Hi, everyone!

I hope you had a great holiday week, and enjoying your weekend. This will be Part Two of my favorite images for 2023 (Part One can be found here). It will focus on the second half of the year, though in practice, all the images in this “definitely not a blog” are from the workshop in the Balkans.

Before I go into the images, I just wanted to note a few things that happened in the second half of the year. I participated in a few successful fairs, which I hope to return to in 2024. My images were chosen for several prestigious juried shows at the Cape Cod Art Center. One of my images even won first place in photography at the All New England 2023 show! Two of my images won bronze awards at the Epson Pano Awards. Finally, three of my images were also juried into the Small Stones festival. The festival was supposed to happen in October, but due to water damage at the venue, it was moved and will now run January 27th-February 4th. It should be a great festival, and I hope some of you will make it to the new venue either for the reception or just to visit. As you can see, all in all, I had a great second half of the year, and I hope it continues in 2024.

Now, to the favorite images. In the second half of October I went to the Balkans for a two and a half week trip. I’ve started a series of “definitely not blogs” about the trip here, and hope to continue as I edit the images. You can also find the gallery, which I update as I edit, dedicated to the trip here. It is an amazing area and I only just scratched the surface. I hope to go back in 2025 for a winter trip. This is a good place to plug our great guide, Luka Esenko.

As you might have already gathered from my other posts, I am behind on my editing. Considering the amount of images I brought back from the trip, it will likely take me a long time to finish the editing process. However, even just looking at the already edited images, choosing twelve favorites for this post was difficult (I ended up settling on thirteen instead of twelve). Many great images I really like, did not make it onto the list (so, do take the time to look at the dedicated posts and the gallery).

The first sunrise of the workshop really set the tone for the entire trip. We went to visit one of the most famous churches in Slovenia, Sveti Tomaz (Saint Thomas). It is a beautiful location with the picturesque church on a hill (as is very common in Slovenia) against the backdrop of the Julia Alps. To top it off, we had the mist filling the entire valley, and flowing in and out the surrounding mountains and woodland. As Nigel Danson says, “It doesn’t get any better than this.”

We spent a couple of hours photographing the area, and apart from taking the amazing wide shots, I also enjoyed picking out beautiful details of the forest/mountains shrouded in mist with my telephoto lens.

We spent the next few days exploring the Julian Alps, Soca River valley, and the Triglav National Park. We enjoyed beautiful, dramatic, misty conditions in the mountains, always reminding me of Grieg’s “In the Halls of the Mountain King.”

There are too many shots that I love from this portion of the trip to include in this post. Many are still waiting to be edited, and I tried to choose the few that really capture the atmosphere we encountered (as well as being my favorites).

The conditions also lent themselves to some beautiful, minimalistic black and white shots.

As we were driving back to Ljubljana on the last day, we stopped to photograph a valley we visited on our very first day. It was a fitting end to the Slovenian part of the workshop. Although the conditions we were hoping for did not materialize, I still managed to capture one of my favorite images of the trip.

After spending a day in Ljubljana, we made our way South to Bosnia. In the next couple of days we explored Una National Park and the surrounding area. The park is located close to the Croatian border and not very far from the much more famous Plitvice Lakes National Park. Although I would say that Plitvice is a more varied location with many beautiful lakes and waterfalls, Una offers the raw power of a beautiful waterfall, and a generally more ragged feel. It is well worth the visit, and unlike Plitvice, you are not likely to encounter endless tourist groups if you come during the day.

After visiting the main waterfall (on two consecutive mornings), we also explored the area. This year, waterflow was particularly strong in many locations in the Balkans. It presented its own set of advantages and challenges. The powerful flowing rivers and cascades made for impressive and memorable images.

Although this is generally not my main focus, I did manage to take a few beautiful more abstract photos of the flowing water. One of them made it into this list of my favorite shots of 2023.

After exploring this area of Bosnia, we moved to Croatia. We started at the Plitvice Lakes National Park. Images of this beautiful location caught my eye twenty years ago, and I wanted to visit it ever since. The park did not disappoint. The only real disappointment was that we only spent one day in the park as on the second day it rained heavily almost non-stop and we decided to move on to our next destination. The silver lining for this is that I definitely plan to go back for a more extended visit.

During the morning in the park, we enjoyed beautiful light shining on the fall colors in the trees surrounding the lakes and waterfalls. It was an absolutely magical scene. This image from Plitvice caps the list of my favorite shots of 2023.

Images from the last part of the trip didn’t make onto this list mostly because I am still in the process of editing them. However, an honorable mention goes to the evening I spent in Piran, Slovenia, after the workshop was over. We went there with two other workshop participants. It’s a beautiful small coastal town, perfect for some street photography, and well worth the visit. Several beautiful shots from Piran are still waiting on my hard drive to be edited.

This concludes the list of my favorite images from 2023 (at least those I am done editing). I hope you enjoyed this and the previous posts.

I wish you a Happy New Year, and a great 2024!

Thank you and enjoy the rest of your weekend and Holiday!

Dimitry

The Year That Was. Favorite Images of 2023. Part 2: International Edition

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The Year That Was. Favorite Images of 2023. Part 1: Shooting Locally