Mary’s Favorite Photos from 2023

It’s that time of year again, where Peter makes me review my hundreds (maybe thousands) of photos from the year and choose between my babies. It is also that time of year where I complain about it relentlessly, but do it anyway. It seems to be the same every year, I start reviewing my photos picking the ones that are “good enough”, thinking there won’t be any better, and then the rest of the year seems to pick up and I end up with 20-30 photos I can’t seem to choose between. And since Peter picked 13 for his “top 10”, I did too. Peter said my 13 picks are totally me, full of variety and expirmentation. I’m going to take that as a compliment, especially the “expirmentation” part.

Throughout the year, I continued to try different things in pursuit of developing new skills, but never seeming to stick with anything long enough to achieve some basic level of competence. This photo was taken for a class assignment (I’m learning how to paint with hot beeswax – but that’s a rabbit hole for a different day). My friend, Karil, and her husband were coming over for dinner, and I asked if she’d be willing to pose for me. My request was only 2 hours before they were due to arrive. Karil, gamely said “yes”, and then proceeded to ask if I had any hair or makeup requests (I love this about her). Just red lipstick was my response. She had none. So Peter offered to pick her up and bring her over, and on the way stopped at the drugstore so he could buy her the red lipstick I recommended. He had to ask for help, and at which point felt compelled to explain why he was buying red lipstick for a woman that was not his wife. Every photo seems to have a story, and everytime I look at this photo, I think of that story. I like the shape she made with her body, the glamour lighting, and the overall vibe. I didn’t end up using this specific image for my class, but it became my favorite for the year.

Peter and I have been talking about driving the entire length of Route 66 for over 15 years. We have yet to do it, but in the meantime, we photograph portions of it when we can. I had been reading about the Holbrook dinosaurs, and have badgered him insistently for a couple of years to stop as we blew by them at warp speed on I-40. Apparently, he couldn’t take it anymore, and this year he stopped – TWICE! I think I inherited my love for kitsch from my mom, I can’t seem to pass up anything that has “campy americana” shouting from the roadside.

For years we have been passionate about photographing ghost towns. Peter has many blog posts about them. You can check out the latest post, How to Photograph Ghost Towns for tips and images from an assortment of places we’ve been. Ruby Ghost Town had been on my list for a while, so when friends suggested it, I enthusiastically said “yes”. A two hour drive to the middle of nowhere Arizona, and I couldn’t wait to get started. This image was taken with a FujiFilm Instax camera, the new take on instant photography. It is my latest fascination and I almost always have it with me. It works well for “americana” subjects, and I love playing with the different film settings. I also find that it is a great icebreaker, and I will often take a photo of a stranger or tour guide, print it and give it to them, then a whole new world of conversation and interaction opens up.

I was housebound for a couple of weeks this past summer, and received lots of flowers from friends to cheer me up. I spent hours with my Instax camera and an assortment of prisims photographing the flowers. I couldn’t stop. This is my favorite image from that series. This is straight from the camera, no processing, using one of the creative film options.

To celebrate her 40th birthday, Karil asked me to make a collection of fitness photos. Peter and I had never done that before, so we dove down the rabbit hole and researched “proper fitness photos”. Some of the examples still keep me up at night. We spent two hours setting up, and two hours photographing her using different lighting techniques to create a variety of looks and feel. This image was the most technically challenging to execute, especially with the equipment we had. We needed a boom arm, and we ended up bouncing light into two v-flats precariously balanced overhead. We tested it, tested it, and tested it again before she arrived. Unfortunately we tested with Peter, who is taller than Karil, so we had to try again with her in the shot. It is the reward of challenging work that I feel when I see this image. I love how the components of lighting, expression, and pose came together.

Sometimes its just nice to go back to one of my comfort zones, abstract macro photography. For my beeswax painting class, I was trying a new technique and became so frustrated, I started scraping my wax off the board. I usually melt the wax shavings and re-use them, but this time I became obsessed with the colors and shapes the wax was making. I brought dishes of scraped wax inside (a thing I never like to do, i.e. bring wax into the house), and proceeded to spend hours photographing them with my Canon 65mm speciality lens. This is lens I have written about before. I have a unique love/hate relationship with it. It is challenging to work with, but I love the results.

I continue to take online photography courses, and one of my favorites of the year was, Explore the Hidden World of Infrared Photography by Rain Hayes.  She has a unique way of seeing the world, and I was inspired by her creative vision. I’ve been photographing with infrared cameras for over 10 years, and thought I understood how she approached infrared photography. I did not. I spent hours. The flowers were starting to wilt and brown in the sunlight. I had to walk away from my images, for weeks. This was my favorite of the series, and I choose it for my top 10 because it reminds me how hard it is to execute on a vision or an idea, and always how much there is to learn.

Peter and I always lament that we can’t photograph the Painted Desert in good light. The best vantage point for photographing it, is from Petrified Forest National Park which is only open from 8-5 to prevent theft of the fossilized wood. I read about a dupe of this desert with a similar look and feel near Winslow, Arizona. We set off another goosechase. It was hard to find. There was a small stone sign at the entrance that was missing the words, and was covered in so much graffitti it looked like a warning to stay away. Ours was only 1 of 2 cars in the whole park. It was a little eerie. We were enjoying a glorious sunset, wondering why the park was so deserted.

Venetian Fish Market at 9:00 AM

The setting, the time of day, the sounds were what you would expect from a busy Italian fish market…and then, she walks by. Glamourous, chic, and confident with somewhere to be. It was such a contradiction of sights, smells, and sounds. I made one frame as she was walking toward me, and then she was gone. I have hundreds of photos from Italy, but this one seems to capture the essence of the experience for me.

We are seasoned travelers. We know how to pack (although we still have the same luggage allocation fight we’ve had for 20+ years, even though we now have our own bags). We check the weather and plan accordingly. Unfortunately, after a week in Italy, the weather changed drastically while we were in the mountains. Our clothes weren’t warm enough, the places we wanted to photograph required hiking, straight up a mountain with no switchbacks, but we still ventured out. I captured this image on our way back from a disappointing hike. We hiked 1 hour straight up a mountain to make the quinessential image of a Dolomite mountain peak, only for the mountain to be so fogged in we couldn’t see past the viewpoint. Two people walking on a cold foggy rainy day, that was our experience. I just hope they weren’t having the same conversation we were, as I questioned Peter about why we were taking the hardest route straight up the mountain (especially when there was a gondola to the top!)

We made up for the “stinky” weather on our last day in the Dolomites. We hiked the popular Friedrich August Weg halfway and had the trail to ourselves for the outbound portion. The return portion looked like a queing line for the Disneyland ride, Rise of the Resistance, as people were hiking in and we were hiking out. I love Peter’s posture as he survey’s the valley and we make our way to the middle building in the distance, which is mapped out quite dramatically with the diagonal line connecting the path between two huts as if it is a roadmap advertising the way to the best apple strudel I’ve ever tasted.

A small Tuscan hilltop town full of old structures and gardens, and my favorite image was the leaves overhead on a restuarant patio. We were in San Quirco d’Orcia, trying to capture iconic photographs of Tuscany. But the fields were fallow, the ground dirt, and the sun blazing. We arrived at the restaurant at noon, and were the only people on the patio (it took us a couple of weeks to realize noon was not a proper lunchtime in Italy). While we were waiting for lunch I got up and roamed around making pictures of the vine covered trellis overhead. Sometimes you just have to accept what is presented, not what you wanted (Mark told me this over 10 years ago, and it is a phrase that has served me well).

It wouldn’t be a favorite photo collection of mine, if I didn’t have at least 1 mud photo. We made our 8th trip to Death Valley this year to photograph the historic lake in Badwater. While I captured many amazing images from our usual places, it was my mud images that excited me the most. I could say something poetic and arty like “the transformation of the earth into different forms and compositions captivated me”, but really I just love the the shapes of dried mud. These were taken on the Gower Gulch Loop trail. It was a typical situation, everyone was on top of the hills photographing the dramatic views of the badlands, while I was in the wash with my camera pointed down. I could have stayed there all day.