Here we are again at the end of another year! Hard to believe another twelve months of life have passed by already. 2025 has been an interesting and, generally, good year for me photographically. It felt busy. Beyond photography trips I was asked to present more this past year than ever before. While I’m grateful for those opportunities, they occupied much of my free time, and this prevented me from photographing as much as I wanted. It felt like I was jumping from one project straight into the next without much of a break. Typically I love being busy so this pace felt great for the first nine months or so but by mid-fall I knew I needed a break, some time to unplug from the outer world of nature photography and just spend time creating for myself. I spent the past two and a half months doing just that. This opportunity allowed me to reconnect with how I had photographed for many years — just exploring nature with a camera while paying little attention to distractions from the larger photography world. It was a chance to reset to baseline, to recalibrate my why. This had a positive impact on my photography. I now feel more motivated than I have at any point in the past two years. I’m truly looking forward t what 2026 holds in store.
So what are the images and experiences which made a lasting impression during 2025?
Utah Canyon Backpacking: In March my family and I spent a few day backpacking through a magical canyon in southern Utah. Water flows through the canyon creating a riparian corridor filled with interesting trees, grasses, and shrubs. trees and shrubs, all of which offered a wide spectrum of photographic opportunities. I had visited and photographed this canyon once four years previously with two great friends. The soaring sandstone walls, arches, color, and plays of light spoke to me deeply. During that trip I made a vow to bring my family back so they could experience the power and beauty of such a magical place. It felt great to finally make this trip happen.
K2 Basecamp Trek: I’m not sure where to even begin talking about this journey into the Karakoram mountains of Pakistan. Let’s just say it was perhaps the trip of my lifetime. For over thirty years I’d dreamed of seeing this range filled with raging rivers, soaring granite spires, and enormous glaciers all culminating in the classic view of K2 from Concordia. I only started processing the images from this trip recently. The plan is to release them as a free ebook (sign up to be notified when it’s released).
Bugaboo Provincial Park: The Bugaboos are not exactly a household name and I have no idea why. Located southwest of the more famous Jasper, Banff, and Yoho National Parks, this unassuming provincial park is a gem for backpackers, climbers, and photographers. There’s a catch — you have to earn the views by backpacking high into the mountains. We spent three days wandering up to and across a high ridge offering jaw-dropping views towards the core of the Buguboos: glaciers, massive spires, and pristine forests. Wind and rain were our companions for much of the trip. It was a rewarding, raw, and glorious trip and an easy one to choose as a highlight of 2025.
Presenting more: I am a teacher by trade. Helping others broaden their understanding of a topic or open their eyes to a new way of thinking is one of the most rewarding thing I can think of doing. One highlight of 2025 was teaching more, mainly in the form of online and in-person presentations. While I hope my audiences found my presentations relatable and beneficial, there is a secondary benefit to developing these presentations. Creating a presentation forces me to carefully think through, assess, and put into words my own views and philosophy on a chosen topic. It makes me realize how much knowledge exists on an intuitive level. I may intrinsically know it, but precisely explaining the process using words is both challenging and illuminating. Crafting a presentation also confirms my own thinking, and in this way forced me to articulate ideas I never had to put into words before. In the end I’ve realized presenting helps me improve as a photographer and teacher just as much as my audience. And for this I am grateful.
Goals for 2026: Setting a loose set of goals at the beginning of a new year is something I’ve often done for a while now. So here are a few broad suggestions I’ve given myself to work on over the coming twelve months:
Seek out more compositionally complex forest scenes, rely less on tight framings of single trees
Photograph around the edges of the day more often. Seek out situations yeilding more dynamic light, less flat light.
Embrace wide angle angle. Take a deep dive into macro.
Open my mind to all the possibilities offered by coastal photography.
Write more, both for myself and for public consumption.
Photograph even more.
Without further ado, here are a handful of images which bring me back to those places and experiences which made 2025 such an amazing year. Thanks to all of the people whose presence, humor, skill, and council helped me along my journey. You know who you are.
”Medley”, Klickitat Canyon, Washington, November 2025
The oak forests of southern Washington have been a muse of mine for five years now. These characterful trees offer quite a different aesthetic compared to the tall straight evergreens found throughout western Oregon and Washington. In fall these oaks display a spectrum yellows, reds, oranges, and browns, perhaps the best fall color in the entire Pacific Northwest. I photographed this scene in one of my favorite pockets of oak forest deep within a canyon. Rain fell off and on nearly all day helping to saturate colors and quiet harsh tonal contrasts. Perfect conditions for a day of slow, contemplative photography. Best of all I was the only person out there. For eight hours I visited and photographed several of my favorite spots in a large canyon. And each time I photographed completely alone. Just me, the oaks, and the sound of the river. Easily one of my favorite days of photograph of 2025.
“Into the Mistic”, Olympic National Park, October 2025
Olympic National Park is special. Wild, raw, wondrous, difficult, and always surprising. My friend Bryan Swan and I spent a few days photographing one of the rainforest valleys. I’d never photographed this particular valley in fall and was blown away by the potential. It’s a place I’m sure I’ll return to each fall for the next several years. That’s how strong an impression those days deep in the forest left on me. As inspiring as the fall color was, it was an unexpected display of fog drifting through a tall hillside covered in primal, pristine old growth forest that turned out to be the highlight of the trip. I’ve photographed fog in forests many times over years but this display is one of the most awe-inducing. It’s one of those moments when I knew, even while photographing it, that it would become a cherished memory from 2025.
“Tree, Hill, Color”, southwest Colorado
In all my years as a photographer I’ve never photographed fall in Colorado. I’ve sure heard a lot about it from photography friends who make the annual pilgrimage to this mecca of fall photography. Me? Never had the chance. My schedule wouldn’t allow for it. Until this year. In early October I was invited to give a presentation at the Horizons Fall Photography Conference in Durango, Colorado. A few shuffles in my schedule opened up just enough time after the conference to get out and sample Colorado in the fall — twenty-four hours to be exact. I hoped to encounter a combination of brilliant color mixed with swaths of trees recently stripped of their foliage, and that’s exactly what I found. A quick evening session, a great night’s sleep in the truck, a quick morning session, then back to the airport for the flight home. It was just a taste, but is was pretty darn delicious.
“Mashallah”, Karakoram mountains, Pakistan, July 2025
This was the last view of K2 I had after visiting basecamp and beginning the long trek out from Concordia, a place I’d dreamt of visiting for over thirty years. It had snowed on the mountain, quite a bit. The fresh snow gave this massive mountain a new character and never on my visit did she look so ferociously beautiful. I stopped, took several photographs, spent a few moments lingering with this ferocious and magical giant, then shouldered my pack and continued my hike down valley. Within ten more minutes I lost sight of K2 for the last time. And I felt at peace. The mountain had given me one last departing gift.
“Toward Brightness”, Columbia River Gorge, Oregon, April 2025
Over the years early spring has become more and more special to me. One chief reason is the chance to photograph these long dangling petal-less flowers known as catkins. At the beginning of each spring they sprout from local cottonwoods and oaks. Catkins come in a variety of colors — mostly golds and reds — which mimic fall’s extravagance. Their dangling forms offers textures to work with which are noticeably different than when these trees are fully leafed out. Early spring’s initial burst of life signals a move toward light from dark. And, for me, this photograph reflects this story of spring’s arrival well.
“Spinning Disks”, Gifford Pinchot National Forest, Washington
I wanted to photograph the forest during a decent rainfall. I felt an urge to see what saturated, damp, gloomy conditions may hold. I can honestly say it was a struggle to find inspiration throughout my hike that day. I just wasn’t seeing it. That’s how it goes sometimes. I decided there was nothing to do but enjoy the hike while resisting the urge to curse the dead, useless thirty pounds of camera gear weighing me down. At the four mile mark the trail briefly touched the shore of the river I hiked along. A moderate rain was falling on a flat section of water lurking within an eddy. Here, unexpectedly, was the inspiration which had eluded me. I spent a good while photographing these radiating circles, experimenting with shutter speeds and focal lengths. This is my favorite images from the session. The rain had brought me into the forest that day, but not to photograph the trees as I had expected, but rather this small section of river covered in spinning circles.
“Softness”, Glenn Canyon Recreation Area, Utah, March 2025
One criteria for an end of year selection is whether I continue to enjoy an image whenever I see it. This is the case here. The soft colors, contrasts, and pleasing composition make this image an easy selection for this year’s end of year rewind.I’m not saying it’s the most engaging image from trip but the way lines, pattern, colors, and contrast all compliment each other creates such a peaceful feel.
“Shine a Light”, Glenn Canyon Recreation Area, Utah, March 2025
“Light does some amazing things down in that canyon.” This is the entirety of a text I sent to the photography friend who first showed me a magical canyon in southern Utah. It wasn’t lie, or even an exaggeration. Light works differently deep down in this steep walled canyon. That’s the beauty of high walled, narrow canyons, they naturally limit the amount of light reaching river level, even at midday. This creates unexpected and unique opportunities to photograph subjects receiving direct spotlighting. That’s exactly what happened during a late March backpacking trip through this canyon. A moment of fortune during a day’s worth of uninterrupted hiking.