My favorite photo from this past year was of my favorite season, in one of my favorite places and taken with my current favorite camera. Mamiya RB67 | Kodak Portra 400 I am a notoriously indecisive person and rather hate making decisions in most situations.
So, when tasked with choosing my favorite photograph from the past year, I immediately started agonizing. How on earth is one to select only a single photo that, theoretically, represents an entire year?
With that in mind, I started combing through the thousands and thousands of images I've created this year. I've documented hikes, vacations, work trips, family time and quiet moments at home. I've also participated in numerous local photography club photo walks. The end result is an overwhelming number of images across a diverse set of subjects and genres to choose from. As I scanned through all of them, one kept popping back into my head.
If you aren't familiar with the Mamiya RB67, here I am using it at the beach. This wasn't where I took the image at the top of the article, or immediately below, but it is where I took the image of the stilt house in the gallery at the bottom.
Photo: Anthony Verdi
I took the image while I was home in Minnesota, where I grew up. I try to make a pilgrimage there every fall, since I've lived in tropical environments for the past six years and desperately miss dramatic seasons. This year, I lugged home my Mamiya RB67, which my husband gave me for Christmas last year and is my new prized possession.
While I've taken plenty of images that I really like with that camera over the course of the year (some of which you can see in the gallery below), this one stands out to me as a favorite. There's no grand story behind it; the light was simply nice on my last evening at home, and I wanted to finish the rolls of film in my cameras before my flight the next day. So I wandered down to the pond in my parents' backyard with my mom and took some images (admittedly with three separate cameras, as any sane photographer would do).
I remember when I got scans back, it stopped me in my tracks. It's an image that I'm very proud of, especially since I managed it on a camera with no built-in light meter and no autofocus. The colors, the light and the subject tick a lot of boxes for me. That it was taken with my beloved film camera in one of my favorite places makes it even better for me. Add to all that the fact that my mom was standing next to me, watching me do my thing, and it's hard to imagine not choosing this image.
Another image that I took on the same roll of film that evening, which others have said is their favorite.
At the risk of rambling about far more than a single photograph – which is the point of this article – let me address the potential elephant in the room: yes, I'm highlighting a film photo at Digital Photography Review. But, you see, 2025 was a year of returning to film (which is how I learned photography) in earnest for the first time since I earned my Master of Fine Arts a decade ago. Some may see that as a foolish or even pointless decision, but I love using film for many reasons. I still use digital cameras constantly (I do work at DPReview, after all), but there were plenty of times this year that I left the digital camera at home in favor of my trusty Pentax K1000, or that I turned to my Mamiya instead of my Sony.
As a result, my list of favorite photos from the past year is a mix of both digital and film (both 35mm film and medium-format). And since I am so indecisive, here are some of those that nearly made the cut of my top image.
Sample galleryThis widget is not optimized for RSS feed readers. Click here to open it in a new browser window / tab. . dpreview.com
2025-12-15 17:00