My Year, in Prattling and Photos

It's been a year since... last year. Ironically, it seems I've found myself a new tradition of getting sick during the New Year holidays. At least, this year (that is, this inter-year period remarkable for its shiny decorations in the streets and houses, and closed supermarkets and pretty much everything), I'm doubtlessly doing better: I've managed to come visit my friends in Germany for Christmas (which I failed to do last year) and—after having some good quality time eating machanka, playing Munchkin and swinging machetes (the last one obviously crept into this checklist only for the sake of the phonological form)—I came back home via proverbial Deutche Bahn and probably less known Schweizerische Bundesbahnen, my body hosting a family of viruses, virions and who knows what other tiny critters somewhere inside my chest.

I believe (I hope) that yesterday I was at my worst, having weird dreams at night, squirming bed-struck and fever-ridden throughout the day, listening to an audiobook by Dostoyevski and thinking: "This kinda sucks."

Today, I believe (I hope), I'm past the crisis, and back on my two feet (or to be more precise, my two bum cheeks), still suffering from back/neck-ache, still thinking: "This kinda sucks," but overall doing okay, and—for the first time in months—feeling motivated to put my thoughts (and prayers) to LCD screen.

I haven't produced long, cohesive texts in months. At work, I'm currently in a period of writing lull, with the PhD thesis obligations looming somewhere at the second horizon, barely perceivable from where I am standing. Due to quite a workload in the lab, my newly acquired hobbies, and, in all honesty, my laziness and reluctance to write, I also haven't been investing any time/effort in concocting fictional stories, keeping a diary, or writing philosophical essays about why I find philosophy boring. Good thing, I haven't abandoned my reading habits, so my word-fencing instincts didn't go completely dull.

Now, away with lengthy introductions that do not even introduce the topic set for discussion.

My 2025 started with blood-stained expectorations, diarrhea, (hypo/hyper)thermia sea-saw, and occasional attacks of suffocation. But doctors told me "You'll be fine," and "Here is a prescription for yeast pills. Keep it brewing!" or something like that.

Just before I got into these unpleasantly intimate relationships with my little germs, I received a Christmas gift from me—a camera. Celebrating the fact that I got a stable (physically, not mentally) and well-enough-financed life for the next several years, I bought myself a decently fancy mirrorless Fotoapparat: it boasted of being suitable for you-name-it photography genres, weather-sealed, stuffed with lots of controls and features, and—having a micro four thirds sensor—with many compact and inexpensive lenses available to screw on. In other words, I bought myself a backpackable travel companion, thus fulfilling my long-standing dreamwish of venturing into the world of amateur photography.

Eventually, the doctors' forecast of my well-being came true, and I reclaimed my healthy stomach, regained my pale-bronze skin color tones, and there I was, all ready to put objects and subjects in frame, shoot them, experiment with them and my camera settings—that is to satisfy my dreamwish.

Looking back, it was quite an eventful and overall good year. For me personally. Excluding all the madness and suffering that the world was going through. I guess, over the years, I've learned not to be very sensitive to the avalanches and shitstorms of events across the globe that expose us, humans, at our lowest. Correction: exposes them. And then there are also natural disasters and mere accidents that make lives miserable and take lives. But over the years, I've reduced my capacity to give in to pains and sorrows to the bare minimum. My family, my friends, people I know personally, people I know by hearsay, and the rest: that's the hierarchical arrangement that keeps my emotional states in check and my mind away from going insane. I speak for myself here, but I bet that's how most of us cope. Things that are out of my control (because I'm a small, insignificant man, living my life in my small world) stay out of my control, and that's why they're unconstrained in taking any shapes and shades. Sometimes, they affect me indirectly, significantly less often, they can affect me in a rather direct way (and then I'm like damnit-damnit, my world is falling apart, cracking at its seams). But they are things out of my control, hence if they don't affect me, I'll just be sad and comment on the situation with something like "damnit-damnit, the world is falling apart, but it's yesterday's news." If they do affect me, I'll try to do something about them, to negotiate the situation away or at least soften the blow whenever it's possible; if not, then well: rejection into acceptance and some sort of personal growth I could live without.

Just recently, my friends and I have been discussing how we cope with grief and sadness and things like this. My reply was that, at my base level, I am always 50% upset, 50% sarcastic. Of course, this simplified, primitive recipe doesn't truly represent the landscape of my inner states, but by nature, I am rarely capable of holding truly deep and profound conversations.

Anyway, with all the sad and bad events of this year in the background, I would like to share here something positive and colorful, occasionally black and white, something that inspired me this year. I hope this inspiration won't expire soon, and I hope I will be able, at least a little bit, to inspire others. So here goes my photo journey of 2025.

            January

Armed with my new weapon, and as if reborn after my enforced bed-bound regime (having consumed a couple of life-asserting audiobooks, including 1986), I'm chasing heavy cream droplets bouncing against the surface of my thick black coffee. While it doubtlessly has no artistic value, this picture was apparently among the first ones I took. It deserves a name. Let's call it "A harmless creamy atomic bomb in a coffee mug."

The next day, I was seeing my friend from Spain and his girlfriend. He was visiting Switzerland, remembered about me, and we arranged to meet in Geneva. With my very limited skills as a guide, I walked them around, and then we stopped for lunch in a nice creperie. Buckwheat galettes with cider are not a frequent but definitely recurrent phenomenon in my dietary habits, and for a good reason: simply because they're good.

And here are my few takes on Geneva's views from above:

            February

I'm walking around Laasaunne's suburbs, freezing my fingers off, trying to capture something interesting with my new wide-angle lens. An "I-need-to-buy-more-new-lenses-and-gear" frenzy hit me, and it would take quite a while for me to get over it. In my defence, all the gear I've acquired so far seems useful, and I am using it fully.

A few weeks later, another friend suddenly came to visit Switzerland. His parents also joined in; they had rented a car, and I was invited on a road trip to Chamonix to see Mont Blanc. I've learned quite a few interesting facts about Switzerland from my friend's dad—he, as an enthusiastic tourist, was much more versed in Swiss history than I, a rather freshly-baked migrant. It was my second time visiting Mont Blanc. And for the second time, I haven't managed to take a train to Mer de Glace with its ice grotto because of poor time management and not heeding the "early bird" proverb.

            March

Hiking season is open! Everything goes well until we come across this sign reading "Tourisme pedestre." Soon after, the path dissolved into dirt, snow, snirt, and, given that it was a rather steep way up and we were not well prepared and didn't have crampons on us, became impassable. Nevertheless, the season was open, and oh yes, I finally seriously got into hiking! The week after, I was exploring a lovely place called La Tine de Conflens. With a camera, the idea of going for a walk/hiking alone takes on new meanings: it becomes a challenge, a game, and work simultaneously. You become a newly enrolled student, a learner of things around you, embracing and capturing them in the moment.

            April

My friend organized his birthday party. We played laser tag and ate cake. And then I put him up to taking the last night train and going to Vallorbe, a village some 45 min ride from Lausanne and, most importantly, away from light pollution, and, as a bonus, with a scenic waterfall a short walk away. "Let's go see Milky Way. The sky should be nice and clear." And so we went.

My original plan was to capture the following frame: above, the Milky Way in all its brilliance and intricacy; below, the rambling waterfall in all its splendor and splatter. But my mind's eye badly miscalculated the lighting conditions. The abovementioned waterfall is hidden in the forest, well shaded by fir trees, birches, and whatnot. Furthermore, it is situated in a sort of small, shallow valley—dell, or hollow... and suddenly I start losing myself to a glossary of landforms. Anyway, the conclusion: I couldn't capture both the stars and the waterfall. So we climbed out of the hollow dell the same way we got into it, and I must say that in the middle of the night, it damn right feels like an adventure with all the sounds and silence penetrating the walls of darkness and exciting your imagination. When we finally got out of the forest and onto a meadow, we could finally see the firmament sprinkled with stars, thousands of them. And, when our eyes adjusted to the midnight blue of the sky, we saw the Milky Way, not very bright or catchy, but it was up there, in flesh and bones. It was way past midnight, almost morning, and it was a beautiful day.

            May

May was quite rich in events (to be more specific, hikes) and, therefore, photos too. But I will limit myself to the most memorable one.

The month started with a trip to Oberstdorf, southern Germany, as a couple of friends and I had decided to go hiking in the Bavarian Alps.

It is the last day of our adventure. The weather is beautiful. It's sunny, and the sky is clear. Of course, we saw something about the high probability of rain in the weather forecast, but it ain't gonna ruin our plans, it's our last day here, so we're going to the top of that mountain! The sky is clear, and it's sunny. Until it isn't. And there we are, at the top of that mountain in the middle of a thunder/hailstorm. The sky changed its garment in the blink of an eye, just like that—woosh!—and started throwing lightnings and iceballs down on earth. Luckily, we reached the cable car station just in time (which was still closed and out of service this early in the month) and took shelter under its roof.

            June

I have just a few photos from June in my archive, all from my "creepy" night walk around Lasaunne. If I must guess, I was busy as hell in the lab, finishing up some things before my big vacation in July. But back to the night walk. It was inspired by my discovery of an interesting courtyard I routinely passed on my way to and from work. Back in March, I had replaced my metro commute with cycling, and gradually worked out a route that avoided busy roads and ran through quiet residential streets. That's how I discovered those little creeps, and thought, "They're gonna look delightfully mysterious at night!"

            July

July had arrived, and I went on my big vacation to the US to visit my sister. Of course, first I had to fill in an extensive questionnaire where I had to indicate my nicknames of all my past, present, and future social media profiles, pay a certain amount of $, put together quite a pile of documents, and finally bring them all and myself to the embassy, and explain to an officer why I want a visa. Luckily, this time my explanations were satisfactory, or rather, it was my status as a PhD student in a Swiss university, with a contract and "competitive" salary. Anyway, I finally got my visa sticker in my pathetic passport and was freeda fly to my sister and her family, that is her husband and my little nephew. Shortly before the trip, I got myself a new old(ish) (as a matter of fact, a few years younger than me) film camera, because of my Gen Z's urge to follow the trend to embrace all things "retro", and as I was "driven by a desire for authenticity, a break from digital perfection, and a more intentional, tangible approach to photography." Driven where? Mostly, places. To be honest, I had more physical (less metaphysical) motives that spurred my desire to "downgrade" from digital to analogue, but I will come to them later.

Three-week story short: I spent some great time in the US, with its big cars, greasy sandwiches, and ID policing microbreweries. I got to see my sister and her husband, play with my nephew, meet with a friend, and finally visit a bunch of cities/places and play a tourist while I was there.

            August–October

I shot my first roll of film, and a lab in Washington, D.C., developed and scanned it for me. My brother-in-law (half-jokingly or full-seriously) noted that taking analogue photographs and then digitizing them with film scanners is weird (I cannot disagree with this, but I nevertheless embrace this technological quirk without shame, as it's more practical in our digitized era, and also cheaper). Time flew fast, flew past, and I had to return to Lausanne and to work. At the airport, my little nephew asked me to show him my passport. He took it in his hands and wouldn't give it back to me, smiling slyly.

August came. I recharged my camera with a second film roll and took it on my weekend hikes, while my mirrorless collected dust at home. It took me almost 3 months to finish it. The limiting factor of only 36 available frames (alongside the financial costs of its development & digitalization) makes one a more thoughtful, careful photographer. It went places with me: a couple of mountains in Switzerland, a mountainous nature resort and a camping site in Haute-Savoie, France, a conference in Paris, and a meeting with our collaborators in Vienna. Sadly, only about half of the photos turned out to be okay; the rest were somewhat blurry, out of focus, or underexposed. Took me three months to find it out! Well, it taught me some lessons and made me wiser, at least in some aspects, I believe (hope).

            November

This month, apparently, was again too busy in the lab, so I don't have many photos in my archive. As a matter of fact, I don't even have many memories of what was happening during the month. Apparently, we went hiking on one of the weekends. Grey of clouds, yellow of grass, brown/fir green of trees, patches of white snow on the mountains. The golden season was over, and winter was coming to the mountains.

            December

And it is no longer, for several hours now. No longer 2025. So it means a quarter of the century has passed and can be archived. What's the next quarter gonna bring? Remains to be seen, but my guess would be: as usual, the good, the bad, and the ugly in no specific order and pretty much haphazardly.

As for December, it was a busy month. First, I made some encouraging progress with my project in the lab. I also recharged my camera with a new film roll, this time b&w, with the firm intention to develop it myself. That was the original driving force behind my getting a film camera: figure out the physics and chemistry behind film photography, start developing film myself (and become proficient enough in this art to be able to consider it as a potential plan B/C/D/E future occupation if I decide not to pursue an academic career or have a mental trauma after my PhD).

So, on the weekends or sometimes straight after work, I started to go out in the streets of the town I live in, and click my shutter at subjects and objects, trying not to draw too much attention, to blend in with the environment, become part of the Christmas decoration, so to speak, so that I could catch more genuine moments. Somewhere in the middle of this enterprise, I took a plane and left for a short vacation in Malaga, with a mirrorless in my backpack, where I met my friend and fellow countryman. We did some city walks, hikes, meditated (with a can of cider) at the empty, somewhat stormy beach, my friend ran a half-marathon, we did some other stuff, and I got a bunch of pictures I was pretty happy with.

After returning from my Malaga trip, I had just enough time to finish my black-and-white film roll, purchase some necessary chemicals, and finally develop it. Of course, I was doing all these during my off-work time. But I must admit that, while the film development ritual was performed off-work and off-duty, I did it at my workplace, that is, in the lab, with measuring cylinders, a water bath, and ultra-pure water at my side. Let's call it a privilege of doing a doctorate in natural science, and a compensation for being generally underpaid as a PhD student. Now, it's absolutely not necessary to have a whole lab at one's disposal to start developing film on one's own. A decent-sized bathroom is enough, or, for that matter, any available space promising minimal comfort to manipulate bottles and vessels that one is not afraid to make wet accidentally. But access to the lab provides you with (glass/plastic)ware, simplifies waste disposal, and gives you free and easy control over the development procedure temperature, which guarantees reproducible results.

Overall, I can say that it was positively easy to develop my first film, and I got pretty satisfactory results. When I told my parents that I was gonna develop my film, they weren't very impressed. "We used to do it back in the day. Your granddad was quite enthusiastic about photography and had all the tools necessary to develop the negatives." Well, what else have you been hiding from me about your past? I remember we had one or two cheap film cameras at home, and quite a few photo albums I used to like to leaf through over and over again. But my childhood happened just as the digital cameras started becoming widespread in ordinary households, and their film siblings began gathering dust on shelves.

I developed my negatives, brought them to the shop for scanning, and left for Christmas in Nuremberg. What I did there, I already briefly mentioned at the start of my account. We swung our machetes, I returned home, and got fever-struck.

2025 was not a bad year, all in all. Hope this one will be alright as well.

Happy New Year to all who have and haven't made it to my closing lines!

Cordialement,

Me

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Lastly, a short gallery from my last film roll (all shot in Lausanne; film: Ilford HP5 Plus).