I don't think I ever did explain it to them :)

April: Bristol

The spring and summer of 2020 were amazing, weather-wise, which now that we've had several lockdowns since, each in much worse weather, I appreciate even more. By April, I had picked up a few new daily habits: 1) practicing Danish on Duolingo, 2) going for a daily run of at least one mile, and 3) taking a picture from the exact same spot on my balcony. I still have an unbroken streak on Duolingo, but stopped both my running and picture-taking by July.

This, though, was a glorious Saturday. After my morning run and some reading on my balcony, I decided to go for a long walk, making a huge loop from harbourside, west to hotwells, then south and back along the other side of the water before returning home. I was wearing a tank top and shorts, carrying only a camera. On the way back I made sure to take a quick detour to get a picture of Banksy's Girl With a Pearl Earring, newly outfitted with a huge fabric mask.

June: Gloucester

I was going a bit stir-crazy by this point, but a friend and coworker of mine, Laurel, lived three floors above me and we had decided to become each other's support bubble. We got together and made pizza one night a week and occasionally stopped by each other's apartments to say hello. When, with great fanfare, the UK allowed garden centers to open once again, I drove us in my lovely blue 2002 Honda Civic hatchback (with only 142,000 miles, thank you very much) to Riverside Garden Center where we both treated ourselves to plenty of seedlings and houseplants for our balconies and flats.

In June, we decided to make a bit longer of a journey. I pre-booked us some time at a nearby farm so we could pick our own strawberries and raspberries one Saturday afternoon. It was the most excitement we'd had in months. That morning we drove to Gloucester, walked around the town and through the famous (and huge!) cathedral, and bought Laurel a record filled with the sounds of Great Western Railway trains passing through Bristol Temple Meads from a crate containing dozens of records of train sounds in the back of an antiques shop.

We grabbed takeaway lunch, drove to the farm, and munched it at picnic tables outside before it was our time to pick. The weather had been great to this point but the sky began to darken and it definitely rained before brightening back up a bit as we finished picking our fill.

July: #bristoltogether

Bristol is known for its street art. Banksy is from here, and every year for a decade, Bristol has been host to Upfest, Europe's largest street art and graffiti festival. Of course they choose summer 2019 to take their first year off in ten years, and then 2020 was, well, 2020. I hope to some day attend an Upfest *sigh.*

Anyways, this June, Upfest gallery, in partnership with Bristol City Centre BID, Visit Bristol, Business West and Broadmead BID, the One City Economy Board, and Bristol City Council, covered the grass of several city-center parks with safely-spaced painted hearts in a project they called #bristoltogether. The point of the campaign was to celebrate the reopening of shops while encouraging everyone to stay safe and socially distant. The hearts provided a stunning visual that I decided to capture from the air. Over the course of two days I documented the installations at Castle Park, Queen Square, and College Green. This one is from College Green just before sunset. Crazily, I posted it on Instagram and someone saw it and identified herself in it. She asked for a copy and I was happy to oblige.

August: Scotland

In August, I had intended to travel back to the US for a family vacation, but of course, COVID happened. My backup plan was to re-attempt to travel to Iceland, but 4 days before our departure, Iceland changed its entry quarantine policies. So our plan C, something closer to home, sprouted into being: a roadtrip through Scotland.

We managed to book some airbnbs and a rental car at the last minute, and went on what ended up being a fantastic trip. This picture was taken from the hills above Glenfinnan Viaduct (made famous as part of the journey the Hogwards Express takes), which is on the way to Skye but which of course we missed both on our way to and from; only when we doubled back way out of our way later on in our journey did we realize how close we had been.

It was just as well, though, because we were able to take this walk after visiting Inverness, where we purchased midge nets for our heads. If you have not been to Scotland in the summer, you may not know what a midge is, and that's lucky for you. Midges are smaller than gnats, and they swarm and land on any exposed skin, leaving small but very itchy bites behind them. They especially like to reside in areas that are damp, and well, it's Scotland, so everywhere is damp. We had encountered small patches of midges near water on some of our hikes, but nothing too bad. Happily we took the opportunity to purchase fine mesh nets while we were in civilization, and on this hike, we were very grateful, as it was very damp everywhere and the air was thick with midges.

We started our hike by walking under and past the viaduct, then headed up the hill hoping for good views. We passed the 'official' path and continued on, hoping to forge our own way, which ended up being a very silly idea because there was a fence running the circumference of the hill with no way through except for a single, lovely, wide gate...along the 'official' path. But to get to the path from where we stood involved crossing a very wide patch of wet mud. We were glad we were wearing hiking boots, but even gladder for our nets; we looked ridiculous and could barely see, but from the number of midge bites on my camera hand, it was worth the tradeoff.

September: Stourhead

This year I decided to make use of the fact that one of the few cameras I brought with me abroad was my parents' old Canon AE-1. I began shooting film again, using color film for the first time in my adult life. I dove in head first, actually: I took a solo mini roadtrip through Wales upon which I brought only this camera and 10 rolls of Kodak Ektar 100.

When I went to Photographique, my local indie film lab, to get the rolls developed and scanned, I decided on a whim to pick up 2 rolls of Kodak ColorPlus 200, a more affordable film stock I had never tried before. Soon afterwards, Joe and Hannah invited me to get together for an [outdoors and otherwise masked-up] day trip. We decided to go to Stourhead, a nearby National Trust place, and pack a picnic and make a day of it.

The park is huge and even with some portions closed and a one-way system in place, it was lovely and took us hours to make our way through. The weather was gorgeous and we brought way too much food. I packed my two rolls of ColorPlus and shot one of them. I took this picture of Joe and Hannah in a small grove of large trees. The tree Hannah was attempting to climb (with Joe's assistance) was very popular among small children; it was quite steep and the bark was worn smooth by decades of small, scrambling feet. This moment was one of only a few seconds between when the previous boy gave up on his attempt to climb it and the next interrupted our moment to do the same.