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Every year Jim Goldstein invites his readers to his blog project, Your Best Photos From 2019. This is my fourth time participating in his project. I am appreciative to Jim Goldstein for continuing to support these end-of-year efforts.

From a health and emotional perspective, 2019 was a challenging year for me and this is reflected in the number and types of images reflected in my Adobe Lightroom Catalog. I battled Graves Eye Disease and the loss of my father. With regular daily and monthly trips into Philadelphia, and the need to walk from one treatment centre to another, I had many opportunities to practice street photography but less time, and with the stress of the treatments, less energy for landscape photography. Not all my trips into Philadelphia were health-related. Bhavna and I discovered that Philadelphia has excellent restaurants and parks.

2019 was also brought health challenges for my youngest who left for college in September. We made an emergency trip to Ohio just days after my surgery and brought her back home to heal. An emotional support animal, Camilla the cat, was recommended to help with recovery so we brought home Camilla, a rescue cat. She has brought joy to the whole family.

I tried something new, attending a few Warbler photography workshops with Ray Hennessey. Being out in the forests and woods of South Jersey, listening to the winds in the trees and the cacophony of birds call was excellent therapy for what was happening in my life. I’m happy that 2019 is over and eager to do a bit more wildlife photography in 2020.

Having an intense dislike of cold, I normally hibernate for the winter, but this year I endeavoured to embrace the opportunities that cold weather bring. I still dislike cold, but layers of Patagonia winter wear helped keep Jack Frost from doing damage.

In 2019, instead of purchasing a Fujifilm X100F which has been on my want list for a few years, I upgraded from a three-year-old iPhone 7 to the new iPhone 11 Pro. I immediately kicked off an iPhone Photography Project 365 to learn how to use my new gear.

The images below are captured on either my FujiFilm X-T2 or Apple iPhone 11 Pro.

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Every year at Jim Goldstein invites his readers to his blog project.

... to list the years best photos from my readers and social media followers. I've run this blog project every year since 2007 and each year I've been blown away by the quality of images and the number of participants. This year I will be collecting participants details via this form. If you're a new participant you can see past years results.

Here are my favourite images from 2017. I wanted to narrow these down to 10 but ... I just couldn't. All of these images have special significance for me. They are not technically great images but they are the ones with the most emotional impact.

Other favourites lists from around the web.

• Michael Russell