Danse Macabre – my favorite photo of 2025

I took this shot around 3:30 pm on Halloween just outside my place in Brooklyn.  I had been looking forward to shooting NYC’s bacchanal Halloween festivities for weeks and I was in a rush to get to the West Village where there is a massive annual street party that was my intended destination.  But as always, some of my best shots happen when I planned on something else!

I ran into this little musical troupe as I was rounding a corner and stumbled right into their midst just as they were getting started.  The West Village could wait a minute, I had to grab some shots of this cool marching band!   I never thought I’d be saying those words in that order but I think this group qualifies, unlike the marching bands of my suburban Pittsburgh past with their incredibly unflattering and perpetually out of style uniforms.  The band looked and sounded great, and were having a blast as they marched, sang and played, all the while led by the young woman in white prancing and dancing and leading them (and me) on a merry chase.

I fell in and followed them along as they snaked through my neighborhood, first through the Brooklyn Bridge Park, then along the East River waterfront and finally ending up under the arch of the Manhattan Bridge.   It was hard to keep up with them — or more accurately it was hard get ahead of them enough to get a good shot, as they kept a brisk pace and I had to guess which way they were going to turn.  I think the image captures a moment that resonates across centuries of similar celebrations; it reminds me of the little circus troupe dancing off into the distance/afterlife at the end of The Seventh Seal.  But instead of the Grim Reaper, my merry little band is following a happy young woman in white.  She makes the photo what it is — her radiating delight as she dances along suffuses every part of her, from the dancing feet, to the beckoning arms leading the band, to the infectious grin.  It’s a moment of pure joy in a time when there’s too little of that going around.

I love some of the details, like all of the different shades and textures of stone and brick surfaces of the street and buildings, the people who are looking out the windows at the parade passing by.  I  debated a bit on the woman taking an iphone photo frame right;  I tried cropping her out, but it ruined the balance of the composition, pushing the woman in white out of a nice ‘rule of thirds’ framing to almost bumping the right edge of the frame.  I usually value life and energy in a photo over polish and perfection, so the woman with the iPhone stays.  I hope she got a good photo too!

On the subject of life and energy, I love shooting quirky non-conformist people I find out enjoying the streets of New York, “Bohemians” for lack of a better word.  From where I stand (or crouch or kneel) behind my camera, it looks like they are having a little more fun than the rest of us and may have found an antidote to our current culture that seems to overvalue conformity and consumerism compared to community and connection. For me this shot was the perfect start to my Halloween photo outing.  It was not to be surpassed that evening, or so far as my favorite of 2025.

I want to thank Hamish and David Pauley for initiating what has been a really exciting series of posts of our fellow photographers’ favorite photos of 2025.  I knew it would be difficult to choose a favorite image, and I might choose a totally different one tomorrow, but I salute everyone for an amazing year in photography and I hope you enjoy my humble contribution, DANSE MACABRE, 10/31/25, Leica M3, Leitz Summaron 35mm f2.8, Agfa APX 400 pushed two stops.

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