Last year, members of the Commons Photographers User Group shared their best shot of 2018 with others. Now it's been another year and I'm curious to hear what you all consider the best shot you've taken in 2019. I'll start:
Obviously this is not a particularly beautiful subject, however, living surrounded by so much poverty has sensitized me a lot about this issue and this type of photography is a form of protest against social differences, often this situation is ignored by most because this happens far from their homes or because people end up getting used to seeing this every day. I have found it difficult to get outstanding images on this subject because it is difficult for me to think of a good composition while photographing this and because it is not pleasant for many people, people are used to ignoring the homeless, people go around them without looking or with a look accustomed to poverty that becomes transparent. With this effect of selective black and white, I seek to highlight what is ignored by the majority, what is always there even though we pretend it is not and look elsewhere. --Wilfredor (talk) 00:19, 31 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
In 2019, I've been all over the place with my photography. I focused a bit on capturing the mesmerizing mood of mossy trees and creeks along the Pacific Coast and on taking documentary-style photos of the California wine-making industry. Whenever I traveled locally or internationally, I took images of buildings (both exteriors and interiors) and it seems like the intellectual challenge of how to best depict architecture never grows old on me. That being said, my favorite image of 2019 is the one above. I just love the way the rocks of the walls interact with the metal of the metro cars, with reflections dancing on the floor below. I also remember this as one of my highlight moments of Wikimania 2019 in Stockholm, because it was one of the few opportunities I could get together with fellow members of our user group. --Frank Schulenburg (talk) 19:47, 19 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks Frank for hosting another round of this event. I don't get out from my little municipality that much, but as I dig deeper into what's available here, I always find something new to shoot or improve how I photograph an old subject. This is the same photo I submitted to Flickr's 'my best shot 2019'. I love rambling down by any body of water and photograph things in and around it. This photo brings back happy memories for me of a day when everything was perfect for shooting things in the fjord. Jellies are not a new subject for me, but I like how I have challenged myself to make better photos of them over the years. This is the best one so far. --Cart(talk)20:22, 19 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks to Frank for hosting another round of this event. One of my favorite hobbies is photographing historic monuments, heritage places and natural spaces. This image of the Noordmeulen, the "north mill", Steenvoorde - Hauts-de-France, France, is my favorite of 2019. It won 9th place in the 2019 French national Wiki Loves Monuments competition. Best regards --Pierre André (talk)20:49, 19 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
This year I didn't get out much for photography (despite it being my second most active year on Commons). But I was pretty happy with this image from Stockholm. Ainali (talk) 21:14, 19 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
(Google-Translate)I bought an annual ticket for the Berlin State Museums and have photographed everything there over time. The impressive dome on the first floor of the Old National Gallery is sold in the museum as a poster, but the quality is modest and it is not the whole dome in the photo of the museum. I wanted to do better and I think I succeeded. I didn't use a tripod, I put the camera on the floor and released it while lying down, so I depicted the maximum possible section. Other visitors looked funny but I didn't care. Danke an Frank für die Initiative! --Ralf Roletschek22:57, 19 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Last year I moved to New Zealand to follow my fiancé. As I was making this country my new home, I started to discover local mountains and got into winter hiking - all that, of course, with a camera in my backpack. I started to pay much more attention to the light and I took shots like this one or this one which are based on a special light. However, my favorite photo still stands out for me for its crispness and the orange sky that is reflected in the water and on the wet stones. The shot was quite random as the water was too fast and deep for my tripod so I just put my camera on a stone and hoped for the best. --Podzemnik (talk) 00:00, 20 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't do as much photography the last year as I would have wanted. I think I have taken some decent shots, some even better than this perhaps but this picture of an historical gate in my hometown of Patiala made it to the Top 10 of Wiki Loves Monuments 2019 in India and I can't express how exciting and proud moment that was for me. Reminds me of a couplet by famous Punjabi Sufi poet, Bulleh Shah:
“You run to enter temples and mosques
But you never entered your own heart”
This one narrowly beat out this Hudson Yards panorama and these cygnets for my pick this year. It's the defunct Chestnut Hill Pumping Station in Boston (aka the Waterworks Museum). Unusual site for a museum, and I was glad to visit when we had our WikiConference North America reception there. It is a far-from-perfect focus stack, but I like the result (I was surprised it worked at all since I didn't have a tripod and the lighting was difficult). — Rhododendritestalk | 03:59, 20 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I grew up in close vicinity to the Olympic Stadium in Munich and began attending soccer matches and other events there when I could barely walk. But it took me a while (i.e. decades) before I started developing a photographer's sense for details, shapes and shades. --Martin Falbisoner (talk) 06:42, 20 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
2019 was a year of radical change for me. This change started in my habits and my way of living. This photograph represents a food that I really appreciate and which turns out to be quite good and healthy. — D Y O L F 77[Talk]09:13, 20 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
This is a dome of a monastery church that I was able to capture from approximately the same height. The forested background well describes the monastery's location near a mountainous village and the colours clearly point out that it was taken during summer. --Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 11:08, 20 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I did a lot of hiking in 2019, even though it was a mini-hiking on this day in Matterhorn, but I choose this photo because it represent my love for mountains and hiking.--Liridon (talk) 11:10, 20 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you Frank for creating this event. It's not easy to choose a picture of a year. A local newspaper asks the same question in December. This image is the one I'd choosen, but may be there is a better one. Ten to twenty photographs are really good every, far more are just good. I like taking photographs early in the morning. The light is very clear and I love the colours of the blue hour and the sunrise. The picture combines all these advantages. -- XRaytalk11:59, 20 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
This is very unlikely my best picture of 2019. But it is maybe one on my more "important" ones. It's one of the last pictures taken of russian handball player Ekaterina Koroleva (#88). In this moment the russian beach handball national team celebrated their victory over the german team at the European beach handball championships in the match for rank 9. Very few hours later Koroleva was dead; she died in a bathing accident just some dozen meters away from this place. She was 21 years old this time. For me this image is very emotional. More worth than a "best" image in quality. -- Marcus Cyron (talk) 17:13, 20 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Not the most active year for me. I had a very pleasant afternoon photographing all aspects of this church. I promised the minister some photographs for Wikipedia, and then discovered it needed first to create the Wikipedia page: St Peter and St Paul, East Harling. -- Colin (talk) 12:29, 21 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I mostly photographed bugs in 2019. Normally, I just do very straightforward documentary shots of the entire bug in order to illustrate Wikipedia articles, but I decided to get a face shot of this preying mantis and it turned out surprisingly well. Kaldari (talk) 13:35, 21 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Noctilucent clouds in Laboe, Germany. I've never been able to photograph NLCs before. The night of the summer solstice was my premiere. But I had no great expectations. We sat on the beach and suddenly the sky was filled with this magic light! It was truly an unforgettable experience for me. --Matthias Süßen (talk) 13:45, 21 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Mountains in northern Iran. I took very few pictures in 2019. This one is hardly a good photograph, but it represents an important tour I did last year, which will hopefully see a new step next month. --Yann (talk) 16:35, 21 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I am not sure which could be considered my best shot in 2019. Instead I have selected a memorable one. I always wanted to photograph St. Brendan's Cathedral in Loughrea which is a showpiece of early 20th-century Irish art. I asked for permission by email and waited for a response which came just in time before the last day where I could still get to Loughrea with a two-hour drive. A staff member of the parish office was very helpful. She made me aware of objects I could have easily overlooked and asked me whether I am interested to get up to the gallery. Unlike as in many other churches, the gallery of St. Brendan's is very tight and accommodates just the organ and the organist. It can be reached only through a very narrow spiral staircase which is usually not open to the public. Seeing my short stature, she offered to carry my unwieldy and heavy-weight tripod upstairs and allowed me to take this shot from the gallery while she played the organ. Thanks to Frank for this page and all contributors for these interesting shots and their stories. --AFBorchert (talk) 22:03, 22 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
2019 has been a very busy year for me, with hundreds of photos uploaded of birds, animals, aerial photos, watercrafts, and many others. I chose this picture because the bird looks like it's free and happy, whereas it is on top of a small tree in the middle of a bustling city, full of man-made structures, smoke, and noises, far from the conditions the bird prefers. Did it just lose its home? Simply roaming around? Only the bird knows. Rehman04:50, 24 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe not the most beautiful photo here but I would like to share it in memory of all the wikimedians who passed away last year. May they rest in peace. I chose this photo, which was taken during Wikimania Stockholm, because I liked the idea of this mourning corner and how the photos of the wikimedians were placed in an open place on the grass. Lest we forget ! --Yamen (talk) 17:43, 24 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
These bugs (the ones on top) aren't difficult to find in Madagascar or to photograph. So I hunted around for a shot that would have both the bugs and the nypmphs (the ones under the branch) together where I could isolate them from the background. You can still see a couple of branches in the background, but I decided to leave them there. Thanks to Frank and Happy New Year to everyone. Charles (talk) 12:21, 26 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
One of my best drone pictures made of the hanseatic city Wismar. It is a panoramic photography contenting 9 separate pictures. Working as a photographer for Wikipedia since 2007 I now love to take pictures also from above... --Daniela Kloth (talk) 13:03, 27 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Here's one of Portland Bill Lighthouse, taken last March just before dawn on the Dorset coast in Southern England. There was some rather scary scrambling around with a headtorch at the top of the cliffs in the pitch dark to get into position. MichaelMaggs (talk) 14:18, 29 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Canadian gymnast Félix Dolci flying to the silver medal at the 1st FIG Artistic Gymnastics Junior World Championships in Győr, Hungary. I've already taken photos of him at the 2018 Summer Youth Olympics where he got a silver medal on still rings. I became friends with him, his family and the Canadian team there. The families sent me a lot of maple syrup and maple candies, the official Canadian Olympic shirt, and such. I was glad to document his activities and those of other international gymnasts (some of them I already knew before) at the inaugural Junior World Championships which has a detailed article on English Wikipedia and links to the categories for every gymnast. It's probabily the best document sports event I have been to and I am happy that many more articles for these amazing athletes have been created since this event, all having my photos from this event. And I was super happy when Félix added a gold medal on still rings to the one on floor. I love that photo because it was very unexpected for me that human beings could fly so high. It looks surreal or even unreal but I could catch that special moment. Cheers, —DerHexer(Talk)21:40, 3 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
It was an honour (not to mention a cause of "imposter syndrome") to photograph the esteemed photographer Vanley Burke, in Birmingham, England, on 12 February 2019.
Flatowturm Potsdam, Germany. Technically an relative easy drone shot. But to take this a lot of preliminary work was necessary: We needed the permission of the property owner (Stiftung Preußische Schlösser und Gärten Berlin-Brandenburg), from the air traffic control (for a hospital heliport nearby) and from the local adminsitration to fly in the security zone of the experimental nuclear power plant "Berliner Experimentier-Reaktor". With many thanks to User:Holger Plickert (WMDE), who managed it.
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