Notes from a Nomad

I have been a passionate photographer all my life, dating from when my parents gave me a second hand Zeiss Ikon Rangefinder camera in the early 1960s, and both my enthusiasm and modest ability as a photographer is genuine and longstanding.

In 1972, after working as an assistant prospecting hand in the remote Kununurra area of Northwestern Australia, I sold images I had taken to the Australian Journal of Photography to help finance future travels, and from 1979 to 2011 it was my images which featured heavily in all the colour brochures and marketing material used by our International Educational Travel company Casterbridge Tours.

And after selling Casterbridge Tours in 2011 the first thing I did was to open a Gallery ‘Global Images’ in Sherborne, Dorset, featuring my own mountain and landscape photography!

I have always thought, possibly because I trained as a Geographer, that I am a competent landscape photographer and I believe that I have an OK eye for composition, which is usually 95% of the requirements for taking a good photo. However, I am less sure of myself and claim zero talent for the skills required for photographing people other than occasionally being in the right place at the right time for an impromptu lucky shot. Markets are always favourite locations for me.

After learning the basic techniques with my Ziess Ikon I graduated to a Minolta Single Lens Reflex Camera which I bought duty free in Singapore in 1972 using funds I had saved teaching in London.

About 20 years ago after using an SLR for 30 years I decided a digital rangefinder camera was much easier when travelling and especially when hiking in the mountains.

Today I use the latest iphone, upgrading almost annually not for the cachet of owning the latest iphone, but to have one of the best specified phone cameras on the market.

And today with incredibly well specified cameras incorporated into most smartphones we are all photographers posting images online and on social media and ‘real’ photographers except for the lucky specialist few, struggle to make a living. How can they make a living when most companies can download the images they require for free or just a few cents or dollars?

Today I am a prolific photographer but in 1972 I made 6 rolls of Slide film (about 210 images) last 3 months as I travelled through Asia from London to Malaysia. Now when location and content combine, there will be several days each year when I may take several hundred images in a day! And shooting 100+ images in a day is more usual than unusual!

Each year after dispensing with the rubbish and duplicates I place the remainder of my images in a chronological series of indexed folders and about 10% of the 10,000 plus images I retain each year are duplicated and placed in between 20 and 50 thematic folders featuring family members, friends, and various trips and destinations. And each year I entitle two of the Folders as ‘Panoramas’ and ’Best’ although perhaps ‘Favourites’ should be a more apt and modest description! 

And on top of that, which requires a substantial period of my time annually, I have a similar time demanding system for the 40,000+ images which I retain on my iphone using my own filing system rather than defaulting to Apple’s options. This is necessary because I have an Apple phone but Windows laptops and desktop computers and the two systems share different operating systems.

The result of this process for 2025 resulted in 12,609 images saved in 320 Folders (numbered 4432 to 4751), each folder titled with a date and description. And as the year progressed I made another 41 thematic folders of family, friends, and travels. 

And in 2025 my travels took me to various parts of Thailand, including Songkhla Buri close to the border with tragic Myanmar, as well as return visits to the Mekong River and the island of Koh Chang, the iconic Glastonbury Festival, a 4^th visit to Greenland, a 5 day hike with friends in the Swiss Alps, a first ever visit to most impressive Sicily, a 50 year reunion in Sydney Australia, explorations in less known areas of the Philippines complete with motor bike accident, as well as two visits to my second home of Vancouver BC.

I have long wanted to make a post of my favourite images of each year and this is my first attempt. It is not such a daunting task because although I saved and indexed 12,609  images in 2025 I am only considering the 279 images that ‘made the cut’ to the ‘Favourites’ folder and the 217 in the ‘Panoramas’ folder.

I should clarify ‘Favourites’ does not mean I think they are outstanding images in themselves but images which are saved separately because they generate fond memories or because I think they are OK images and not without some merit for a hum dum wannabee photographer like myself.

What follows are my own favourite images from 2025, some because I think they are attractive images and others because they are personal favourites.

©Michael Bromfield 2026