It’s again time of the year to recapitulate. Already while I was browsing through my photo archive to select photos for my 2019 calender earlier this year I was quite shocked how the amount of photo folders declined this year.
Here is a little overview of the amount of photo folders which correspondent to occasions where I took photos, over the past 7 years.
– 2011: 33 folders
– 2012: 33 folders
– 2013: 42 folders
– 2014: 39 folders
– 2015: 33 folders
– 2016: 31 folders
– 2017: 31 folders
– 2018: 9 folders
At least it’s not surprising to me when I think about all the other time-consuming things I’ve been doing this year, like attending a Japanese language class once a week, plenty of training for my first Olympic triathlon this year, finishing a three semester long degree at an online university which required approx. 18h/week and constantly learning new stuff for work in my free-time, while working full-time and still accumulating plenty of over-hours.
For next year I can already say that I want to do less different things at once and focus more on fewer things, especially photography. At times I was really missing the free-spirited feeling on being outdoors and on the road, experiencing new places and get inspired by them while trying to capture the essence of those places.
That’s why I want to give a big shout-out to my friend Alexander Otto who has been such a great company and source of inspiration during all my big photo trips this year, to Tenerife in late March, to the Alps in July and to the US South-west in October. Who knows, without him and his constant drive to explore new places I might have not done many photo trips by myself this year.
Last year I was writing that it might take a couple of months to catch up with processing of my shots from Japan, Australia and Tasmania from 2017, I could not have been more optimistic, I think I barely processed a half of the shots yet. The same goes for my shots from 2018, that’s why I have to cheat a little bit this year and probably next year with my top 10 photos of the year. For this years’ photos I considered also photos from 2017 which I was only able to process this year.
When I look at my abstract architecture prints hanging above my TV I feel really sad that I again didn’t shoot anything like that this year and for 2 years in a row already.
I really hope I get to do this next year again, I already have plenty of places in mind which I want to experiment with.
Now I’ll leave you with my personal top 10 photos which I published this year and wishing you a happy new year, enjoy 
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- The spectacular granite tor of the Cathedral (located in the Mount Buffalo national park, Australia) had a really majestic appearance in the first light of this very morning after being completely hidden in fog earlier. After a rather cold and foggy morning - with very limited sight - seeing and feeling this warm sunlight was pure bliss!
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- Winterwalk
On a perfect winter day last year I was going for a long walk in the mountains. The deep snow was cracking under my feet, the sun was kissing my face and I could see every breath in the ice-cold air. I'm looking forward to get such nice conditions this year as well!
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- Wild Awakening
After a long break I eventually was able to start processing the pictures from my last photo journey, where I was visiting the island of Tenerife together with my buddy Alex. I took this picture on one of my favourite spots in the north of the island and because I didn't take seascape shots for such a long time this felt like pure bliss, being out and about at the wild sea, smelling the salty air and feeling the raw power of the waves rolling in. We almost spend two hours staying at huge rocks next to the beach soaking in the scenery and sometimes also salty water from big waves which we didn't anticipate. In the end we had to get our feet wet because it was getting high tide and there was already a small stream of water between the rocks and the beach which cut off our way back.
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- Teide on Fire
During our trip on Tenerife my friend Alex and I experienced an interesting weather phenomenon which is called Calima and means that sand from the Sahara desert is carried by windstreams all the way to the Canary Islands. This phenomenon is noticeable by very hazy and yellowish haze. On the first evening where we could notice the phenomenon we got an incredible colourful sunset, no matter in which direction you looked, the sky just exploded of colours, it was definitely my most intense sunset for this year so far. While we've been in the beautiful and otherworldly Cañadas area, we could literally capture Mt. Teide catching fire from the sky. Now I'm not sure whether the Calima was responsible for such an incredible sunset because the days after all sunrises and sunsets were quite unspectacular. Let me know if you're a weather expert and you can help me out.
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- Per Aspera Ad Astra
On the last night of our trip to Tenerife my buddy Alex and I went on a little hike to a place full of small pumice rock towers, which turned out to be not that easy to find at first. Fortunately the moon already rose high enough to shed light on those peculiar structures, significantly helping to find them in the dark. At the beginning the moon was still so low that it even caused flares in our wide-angle lenses. After briefly scouting the location we spend many hours at this very place shooting only two compositions each exposed for around 1.5 - 2 hours. While our cameras did their job we got quite creative in killing time, a good amount of time we were jumping and dancing around to electronic music to fight the cold and entertain ourselves 😉 As per usual on those long photo nights we went to sleep at around 5:30 and already had to get up at 7:30 to get to the airport and catch our flights. I can't say that we got enough sleep but in my opinion still well worth the effort and if not for the picture, then at least for the fun we had during that night 😉
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- Rushing Melody
I'm slowly catching up with pictures from the last year. By the way, I wish everybody a happy new year and hope they head a great time on new years eve! This is one from the annual trip to the Alps with my friend Alex in August! Actually, because the weather was so bad in the Alps, we decided to make the best out of the trip and went to the French Jura Mountains in the hope to get some beautiful waterfall scenery in front of our cameras. We got quite lucky with this spot which was the first place we visited, however all other places did not work out, because there was hardly any water in the rivers. Phototrips are always full of surprises, positive as well as negative ones. I guess this is what makes it so exciting for me!
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- Transitions
Seasons have a temporary nature. The joy I experience in every season is also temporary and will transition into something else in the new season. Therefore, at first, a change of season is seen as disruptive. However, witnessing a change of season in nature can be very aesthetic and should symbolise the beauty of change, that means still seeing the good things which are left from the previous season and already get an outlook what's on next. I've always wanted to capture that in a photo and during my trip to the Southwest in the US I was finally able to get a picture with autumnal foliage and snow in one frame.
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- Wild West
It was my first time visiting the south-west of the US with my buddy Alex and that's how I imagined the "wild west" in a nutshell. After having seen plenty of western movies together with my dad when I was a child and only recently while watching Westworld I had this particular image in my mind. This picture was captured way after sunset during a very impressive blue hour, the rocks kept glowing for over 20 minutes after the sun had set. I was glad I got away with a satisfying image before I laid down in the car, because I had a bad cold and urgently needed some rest after driving and walking around all day long. The satisfying feeling of having experienced such beautiful landscapes and even gotten away with a nice image really helped sleeping in.
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- Warmth
This is a shot from a late autumn hike last year where we just had as good weather like these days, but unfortunately I didn't get any good shots this year. It is always such a spectacular experience when see the setting sun emphasising the already beautiful mountain ranges and giving away the last warm bits before a cold night high up. Actually on this trip at the end of October I experienced an unusual warm night at around 2000m of altitude, not going much below 10°C.
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- Bötlis
During our last annual trip to the Alps, my friend Alex and I drove to a lake in the Swiss Alps we scouted earlier on GoogleEarth and were surprised how beautiful it really was. On the lake shore there were cosy benches and fireplaces with firewood next to them. It was simply too inviting to not spend a night by the campfire. We were also surprised to bump into Roland Gerth there again, whom we only met briefly one day earlier somewhere else. This time we had more time to chat and exchange thoughts about landscape photography.
