As a photographer it is a humbling thing to look back on your year in photos and not only see how much you've grown, but to be taken on an emotional journey too, reliving some of your favourite moments and memories.

If you are a keen instagrammer you may have seen people posting their "best nine" grids over the last few weeks. For those of you unfamiliar with them, it is a compilation of their 9 most liked photos of the year. Curiosity always gets the better of me with these things, so of course I looked up mine. Unsurprisingly I found my most liked photos of the year were not even close to my personal favourite photos. Which just helps to confirm what we all already know but don't always believe; that likes on social media do not in fact mean a whole lot.

Don't get me wrong, I have not perfected the art of not caring about likes just yet, and it always feels somewhat satisfying to see a photo receive a lot of love online, but the flip side of this is we can often feel disheartened when we share a photo that we really love, or holds a lot of meaning for us and it doesn't get a lot of likes. 

So as 2017 comes to a close, I wanted to take a moment to look back through my year, and not pay heed to the number of likes or how anyone else felt about my photos but to share the ones that make me feel something.

So here they are, the ones I felt giddy whilst taking, to the ones I gasped at when I saw them on the big screen for the first time, and the ones I couldn't wait for those so called "optimal posting" times to share with everyone online.

Here's to a 2018 full of photos that prioritise feelings over likes. I can't wait to see what it brings.