Best of 2024

By Rebecca

December 31^st, 2024

Here are my top ten photos from 2024!

Past top 10 posts: 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017.

And companion #fromwhereistand posts: 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019.

March: Berlin

I'm not really a bachelorette/hen-do kind of girl, but I did want an excuse to hang out with Felicity, Laurel, and Mary, so we made plans for me to come meet them in Europe in the spring for a long weekend. We debated a bit between London and some other city; I hadn't ever been to Berlin so we ended up opting for that. Laurel, being the true train fan she is, found an overnight train from Brussels, so we made a full train journey of it (in one direction) and I made little goody bags for each of the others that included American easter candy, eye masks (for the overnight portion!), and silly custom tattoos featuring Claus's face and the text "Sorry ladies, he's taken!" in big bubbly pink letters, all packed up in little hand-sewn drawstring bags I made myself.

I took this picture in front of a mural along the East Side Gallery, a large portion of what was once the Berlin Wall that is now an open-air art gallery. I promise I didn't tell them what to wear; they just ended up perfectly coordinating their black and black-and-white patterns.

April: author headshots

My dad wrote a book, in case you hadn't heard! I'm so proud of him. Writing a book is a lengthy and involved endeavor, and there are all sorts of aspects you have to consider and plan for. One part I knew I could help with was making sure my dad had a worthy headshot.

I had it in my mind that we would do an environmental portrait. I was inspired by the headshot that the father of a friend of mine has in all of the books he's authored as an academic in the field of archaeology: he's situated in front of a bookcase full of scholarly archaeology books, but right next to his head is a VHS of Raiders of the Lost Ark. I thought we'd try to do something similar, so we completely took apart and rearranged my home office, ensuring the desk setup included a family photo, a mortar and pestle that had belonged to my dad's father, and of course, a copy of Spreadsheets for Dummies.

In the end, the shot we liked best was black and white, in front of a blank background. This is just my favorite outtake from that day.

May: quails!

When we tell people we keep quails, we get a variety of responses (such as "on purpose?"). My favorite one to answer is how it came about, because I get to answer, "well, it's sort of the same way I decided to go to North Korea with Felicity so many years ago...it was kind of an escalating game of chicken." Like with North Korea, the idea of birds came up once as a curiosity, then a few more times, then became a regular point of discussion ("but if we did have birds, what kind would they be?"). We found ourselves accepting a friend's offer to connect us with a friend of hers who kept ducks so we could visit them and ask questions. But when we realized the requirements for fresh and running water, we determined that would be too much for us. And we knew chickens were loud and would decimate our vegetables.

On the other side of the spectrum, we had caught glimpses of quail in the Bolz Conservatory at Olbrich Botanical Gardens and been intrigued. They're small and quiet. Their beaks are too small to eat everything in sight in a vegetable garden. And the internet seemed to think they were relatively easy to keep.

Suddenly we found ourselves watching YouTube videos about coop construction, researching breeds and their relative cold-hardiness, and then, investigating hatcheries that delivered live quail chicks via USPS (our chosen one was a local place, just a short drive away in Lodi, WI called "Just Wingin' It Game Birds").

Anyway, you know how the story ends. We placed an order, I requested a vacation day at work for the day of their arrival, and we began planning our shopping list for coop construction. I snapped this quick phone pic of proud quail dad Claus on the day our little birds arrived.

June: more quails!

We have Coturnix quail, a breed that is on the larger side (for quail) and quite cold-hardy. They were shipped to us the day of/after hatching, and reached us the next day (the postal worker who brought them out to us when we rang the bell at 8 AM before opening, which is what you do for live animals apparently, still remembers us and asks after them every time we come in to mail a package or buy stamps). As instructed and generally accepted across the internet, we kept them indoors in a brooder for two weeks, under a heat lamp for much of that time to keep them warm until they developed their real feathers. Once they'd shed their chick fluff, they were ready to live outdoors.

We finished the coop around that time and transferred them outside, then eventually let them into the enclosure to run around. Our girls reached maturity right around the expected two-month mark and began laying eggs. Quail are skittish; they are shy birds that prefer to spend their time safely in the cover of underbrush. They only fly when startled or to escape predators, and even then, only reach heights of about 8 feet; otherwise, they scurry (fast!) on the ground. You can tell this photo was taken in June because that's when our first crop of peas reached their fullest; they loved hiding in the peas and escaping our grasp (when attempting to shoo them back into their coop for the night) by running back and forth and using the pea trellis to their advantage.

July: Madison

The summer of 2024 was chock full of evenings with strange and haunting light. I often wished I'd planned ahead and gone somewhere with my camera or drone, but didn't, and resorted to darting outside with my phone, running barefoot into the front yard or street to try to capture something ephemeral. Happily, using my phone in this particular case helped, as I was able to use the wide angle to capture the full rainbow (and most of the ghostly double you can see faintly outside of it).

July: in the garden

We moved into our hose in August of 2022, and there were a lot of things (aside from it being the ninth offer we had made) that drew us to it: it was yellow, cute, had hardwood floors throughout, was a hundred years old, was near downtown and in a cute neighborhood...I could go on and on. We knew we wanted to have room to garden outside, and it had space, but the long, skinny lot was somewhat intimidating to us at first. I wasn't sure if we'd be up for taking care of it all, or if we'd actually make use of it.

One of the great ways Claus and I complement each other is that I am having ideas constantly, but I don't write them down or iterate on them, am loathe to start a project, and am impatient for it to be over once started. Claus takes notes, makes digital mock-ups, and forces us to plan, start, and finish things. He gets very attached; it's great. One of our crowning achievements was building the enclosure you see on the left side in the picture below. It's 10 feet wide, 30 feet long, and 7 feet high, and stands on a perfectly square and level foundation of treated 4x4 lumber sepped into the ground which drops over 20" along the long side. Claus built that foundation, then we build the rest together over a series of weekends in October of 2023, and yes, it's overkill for keeping bunnies out of my strawberries (the purpose for which it was conceived) but it's very effective. It also doubles conveniently as an enclosure full of enrichment and exploration for our quail, hence the placement of the two chairs below and the drinks holders between them -- great for sipping coffee or beer and watching "quail TV."

August: Outer Banks

At the ripe age of 1, Wesley took his first trip to the Outer Banks. It wasn't a year of bright sunny days; it was overcast most of the week, and rained most of the time, (or close to it), but we got out there and stayed out as much as we could in between (and sometimes during) the storms. Obviously to the boy, the rain was nothing; he got to debut some killer bathing suits, tolerated being slathered in sunscreen, and equally enjoyed splashing around in the water and playing in the sand. There were plenty of cute pics of him to choose from.

I chose this one for several reasons, but mostly a) Andrew's arms and hair look freaking fantastic and b) it reminds me a lot of a picture taken of my dad holding me in a similar way -- one of my family's classic shots, pictured to the right.

September: Kapadokya

Felicity and I have been talking for years about going to see the balloons in Kapadokya. Earlier this year, we finally did it.

I'd never been to Türkiye before and had farther to travel, so I made a full week of it, arriving in Istanbul and spending a long weekend there on my own before meeting up with Felicity in the airport to fly to Kapadokya, where we stayed for 5 days. This region is known for its breathtaking landscape, interesting history and architecture, and various features that make it excellent for ballooning: calm, predictable winds; lots of flat area for landing; and a long history allowing them to attract and maintain experienced pilots.

There are 27 licensed hot air balloon operators in Kapadokya, and they all have it down to a science: collect lots of info (including passport info!) upon booking, contact you the day before with a pickup time between 4 and 6 AM, bring you to their headquarters for a breakfast buffet and coffee, assign you your balloon and pilot, load you into a van based on your pilot, drive you to the starting location, load you into the basket, and take off in time to see the sun rise over the fairy chimneys and pale stone outcroppings, illuminating the ~150 other balloons traversing the sky around you. Then soar, moving up and down to get different views and sometimes pass scarily close to cliffs and towns, finally landing expertly on the trailer behind the pickup truck the company will use to take the gondola back to town for storage until its next use. Once unloaded, have champagne and a piece of cake, socialize with your fellow passengers, and ride back to your lodging.

We came to Türkiye to ride in a hot air balloon and gosh dangit I wasn't going to let weather stop us. So I booked two rides, one each on two consecutive days. Yes, all the companies say they'll refund you in the case of a rain cancelation, after first trying to fit you on a balloon the next day, but they don't guarantee a make-up ride and I figured each company would likely be so booked up that we'd be out of luck. We had the privilege of being able to afford two rides so we went for it. In the end, neither was canceled so we got to ride twice! It was breathtaking both times, as you can see.

November: Gerlichtmansteins

Hilary and Marty asked me to photograph their family for their holiday card and of course I said yes (I take pride in the number of profile pics and Christmas cards I'm involved in -- if you're interested, hit me up)! Winnie and Andie got to wear their matching fox dresses, and Marty and Hilary got a bit fancied up too, though what betrayed this as the Gerlichtmansteins was everyone's very colorful and assorted footwear. Thus spiffied up, we walked down the street to the neighborhood park where we coaxed Andie out of her jacket, swung on swings, did some frolicking around, and finally, Winnie got on Marty's back and he took her around the park on an adventure. It was really hard to choose a favorite (and honestly my true favorite might have been the version of this one I shot with the instax), but this was it.

November: Yurgolds

Alice and Andrew also asked me to photograph them and lil' Wes for their holiday card this year during our time together at our parents' house for Thanksgiving. Somewhat stressfully for me, this involved a new hobby of mine as well: sewing. Andrew and Alice had purchased Hannukah pjs for him, Christmas ones for her, and two onesies, one of each, for the little guy and asked me to cut them in half and sew them to reflect his blendedness. I said yes but then privately freaked out for several weeks before biting the bullet and just doing it. In the end it took ten minutes 🙄

In the days leading up to shoot day, we sat around brainstorming and it became evident that there was a difference in artistic vision between the two parents: one was thinking about lots of set-dressing and ambiance, and the other wanted something much more low-key and to not inconvenience anyone. In the end, a party was dispatched to the local Christmas tree pop-up and returned with a poinsettia and a sparkly santa hat. While they were gone, the at-home faction selected an assortment of cardboard boxes from the extensive stash in the basement, chose an array of wrapping paper, and wrapped them as props. Then I took a ton of photos, during most of which Wesley was a little angel, smiling and looking around with interest. My favorite one, though, tells a bit more of a conflicting tale (namely: he really liked the shiny ribbon but someone took it away from him for like, a minute).