2025 has been a mixed bag for me, photographically. Looking at my Lightroom catalogue I can see that I have roughly half the number of images for the year compared to 2024 and that number includes scans of most of the negatives I have shot in the course of the year. Certainly my activity recording day to day life and events with a DSLR has been right down on previous years.
However, within that reduced number of pictures there is quite a variety. The selection includes DSLR and mirrorless digital shots, black and white and colour 120 film run through SLRs and TLRs, shots from my trusty Leicas and a significant body of pictures from shooting a Pentax MX with a 43mm limited lens – an acquisition in the spring which has provided much pleasure and some nice pictures en route. Given all this variation in styles it has been difficult to select a photo of the year to share, but in the end I have settled on one which reflects both the most interesting place I photographed in 2025 and one that, I suspect, gives a pointer as to what I’ll be trying to do in 2026.
Capo Testa in Sardinia is an astonishing landscape. A landscape that you might imagine Henry Moore would come up with if given free reign with a Mediterranean headland and a lifetime’s supply of chisels. Wind-shaped granite forms give the impression of wandering through an enormous outdoor modern art gallery as you pick your way across the cape—as I found myself doing just after dawn on a morning in July, medium format digital camera and wide angle lens in hand.
There are three themes to my photographic activities: Firstly, an unhealthy obsession with comparing specs, prices and reviews of equipment old and new which I imagine will improve my image making, but in fact just takes time away from it. Secondly, much of my work is captured on black and white film with a view to producing silver gelatin prints in the darkroom of the highest quality that I can manage. Thirdly, and where it all started for me, is an interest in classical colour landscape photography of the type practiced in the UK by luminaries such as Charlie Waite and Joe Cornish. This third strand led me, 15 years ago or so, to the purchase of a large format camera and a period of shooting 5×4 inch Velvia to try and achieve the look that I was after. However, the practicalities and cost of this approach have led to it falling by the wayside in recent times and at £10 a sheet plus processing I can’t see it coming back into my repertoire anytime soon.
It is while contemplating how to take colour landscape photography forward that I have been forced to admit to myself that, luddite, analogue obsessive and darkroom denizen as I am, modern digital cameras and lenses are capable of astonishing quality, rivalling or even exceeding that of large format, low speed colour reversal film. Furthermore, digital image processing and printing is enormously fast when compared to darkroom work.
And so you rejoin me on my windswept Sardinian headland trying to recapture that large format Velvia look with modern tools. I was attracted by the central form that I felt resembled a cloaked figure with its featureless face turned towards me. I always struggle to know what to leave out and tried various compositions between viewpoints and stitched panoramas. If you look up the location online you are likely to see numerous pictures of the Faro di Capo Testa (Capo Testa lighthouse) and that is visible just to the left of the main image and included in this stitched panorama which I also like.
However, given that many of you will be viewing this on a smartphone screen the panorama is a less appealing choice for this platform and the squarer crop of the main image fits better with my intention to pursue that aesthetic once more.
The sun was almost directly behind me as I made the image, casting shadows of the equally bizarre rocks behind me onto the scene. In the process of doing so it also cast a clear shadow of the photographer into the foreground. I couldn’t escape this by hiding in the shadow of a rock—the angle was wrong, so the central bizarre shadow you see is me, trying my best to look like a piece of wind scored granite!
I have enjoyed these colour pictures I made in Sardinia and they have prompted me to plan to devote 2026 to making more of them, parking my film cameras for a while and giving me at least the glimmer of a hope that I might address some of the backlog of negatives in the darkroom without adding to them faster than I can deal with them. I’ll let you know how I get on.
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