You guys and gals are so much more creative than I am ! What gorgeous photographs there are in here ! I feel like being not creative at all in comparison to several of your photos... you "create" the photo while I only snap what is out there
You are all teaching me great artistic lessons with your examples.
Now, while I've been traveling a lot for my job and took photographs of fantastic places, my personnal challenge is to highlight the several charming and beautiful details of my small rural village (pop. 3200) which is one of the oldest in North America (mid-1600s, during the French regime). So, I decided to select one photograph which, for us leaving here, has a lot of meaning: sailboats taken out of the marina for wintering but photographed during the 2008 Indian Summer sunset (Indian Summer is a 3 or more days of warm weather in Oct-Nov after the first series of Fall freezing days). It is a contrast between a warm sunset and out-of-water sailboats probably "feeling" they are not at the right place at the right moment!
http://photo4fun.zenfolio.com/p591627136/h18505f4b#h1e927665
In fact, such a photo may look like any other standard photograph except to the ones who know... Thus, it talks only to a very few viewers...and has very different impacts on different people. From what I have seen from the other posts, you have presented photographs that talk to a much wider audience. I couldn't really find this in my 2008 photographs except for a few maybe. Here are examples:
http://photo4fun.zenfolio.com/p620996374/h15312262#h15312262
http://photo4fun.zenfolio.com/p620996374/h15312262#h1ce86de6
These bring me some feelings even if I'm not religious, but my prefered travel photos are in fact part of a series: windows and doors of Lisboa houses, in Portugal. Here is an example:
http://photo4fun.zenfolio.com/p749833891/hc3339bb#hc3339bb
Sorry if I couldn't make my mind on only 1... but I felt this exercise was also an occasion to exchange with you about "what makes a best photo".
Your comments are very welcome.