I can't believe it's this time of year again. December offers the opportunity to look back on the last twelve months and reflect on the photographs I've taken in that time. Re-examining last year's review, I was mostly pleased with the photos I made, however it wasn't the busiest year of travel. 2024 has been completely different - by New Year's Eve I'll have been to a record 10 countries in the last twelve months - Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Spain, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands - as well as Czechia if you expand the time period for two or three days (the last three countries are excluded from this review as I won't have got back and edited the photos by New Year's Day). The main trips were 1) a Central/Eastern European trip in Dec 2023/Jan 2024, 2) a trip to Slovenia (bookended with Trieste in Italy and Zagrab in Croatia) in February, 3) two weeks in Northern Spain in the summer, 4) a week in Scotland just before term began in September, and finally 5) a visit to Italy in the October half term. I also managed to travel down to London in August and do some street photography, which I really enjoyed and some of the results of which are below. Happy holidays and I hope you enjoy the images (full galleries are linked below).
While I was happy with these images at the time (click title to be taken to gallery) only a couple were considered for my top ten. I like the image of the woman inside Antico Caffe Torinese (Trieste), and the images of Lake Bled in Slovenia are nice 'postcard' shots, but the only one that made it into my top ten was the staircase inside the Nebotičnik Skyscraper. I considered cloning the towel out but was persuaded that the shot is actually better with it left it. I love a semi-symmetrical staircase - I found a similarly appealing one in Santiago de Compostela in the summer, but it didn't quite match this one.
In hindsight the most productive trip of the year, along with the photos taken in London (below). Lots I could have chosen here - see link above - but my favourites are a black and white processing of image number 4, taken on the Cies Islands, image 33 taken on the roof of the main cathedral in Santiago de Compostela, image number 36 taken at the same location, and finally the Martin Parr vibes of image 13, from A Coruna. I also like 14 and 15 a lot, and the bird hut (image 16), along with 29, 30, 39, 40 and 41 - in short a lot! Not quite sure why I clicked so much with these locations (or maybe it was my increasing familiarity with the X-S20).
Part of the satisfaction of 2024 photographically was that, after watching numerous YouTube videos from photographers such as Roman Fox, Mike Chudley and Mark Fearnley (not to mention others - YouTube was a real source of inspiration this year and I'd also recommend following Eren Sarigul, James Popsys, Alex Munoz, Nick Carver and Sean Tucker), I was finally able to go down to London and make my own street photography images based on their advice. The first image below was actually taken waiting for a train back home to Sheffield after the first trip of the year. The next two were taken on a day of street photography in London in August.
After a week in Scotland at the end of the summer, my next big trip was to Italy in October half term, where I visited Bologna, Ferrara, Ravenna, Parma, Milan and Bergamo. There are a fair few images I'm happy with here but relatively few that I seriously considered for this top ten. In the end the simplicity and atmosphere of the first shot below, from Ravenna, plus the beautiful light and isolated subject of the second shot, won out.
