2019 has been an incredible year for me. I quit my job in March, left London, and have been travelling ever since. During this stint of unemployment I wanted to spend as much time doing what I love as possible, so unsurprisingly I have taken a hell of a lot of photos!
I love a ranking, be it Marvel movies, TV series, NFL teams, or in this case photos. As with last year, I’ve decided a nice way of reflecting on the past 12 months would be to pick out my 10 favourite captures, only this time recounting the story behind them.
So, without further ado, number 10…
It only seems right that the first photo I’m starting with was one of the first photo’s I took in 2019. While a lot of this list consists of photos showcasing some of earths natural wonders, the first 3 months I spent really trying to develop my photography skills in an urban setting. I realised that despite living in London for the past 2 years I was yet to properly take advantage of it with my camera, and had never properly committed myself to a moody, urban style.
This particular shot was taken about half way down Fleet Street, a couple of minutes walk from my old apartment and one of my favourite streets in the entire city. The contrasting tones of this photo is what really makes it one of my favourites - you really get a sense of the city slowly waking up as the golden light hits the dome of St. Paul's and creeps over the surrounding buildings. Makes me miss my morning strolls before the rush.
Jumping from cold winter mornings in London to early summer strolls along the beach in Corsica. I really dedicate a lot of time finessing my drone piloting skills during the month I had in the Med. My plan was to make a video showcasing the beauty of this island using footage captured solely from my DJI Mavic Pro, and with this came lots of photo opportunities.
Corsica is probably best known for it’s beaches. This one in particular, Palombaggia, is regularly voted one of the best beaches in Europe, and was luckily a short 5 minute drive from where I was staying. I ended up regularly heading down to the beach in the evening to see the day out and catch the golden hour light. This one evening in particular was especially still, so I was able to fly my drone higher than I normally would as their barley any wind. At a cheeky 400m up, I was able top capture those Mediterranean waters perfectly.
I knew when I was going through the potential images for this list, that at least one photo from this magical morning in Zimbabwe would make the cut.
As I visited Zimbabwe during the winter months temperatures would drop drastically when the sun went down. Mornings would be very chilly, which brought with it a tremendous amount of low hanging mist making for some really atmospheric sunrises (check out what is maybe the most incredible drone footage I’ve ever captured with my drone below).
One morning, myself and Phil (my roommate) decided to wake up extra early and canoe out onto the dam that sat in front of Imire’s volunteer house. The conditions were perfect - there wasn’t the slightest breeze creating a mirror effect in the water, and there were just enough clouds in the sky to make the sunrise pop in unexpected ways.
Over the course of the next hour, we gradually paddled our way out further into the dam and watched one of the most insane sunrises I’ve ever seen. Initially, there were other photos from that morning I preferred. Over time however, the way it was composed and the mirror like reflection of the dam grew on me massively, and its soon become one of my favourite photos from Africa.
Although this isn’t my favourite trip from my month in the USA (sit tight), I don’t think any other picture I took encapsulates the sense of freedom I felt better. I use the word ‘freedom’ because America was my first stop after quitting my job, so I really did feel a huge amount of excitement finally being free (…unemployed) for the next 6 months (…until I ran out of money).
This shot was taken in a place called Red Canyon, Utah. Part of why I love it was because I had never seen pictures of it prior to my trip. I’d spent months planning various routes, narrowing my choices down, and scouting out the best places to visit and photograph. Then, on the first morning with my campervan, I find this gem of a spot whilst driving towards Bryce Canyon.
As soon as I drove under it I knew the shot I wanted to get. I parked up and went off the beaten path, hiking a nearby hill to try and find a good vantage point. Once I had that, I sat and waited for the perfect moment.
One of the luckiest things about this photo was the recent snowfall, which had all but gone a couple hours after I took this. The way the orange rock contrasts with the snow makes the picture pop that much more, and adds to the sense of adventure in the great outdoors. Take a look at some drone footage I captured the following day without any snow, it looks completely different!
My favourite photo from my time in London. There’s not much of a story behind this one - I hadn’t even gone out with the aim to take any pictures. I happened to be in the Tower Bridge area during rush hour and luckily had my camera on me. The lighting was great, with the sun still low enough in the sky that it was creating some really dramatic shadows from people walking past.
I have no idea what the oval sculpture is, all I can think when I look at this is it looks like those alien spaceships from Arrival, but it definitely adds something to the photo. I had my camera on burst mode so I’d be sure to capture the perfect ‘walking motion’ from whoever my subject ended up being, and then with a little Photoshop magic (do you really think it would be that quiet at Tower Bridge during rush hour…?) voilà.
Probably the simplest photo on the list, but then sometimes less is more? Monument Valley had been on my bucket list ever since I can remember, so much so that I’d planned this stint of the road trip entirely around it. It lived up to my expectations in every way - driving through it really did feel like you were in a Western, or that you were on Mars…basically like nothing you’ve experienced before.
This photo was taken literally seconds upon arrival. I had driven about 4 and a half hours from my previous stop (Bryce Canyon) and had been watching the sunlight gradually fade as I got closer to the reservation. I was only planning on staying here for two nights, so the thought of losing one of those sunsets wasn’t appealing. Luckily, I managed to make the most of the time I did have once I paid my entrance fee and pulled up at the visitors centre. I rushed out of the car with my camera and found one of the remaining spots that wasn’t occupied by the large crowd that had gathered to watch the sunset.
Usually I’m one for not taking the same picture as everyone else, but I had so little time to play with that wasn’t an option. Sometimes I’ll go way out of my way to get a unique perspective on something, but there’s a reason certain spots are so popular - because they tend to give you the best view of something. In this instance, that seemed to be the case.
The last thing I have to say on this photo is that I’ve never seen rocks change colour in such a way, it was truly beautiful.
I’d wanted to somewhat replicate a photo I’d seen a couple of years back by a local Bonifacio photographer called Julien Filippeddu (@julien.filippeddu), in which he captured the extreme wealth that often takes up residence in Bonifacio for a couple nights at a time during the summer months. Bonifacio in it’s own right is a beautiful town - it looks like it’s been ripped straight out of Game of Thrones with it’s historic fortress overlooking the harbour area below. Julien’s photo however gave me the idea to juxtapose both the new (the modern yachts) and old (the fortress) even more than he had done previously.
I first tried to do this on ground level, but quickly realised I’d have to get up high if I was to fit both the yachts and the fortress in the frame effectively. The other complication I found was that I needed a certain sized ‘mega yacht’ to be docked in prime position at the end of the harbour. This has never seemed to be an issue when visiting Bonifacio in the past, but of course as soon as I need one, all the billionaires that have stopped by previously have taken their yachts elsewhere! Three times I woke up at 5am, drove half an hour to get to Bonifacio before the sun rose, only to find the place void of any massive yachts…how selfish of those billionaires.
Thankfully, the fourth time I made the trip there was a yacht of ‘sufficient size’ (would still have loved one with a helicopter on the back like in Julien's photo, but I made do). Once the sun was giving me enough light, I sent my drone up and flew it at a number of different heights and angles until I found the best one, and then *snap*. I’d say most of my photos happen unplanned, in the spur of the moment, but when you execute an idea like this after having it in your head for months, it’s extremely satisfying.
Now for the podium positions. In third place is Tafara…or at least a picture of her! At the time of taking this picture, Tafara was the youngest black rhino at Imire being only 2.5 years old (her mother had a baby 3 weeks later, check out this clip of newcomer Khanya for the cutest thing you’ll see today).
Once a week we would head out into the wild to observe the black rhinos. All the volunteers would enter a small penned area where we’d then wait for the black rhinos (and other animals) to approach - think shark cage diving, but with rhinos! This was my favourite morning from my month at Imire, and as cheesy as it sounds, it’s something I’ll remember for the rest of my life.
Of the three black rhinos that would join us that morning, Tafara was by far the most cautious. Still being so young she’s had far less human interaction compared to Gomo and Kamchacha (her parents), even with armed rangers protecting her from potential poachers at all hours throughout the day. She was born completely in the wild, and as such, humans are somewhat alien to her.
Now the photo itself - I’ve been a massive fan of David Yarrow's work for a couple of years. He famously shoots using wide angle lenses, meaning you need to be up-close rather than zooming in from far away, hence his work is so renowned because this is incredibly hard to do with wild animals. Being in such a unique position, I gave my best shot at mirroring this technique using my 16-35mm. The moment I took this shot was the closest she came that day. Her stance makes it look like she’s posing for the camera, when really I imagine she was sussing me out.
For a long time this was my favourite picture from my travels. Taken back in April, it was the first stop on my road trip in the States - Sequoia National Park. I’d always wanted to go either here, or Redwoods (basically anywhere with ‘really big trees’) and it did not disappoint. As silly as it sounds, I don’t think I realised just how big these trees are. For this stint of the trip I was travelling with my friend Weston, who summed the place up best when he said “it feels like your living in a giants world”. I can’t say I’ve been to many other places that feel like you’re in a fantasy novel, or on another planet, in the same way Sequoia did.
Photographing this scenery turned out to be quite difficult. The trees are so big they’re hard to fit in frame while keeping a good composition, and when all the other trees around them are huge you need a subject that gives a sense of scale to them - in my case, Weston.
We came across this grove of Sequoia’s by chance. Not that far away was General Sherman, the biggest tree on earth (by total volume). As you can imagine, you have to wait in line if you want a picture with it, or without random families taking their group photos. Hence we decided to go off piste and escape the crowds. About 15 minutes later, we stumbled across this - probably the most closely knit group of Sequoia’s we found during our time here. Best part about it, no people.
I hiked a nearby hill, Weston got into place, and this was the result. I could have gone wider with the shot, and maybe gotten the full length of the trees in, but by cutting them off at a certain height it makes them seem never ending.
Finally, my favourite photo from 2019 is this moment I captured between Polite (one of the elephant handlers at Imire), and Mac (the bull). Every morning in Zimbabwe we would make our way to the bomas (animal enclosures in southern Africa) and help clean either the elephant or rhino pens. Unlike the rhinos discussed in #3, in this part of Imire the elephants and rhinos are kept in pens over night, and then free to roam the park during the day. There are various conservation reasons for this, so to keep this brief - it’s largely for their safety.
I’ve previously mentioned how atmospheric the cold mornings in Zimbabwe were. The first rays of sunlight combined with the low hanging mist made for some stunning scenes, and would create some really strong silhouettes from the elephants and rhinos as they wandered off into the bush. The first morning I witnessed this, I had an idea of the shot I wanted to get.
It took a couple of weeks however before the pieces fell into place. The biggest difficulty was that these multi-ton beasts didn’t give a rat's arse about the picture I wanted, and would head in which ever direction suited them. This would mean repositioning yourself (provided the lighting still worked), but even in the time it took for you to do this, the elephants would have covered decent ground. The way they lumber about may look slow, but their steps are so big they cover ground surprisingly quickly.
One morning it finally all came together, and even better was the addition of Polite. Elephants being far more intelligent than rhinos meant the relationship between them and their handlers was a lot stronger. Seeing Mac’s head slightly turned towards Polite, looking at him, as they walk side-by-side into the wilderness together - it perfectly encapsulated the wonderful work Imire is doing and how humans should live alongside animals.
A couple of minutes later, I was shoveling heaps of elephant piss and shit…and wouldn’t have had it any other way.