Best of 2025
With the year coming to a close, I wanted to look back and take a look at all of the photos I took in 2025 that I am proud of. I went back through my files and picked out pictures from different sessions that I think stood out amongst the rest. We'll be going through month by month and reflect on them.
January
This month didn't really hold much, 3 photos stood out to me. All fairly different exposures and compositions that really felt like they were shot with intention, which is something I felt like I lost in the next couple months.
February
This month was when I really started to get into "street photography". Living in Santa Barbara, I felt like doing this style of photography was difficult. It's not a super busy town, mainly just on weekends and holidays. Because of this, I saw it as a good challenge to at least try to get some memorable candid images in the city.
I would walk up and down State Street, from the heart of down town to the end of Sterns Warf almost every other day to collect images. This was also when I experimented with a certain look with my colors, and living in this vibrant beach town, I really wanted to capture that.
March
This was a fun month. Some of my favorite images I've ever taken came from this month. I also rediscovered my love for a certain lens in my collection. I restarted using an 18mm fixed aperture pancake lens that I bought for fun last year. Doing street photography with this lens was such a joy, less fiddling with my camera settings and more picture taking during sessions.
The lens itself isn't the best optically, but I felt that this lens aided with a certain look that I was looking for, nothing too sharp, highlights are kind of exaggerated, giving me a softer with a somewhat dreamy look. With the size of the lens being so small, I also felt more confident in my photography, getting closer to people and also capturing whole scenes that I felt like I was missing in the previous month.
April
This month was more or less a continuation of my street photography journey. Going back to shooting in color with that pancake lens really helped elevate that look I wanted. Exaggerating that almost "dreamy" look but keeping the vivid colors that I see Santa Barbara with.
This was definitely a good month for my photography especially with keeping a consistent style that I was happy with.
May
This month is where I felt my photography started to lack inspiration. Lack of consistency in looks, not many photography sessions, and more or less a lack of direction in my art.
Some street, some more carefully composed stuff. I felt like I wasn't really enjoying photography, and was just doing it to kill time.
June
This month my friend Jakob and I started a photography project, it never got finished but it was a good learning experience to try out something different. As much as I loved the idea of doing a project with my friend, I didn't enjoy doing so. Planning out shoots and setting up days for shoots kind of drained the fun in photography for me, and it felt like I was doing it because I have to rather than for fun. It was a great learning experience though, I definitely have a lot of respect to those who enjoy doing this style of photography.
July
This month for me was pretty varied. I spent more time with my friends, went to punk shows, and started playing with a new lens. This brought back some life into my photography. Hanging out and traveling with friends and getting more candid stuff was a lot of fun.
Getting the fisheye lens was a game changer for me. I've always loved the look of fisheyes and I bit the bullet and bought one. This also reignited my my love of concert photography as well. It's not something I do so often, but with the fisheye, it makes me want to do more. My brother has a punk band so I knew it was time to really go for it. I definitely want to explore fisheye photography more
Street photography with the fisheye is definitely interesting. I only did one session with the lens, but I would like to practice it more. The extra wide look is super neat and can get some really neat compositions. I'm gonna try shooting this lens more often in 2026.
August
I started back at school this month, so photography sessions were very few. Although, this month I started experimenting with another look. I wanted softer and cooler images so playing with lightroom to create a preset I was happy with was a lot of fun. Also starting to use a new lens was interesting. I'm still learning to love this lens but that will take some more time.
September
School really started to take up my time so the amount of photos I have to share have lessened. The only thing that I really shot this month was another punk show that my brother band played, so I brought out the fisheye for the job. The stage they played on really put some distance between them and I so I didn't get much from the show.
October
This was a really fun month. I started to get more into portraits with the fisheye. I absolutely love this style of portraiture. I'm not a fan of shooting portraits, I think it's kind of boring. But, with this lens it's starting to grow on me.
This month also had more concert photography. The annual Avocado Festival in Carpintera is always a good time. The whole festival gets so lively when the local ska band "The Upbeat" gets on stage. Moshing and dancing persisted through the whole set. Being in the crowd, jumping up and getting these photos was so much fun and I hope to do more in the future.
December
I didn't shoot anything in November so we skip straight to December. The only photos I took were on a little day trip with my friends up the central coast. Nothing to crazy but stuff I enjoy
With this year coming to a close, my future in photography and in general is still fairly unclear. I'm learning a lot about myself everyday, and I want to learn more.
I hope you all enjoyed this post. Enjoy the holidays and enjoy the time you spend with your loved ones. This is going to be the last post of 2025. Happy holidays and happy New Years!
Comments
Post a Comment