Favorite Moments of 2025

Hello Everyone,

Thank you for being here. I can’t believe I now have almost 6500 subscribers to this newsletter! This is despite my best efforts at being sporadic, erratic, and generally unreliable as far as getting these out in any kind of regular manner. I guess the upside of this is that I don’t spam you all with content that I’m not extremely passionate about. When I have something I want to share, I share it. When I don’t, I don’t make up stuff simply because I feel like I need to. I have gotten a ton of gratification and energy from your support and encouragement here. I hope we can continue to build out the community aspect of this newsletter a bit going forward.

On that note, I’m going to be giving a presentation titled “Guide to Landscape Photography” for the Lehigh Valley Photography Club on January 15 at 7 PM ET. This talk is online and open to the public. If you’d like to learn more and sign up to attend, for small fee, you can do so HERE.

Now, on to the year in review!

2025 was pretty momentous for me. I ended 2024 on a high note after feeling burnt out during the summer months, and that energy seemed to carry through all of this year.

I believe this burst of creative success can be attributed to many factors. The first is simply time in the field. I co-led many workshops and traveled quite a bit. I was inspired by the scenery and also by the people I was with. Leading workshops gives me a ton of spiritual and creative energy, and the more I commit to them the more I get out of them.

Another major factor was the support at home. My wife Kimberly is working on launching a new career, and having her support, both while I work from home and while I’m on the road, is massive. Our kids are 8, 5, and 5, so they are at a really fun stage right now and we’ve been having a blast with them, which makes me really happy, too!

Finally, I made a lot of trips to new locations or one’s that I hadn’t visited often before. This showed the power of exploration and novelty to generate excitement and awe. You’ll see these newer vistas extensively in the following images.

While many of these photos have been seen before, there are a few new ones. I had a heck of a time narrowing them down, and erred on the side of plenty.

January found me co-leading our annual “Winter in Acadia” workshops with John Putnam. I love being here with John and students this time year, in the heart of winter. Getting people to embrace being outside in challenging conditions and just sharing the beauty of winter in one of the prettiest places in North America is extremely satisfying!

The two previous images are from those trips. The first one of the snow-covered boughs was taken while I was xc skiing around Jordan Pond and the second one was taken during a workshop on the famous birch path in Sieur De Monts. To me they both reflect a deeply felt connection to the bright and joyous feeling I get by being in snow.

I’m fast forwarding a bit quickly here because I have a ton of images to share from summer and especially fall. The image below was captured in April at La Verna Preserve in Bristol, just down the road from our new home in Newcastle, Maine.

Part of the joy of living in a new place is exploring it photographically. Stick season is the perfect time to photograph the rocky coastline since bare trees and even snow aren’t too much of distraction. It’s all about the geology on display here, in a location that’s just up the coast from the similar, but much more famous, Pemaquid Point. Who needs a lighthouse when you have rocks like this?

Moving on to a totally different environment, I spent part of May in Olympic National Park. You can read the full newsletter post I put together about this trip HERE.

The image below features my favorite scene of the trip, an encounter with the maple trees covered in moss and epiphytic ferns in gorgeous light in the Quinault Rainforest.

I loved the glossy wet sheen on the foliage seen in the image below, which is a bit darker and more sombre than the image above.

That dappled sunlight in the Quinault Rainforest helped me to focus on tiny details, something I don’t do often. These unfurling tendrils on a fern were highlighted nicely in filtered sunlight, and I moved around until the background was dark to showcase them.

Another detail I found in Olympic was this pattern in some driftwood on one of the beaches. I spied a heart-shape among the otherwise abstract swirling lines in the trunk and excitedly composed around it.

I just read a post from Bryan Hansel about how reviewing images made over the past year and choosing your personal favorites can help you find direction with your creative work leading into the future. I think he’s spot on. Seeing these detail images remind me that I want to keep looking for the smaller scenes going forward.

Moving on to summer, the following are a couple of images I made doing one of my favorite activities, hiking. I captured the image below of the sun rising above the clouds from Mount Washington during our Presidential Traverse in June. The rest of that hike, which I detailed extensively in another newsletter post, was a rollercoaster of highs and lows. Surprisingly, other images that I enjoyed making on this trip and thought would be worthy of inclusion in a collection such as this one, just haven’t held up.

Another hiking image that captures a completely different mood and moment was made during a family trip to Acadia National Park in July. Thanks to the generosity of my friend Andrew, we were able to stay a few days in Southwest Harbor and do fun stuff around the island. I got away one evening by myself while the kids were watching a movie and hiked all over the quiet western side of Acadia around Mansell and Bernard Mountains. It was extremely misty and foggy and I didn’t even bring a camera, much less planned on making photos. Once I started hiking, however, I was completely entranced by the mood and beauty of the trail and forest, and made many images with just my cell phone, the image below being my favorite one of them.

Just a few weeks later, I was co-leading another workshop in Lubec with John Putnam. Our first full evening with the group featured this incredible pink sunset with the wildly beautiful Cobscook Bay reflecting the sky in an almost mirror-calm. I built the image around the f/v Family Tradition, a red fishing boat moored just offshore, in my mind the perfect subject!

While this trip was mostly about puffins, we were extremely lucky to encounter two Northern Gannets on the rocks near the blind that I happened to be in. The below image captures what I found to be a very comical gaze of this strange bird as it turned its head.

Of course the puffins were magnificent, as always.

My favorite gannet images revolved around interactions that must have been some form of communication (mating display?). As one gannet kept waving its wings and bowing down, a fish boat passed. It was mesmerizing!

And just the night after the previous pink sunset, we were treated to a totally different, but equally compelling, sky above the harbor. I found another red boat, this one moored right in front of the picturesque island just offshore. How lucky were we?!

This next image is a good reminder that clear skies at sunrise or sunset aren’t always a bad thing. The blank expanse of sky helped simplify the scene around this little artist’s shack near the entrance to the stunning Western Head Preserve in Cutler. On the opposite shore, behind the shack, sits another land trust plot, Eastern Knubble. Capturing the sun as a starburst shining through the trees gave the image the ‘spark’ that it needed!

This trip was also detailed in a post that was probably my favorite of the year titled Bold Coast Reflections. I combined images from my Bold Coast trips with writing about my own nature and struggles with anxiety and depression in a deeply personal photo essay.

Moving on to a trip that I teased out through some individual images shared on SubStack notes and social media. This was an exploration of Deer Isle and Stonington with my friend Don Seymour. This is Don’s backyard and I got to explore this area with him and stay at his home right in the center of this picturesque village.

The image below is the view from a few yards down the road from his house, overlooking the harbor and Two Bush Island (with the flag), with Isle Au Haut looming in the background. Some late day light hit the tops of the buildings and boats, and I focused on this lovely house with a mansard roof as my main subject here.

I loved seeing Don in the place he loves so much and captures so well, and made him the subject of two of my favorite photos from here.

The image above was captured at an inlet on Green Island, where we got out and explored. Don built this kayak himself at the Wooden Boat School in Brooklin. How cool is that?! The image below features Don photographing a stunning sunset at Sand Beach, one of the best locations in Maine.

I came back that night after dropping Don off at home and captured the image below as the last bit of twilight departed and the stars came out. It was a wild panoramic capture of Sand Beach looked otherworldly with the sweeping clouds and milky water from the long exposures required in such low light.

In September, I got to go back to Cape Cod, somewhere I had been before and even led workshops with Michael Blanchette almost a decade ago. That space of time has turned me into a different person and certainly a different photographer. I felt excited and energized to come back here to co-lead a workshop with Tony Baldasaro.

Again, I owe a full newsletter to this adventure. The first evening there I went with Tony and my friend Kevin Armstrong out across a treacherous breakwater in Provincetown to the Wood End Lighthouse. It was absolutely stunning!

The following morning, we had the group at one of our favorite locations, Salt Pond. I captured this image of a dinghy with an American Flag long after the sun had come up and the light was a bit harsh. That light worked fine, however in backlighting the flag and grasses and helping make this image work. It was only in hindsight that I realized this image was taken on 9/11, a haunted anniversary for the country and one in which our flag featured prominently. I must have been feeling that somewhere in my psyche. That day certainly had a profound effect on me.

We had a chance to do some night photography, and thankfully were just a few miles down the road from Nauset Lighthouse, one of the prettiest sights on the Cape. I loved capturing the rotating beacon under the stars!

Our last morning, we were treated to an incredible sunrise at Salt Pond. The sky was filled with birds on the move, and this flock of cormorants fit the scene perfectly, even reflecting in the calm waters of high tide.

After this, we said bye to the group but had some time to wander around. We went back to Nauset and were happy to find that the doors were open and some volunteers were giving tours! Lucky for us, because I made two of my favorite-ever lighthouse images inside.

One looking up from the bottom of these distinctive red stairs.

And another looking down form the top.

We’ll be co-leading this workshop again in September, and I’ve already talked to the folks at the Nauset Preservation Society and arranged for our group to have a private tour inside the lighthouse on our visit! You can learn more about this workshop and sign up HERE.

Maybe take some time to go grab a snack or beverage, but I promise I’m over halfway through my favorite images of 2025.

The image below was captured on a cloudy day at Thurston’s in Bernard on MDI during our Best of Maine workshop. I usually stay away from photographing water when it’s cloudy, since it can look so dull, but on this occasion I proved myself wrong by complimenting the gray weathered wood of the boat with the gray skies reflected in the water. I’m really happy that I saw this composition and it feels like an honest exploration of a more somber mood.

One of the usual moods that I love capturing that I’m sure you are familiar with are pink sunrises and sunsets. This one was made on the northern end of Jordan Pond and required me squeezing myself as far back into a bush as possible with a ultra-wide 12mm lens to capture this tree. It was worth it!

Going back to the cool, quiet mood, I found this scene on the way back from the Adirondacks in October. I’m surprised that I don’t have an image from New York that fits in here, but I greatly enjoyed exploring that new area for a couple of days. To be honest, I visited mostly iconic vistas and didn’t come away with anything that eclipses what I had already seen made from those locations. Next time I’ll be traveling with a seasoned veteran of the area, Zone3Photo, and will surely come away with some better images.

Anyways, this is from a small pond in Vermont.

The same day, I dashed all the way from Vermont to Maine to capture what I thought would be a nice sunset. I climbed Tumbledown Mountain and got to the top just in time to witness this blaze of fall color with a magnificent sky!

During our Fall in New Hampshire workshop, we set up at a popular lake to photograph a little white church through the mist. Instead of the church, I found these colorful maples darting in and out of evergreens to be even more interesting with the fog.

My favorite wide angle scene from the fall was this one on the Ammonoosuc River in New Hampshire. It wasn’t hard to make. I was standing on a bridge, photographing the sun through the trees, but it was oh-so-satisfying.

Even though I’m sharing a lot of images here, I’m leaving a ton on the table. If you haven’t seen them already, check out my two newsletter posts from this fall titled A Taste of Fall and Awesome Autumn.

Here’s one from The Tarn in Acadia.

Back at home, on a break between workshops, I enjoyed a misty sunrise right down the road where the Sheepscot River passes over a reversing falls. This old boathouse and the scene around it look great in all kinds of weather, but really shone with the fog and golden light on the golden fall foliage.

Below, I’m going to share my favorite images from my huge trip to the southwest. You have to read my posts Unlocking a Love for the Desert and Road to Zion if you haven’t already. These are just a few highlights.

Totally bananas, right?

The biggest takeaways from this trip were that I discovered a love for the desert that wasn’t there before. I was filled with awe and the sense that I was doing exactly what I should be doing, exploring the wonders of nature and the world with my camera and like-minded companions.

With that determination, I’ve just booked a trip to explore Yosemite in late February and early March! This will be the first of hopefully many trips around the world to satiate my wanderlust that was really ignited this November in the desert.

But in the meantime, I will remain grounded at home, with my family, and in the places I know and love deeply close to me. The image below was captured just across the river from our house, looking at our neighbor’s beautiful colonial home in the heavy wet snow we received on Christmas Eve.

That snow lingered into Christmas and I captured another scene from the neighborhood with our 8-year-old daughter Charlotte in tow, this tenderly decorated spruce tree (thanks to our neighbor Catherine) during a heavy snow squall with the sun setting behind some majestic pines.

And that wraps it up! Whew! Thanks for following along throughout the year and through this very long post. I know we’re supposed to keep it around 10-15 images, but this year was just too massive for me to hold back.

I’m leading and co-leading many photography workshops in 2026. I’ll also be appearing again at art shows in Maine and giving talks in various locations. I’ll try and update those as they become available HERE.

I’m also excited to announce that I’m now an official affiliate of B&H Photo, where I buy most of my photography equipment, as well as ThinkTank, which carries my favorite camera bags. Any time you shop through B&H or ThinkTank, use can use the links here and I’ll get a special referral bonus. It’s no extra cost to you and it helps me out. Thank you!