Favourite Photo of the Month, 2024

It’s been, again, a bit of a strange year. I tried to make it a decent one, with some modest plans for improving my life a bit, and that’s worked out in a few ways, but I’ve also been ill quite frequently, with flu or colds that seem to drag on far longer than I remember them doing in the past. I’m wondering if one of my earlier infections was, in fact, Covid-19, and whether this may be some lingering post-Covid kind of effect.

Either way, it’s rather sapped my energy, both mental and physical, and one of the side-effects of that is a reluctance to get out with my camera. Last week, with the end of the year and this traditional blog post fast approaching, I realised I hadn’t actually taken any pictures in December yet, and had been ignoring for some months my usual “best photo of the month” selection process that usually makes this post quite easy to put together.

Nevertheless, I managed to scrape together my favourite photos from each month of 2024, helped by my friend Vik accompanying me on a little photo walk in Weston-super-Mare a couple of days ago. So, without further ado, let’s see what the year has offered.

January

In January, just before my birthday, I went to Clevedon and had a proper psychogeographical wander around, deliberately not taking my phone out to check a map and instead just wandering where I felt like, getting deliberately lost, crunching my way down towpaths behind little housing estates, and finding myself walking past this charming little harbour with its colourful boats. Nice!

February

In February I worked from home a fair bit, which let me get out to see this exhibition at the Spike Island gallery just by extending my lunch hour a little. Young In Hong’s main exhibit was the tapestry in the background depicting the struggle for better working conditions among women workers in South Korea, but I wanted to focus on one of the surrounding fabric sculptures that resembled animal toys found in zoos.

March

I seem to have been beside the seaside a lot this year — I wonder if some part of my unconscious wants to be taking a few months of Victorian-style “rest cure”. Here are Sarah and Vik walking in front of my along Sand Bay during one of our occasional outings.

April

As well as being by the water, I quite like being on the water, though it’s been much rarer that I’ve managed it this year. This was a day of doing things slowly, at an old-fashioned pace: I was going to get a cheque out of the building society, like someone from the 1980s, and I decided to take the ferry for part of the journey, travelling underneath what I still think of as Bristol’s “new” Castle Park Bridge.

May

Back to the water, and in fact back to Clevedon again, this time for a quick trip with my friend Sarah. We almost accidentally found this view under the pier by visiting the toilets at the pier cafe restaurant; I think I’ve “discovered” it in the past and later forgotten about it again. I like the vignetting effect of the round window.

June

While I was in Crete I tried to get back into street photography a little, on the grounds that it’s easier to get away with when you just look like any other idiot tourist with a camera around your neck. Here in Rethymno I noticed this man concentrating on his newspaper. I’d like to think he was doing a crossword, as I struggle through a couple of cryptics a day myself.

July

Another month, another holiday, this time in Penmaenmawr, North Wales, with a group of friends. Sadly I was really quite ill for most of the holiday — ill enough to consider coming home early, something I’ve never done before — but I struggled through…

August

…and by the end of the holiday I was at least feeling up to one single hill walk in the steep landscape above Penmaenmawr, which was worth it for the colour alone, let alone the Cefn Coch stone circle or the wild horses.

September

A real black-and-white image for September. At the end of my solo holiday in Aberystwyth I added a night in The Village in Portmeirion, staying in the Mermaid suite right in the centre of the Village, near the Piazza and the Hercules statue, with a view of the Green Dome and, of course, next to the giant chess board. Stying overnight I was able to roam the village in the dark with a tripod, and took this shot of the famous chess board with the Dome in the background in the late evening.

October

At some point the Council will finally get around to developing the Western Harbour, I expect, after one or two dismal false starts. Who knows what it will entail, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the entire Cumberland Basin Flyover System, including this view under the non-swinging section of the Plimsoll Bridge, changed forever. The last time the council messed with this area significantly it was to level half of the district I live in in order to install this fairly terrifying concrete network of roads and bridges which, over time, I’ve actually grown fairly fond of. Or at least developed 25 years’ worth of Stockholm Syndrome for, anyway. I’ve been trying to take a few photos of what it’s like now, so we’ll have a bit of a record of what the “before” looked like. I’ve enjoyed looking at old photos of what Hotwells looked like before the current mess was installed, so it seems only fair that I should try to capture it before its next big change.

November

And on that theme, here’s another picture of the interesting mishmash of contradictions that comprises the Cumberland Basin Flyover System, this time some teasels at the riverside toward the end of Spike Island, with the much-graffiti’d flyover system, the brutalist concrete bench that commemorates the installation and the Avon Gorge with Brunel’s Clifton Suspension Bridge bringing up the rear.

December

I took this shot just three days ago on a trip with my friend Vik to Weston-super-Mare. Vik and I both have a thing for faded seaside glory, and the murky weather was a very appropriate accompaniment to our wander along the main promenade to Birnbeck Pier and back. Here’s a view of the rocky shore looking out across the mud to Steep Holm. I do like a bit of seaside atmosphere.

And we’re done! This year I’m going to try to force myself out to take some pictures, and perhaps take a couple of trips to new places so I can challenge myself a bit more. We’ll see how it goes…