Best of 2025

 It's that time when 'the best of 2025' lists are posted in the media. 

For me 2025 was an unusual year as far as photography was concerned. I took quite a few photos but predominantly in three big bursts -on our trip to South Australia/Kangaroo Island in April, on our trip to Portugal and Spain in June and finally on my photo tour in Morocco in October. 

Apart from a few photos of our two cats, Smudge and Holly, I took few other photos. 

However culling the 2025 photos down to just ten was not so easy particularly as my Moroccan photos contain quite a few I consider as amongst my best efforts. 

One surprise is that all the photos in my selection were taken with just one camera, the new Q3 43. My superb Leica SL2, a beautiful camera, with its collection of very expensive lenses did not manage even one shot in the final ten. The reason for this is very straightforward-it is just too heavy to be used as a travel camera whereas the Q3 43 is my definition of an ideal travel camera.

I've made a new year's resolution to use the SL2 more in 2026. Let's see how that resolution hold up.

Here's my 2025 top ten selection. The first 5 were all taken in Morocco.

 

The photo below was taken on a wet, miserable winter's afternoon on the seafront in Terrigal. 

 

 

The next two were taken on the Portugal/Spain trip.The woman with the hat in a tourist crowd in Salamanca, Spain, is a personal favourite. It also looks good in monochrome.

The man is fishing on the Douro very early on a Sunday morning. The light was beautiful. He was still there an hour later but the light was too harsh by then and I was glad that I had been awake early enought to capture the scene when I did.

 

 

The cat photo above is particularly sad. I consider it one of my best, if not the best, cat photo I have ever taken and I've taken more than a few. It is of Myles, my daughter's beautiful cat. Three weeks after this lovely portrait was taken poor Myles died from cancer.

The last photo is of a Kangaroo Island sheep farmer taken during shearing. I should have come back with many more photos from that trip but the heatwave conditions sapped both my energy and my enthusiasm. When the camera is too hot to hold it's time to head to the nearest bar!