With the end of the year approaching, I tried to select my favourites from 2025, but I initially felt overwhelmed. All year, I have been asking myself: How do you choose the best pictures? What constitutes the ‘best’ pictures, both for myself and for other people? Are these pictures that you can present on your own, or do they need to be presented as a group? Would they make sense to other people, or would they only make sense when grouped together?

For me, this is closely linked to the question of what I want to depict or express here, and ultimately, how I can express something through visual media. Although I practised communicating through text at school and university, communicating through visual media such as photography is still a new experience for me. I am fascinated by how many artists manage to convey meaning through photography. Whether street scenes, portraits or landscape shots, they all tell stories and convey experiences, or sometimes simply capture situations. Thinking about ‘visual communication’ over the course of the year somehow prevented me from actually taking the step of publishing pictures.

In addition to aesthetic and philosophical considerations, technical challenges remain an essential aspect of photography. Despite the technical hurdles it presents, my photographic medium of choice remains analogue photography. I make mistakes with every roll of film, and I made many mistakes in 2025. These mistakes are also far more serious than they would be in digital photography. Images and scenes can be completely lost or severely damaged. This probably slows down my learning process, but at the same time, it motivates me much more than digital photography ever did. I remain mystified as to why mistakes motivate me so much in this context.

Overall, when I look back on this year, I am proud of my photographic work. Although I regret not sharing it more publicly earlier on, I now see the process of selecting and sharing as part of the journey.

Below, I have selected twelve of my favourite pieces from this year. They are not organised by theme, but rather aim to reflect the overall range of my activities this year.

After I got my first film camera I couldn’t really stand the fact that the camera I used (Revue 400 S) didn’t have any kind of exposure control. Film just felt too expensive to be wasted by a light meter that might or might not work correctly. So I got a Minolta X-500 because … well… I already had some old Minolta lenses to use on my Fuji digital camera and it was only 50 euros which I considered quite cheap for this camera in decent condition.

The first trip with this camera resulted in some images I quite like. I learned a lot with this single roll of Kodak Gold 200. A lot of the images had severe light leaks. The one with the mushrooms is heavily cropped but even so it’s colours and the way it just renders light still impresses me. This single roll of colour film made me fall in love with film photography.

• Camera: Minolta X-500
• Film: Kodak Gold 200
• Development: Lab (Drug store)