My Top 10 Photos of 2018

In the course of researching locations for workshops and in sharing my favorite locations in workshops at the best possible seasons and times, I capture a nice photo from time to time.

A lot of people are posting collages of their Top 9 most popular posts on Instagram, but I only put 48 images on Instagram last year, about one per week. Due to variations in number of people on Instagram by time of day, or how post distribution algorithms may affect my posts during the course of the year, I didn’t see many of my own favorites among the top-rated Instagram 2018 posts on my account (shown at the bottom below).

My own favorites change from day to day, so the Top 9 above don’t necessarily match the Top 10 below!

On Flickr I find 467 photos when I search for “2018”, and I saved 112 photos into a 2018 Favorites album on Flickr so far:

One of the things that jumps out at my in the Flickr collection is that some of my favorite images are newly-produced edits of past work. As my tools, skills and objectives evolve, I see new opportunities for old images. Bet are completely fresh results 2018 work, or work from the year in which the original image was captured? For the sake of this post, let’s say they fall back to the prior year.

For example, I produced my first black and white conversion for one of my old sand dune shots for a black and white Assignment on Outdoor Photographer, and the result made it clear why I should be re-imagining old RAW files more often:

So for an “entirely new in 2018 selection”, let’s go with the 10 images displayed below.

Top 10 Favorite 2018 Images

The exercise of pursuing black and white results led me to try it on some of my latest work as well, and this result from an early October shot is probably my favorite image of 2018 so far:

#1 

Mt. Mallory rises above storm clouds in the Sierra Nevada.Another of my favorites came as I made the creative decision to use this image of a bristlecone pine illuminated by departing vehicle brake lights as the backdrop for my north-facing Perseid meteor shower composite :

#2:

All of the meteors appear exactly where the camera captured them in this scene.

New places were featuring prominently in my favorites, perhaps partly because they’re new, but also I think that it’s easier to take an entirely fresh look at a location when it’s your first time there, such as this find at White Pocket, Arizona:

#3:

Particularly fond memories of a 2-week trip to Oregon may color my impression of this shot from the Oregon Coast as well:

#4:

Sometimes it’s rewarding when detailed planning andcomplicated shooting adn post-processing work pays off, like this composite from the lunar eclipse in January:

#5:

Multiple exposures were used to get the optimal exposure on the moon, but nothing in the image is moved, resized, pasted or “faked”.

Still other times an opportunity is more serendipitous, like the view into the water in this lake in the Eastern Sierra:

#6:

There were photographers a matter of feet away, but they didn’t seem to anticipate this composition that I envisioned from a couple of hundred yards away as I saw the conditions. Often i direct bystanders to opportunities that I see, but in this case it was best left to my workshop participants.

Sometimes a particular combination of time of day, light and composition makes a familiar scene particularly unique, although I’m not sure that I’m done adjusting this this initial result:

#7:

Sometimes not being where you wanted or expected to be pays nice dividends:

#8:

I had an appointment to access a closed property for night photography miles away, but a friend getting stuck in sand at sunset, then the rescue vehicle getting stuck for hours more, gave me the opportunity to catch a panorama of the rising Milky Way over the largest sand dune hours after I expected to be gone. As a side bonus, BLM Nevada selected it for the cover of their 2019 calendar!

Some images turn out to be appealing for their sheer beauty. This image from the Oregon Coast had me at the pattern in the reflection, even before I triggered the shutter:

#9:

Still others have appeal for the sheer unexpected coolness of a location discovery, like this one I dubbed “Flash Gordon’s Mojave Desert Hideout”:

#10a:

I have far better photos and new edits from the year, but a stainless steel miner’s cabin at the top of a mountain, a couple of days into a 4WD traverse of the California desert? Totally unexpected. The presence of a rusty red wagon told the story of a family living in this harsh, isolated environment:

The child may still be alive somewhere today!  And the ironing board… his mother was ironing clothes… way out in the Joshua trees among coyotes and wild burros!  Most of my workshops are to show photographers unique locations like this, but increasingly I’m going to invite people along as I discover them. I still have dozens of places on my “to do” list, come experience the thrill of discovery!

So that last image was a bonus, and the one prior isn’t really one of my “best” photographically speaking, but you can find dozens of contenders in my 2018 Favorites album.

Prior Years’ Images Discovered or Reworked

Sometimes I can’t quite get to a particular image, either because I lack a particular tool or I don’t have the time. This panorama I simply didn’t have the right version of software loaded when I first post-processed the folder of images, so it’s the first result from a 2016 image:

I didn’t have time to finish this time-lapse of the sun rising while the planet Mercury was making a transit across its face. But since I’ll shoot that event again in 2019 (contact me for details), I figured that I might as well get around to producing the video:

I hadn’t produced this next image because I had no use for it. I didn’t want to show the site much and drive crowds to it, but it seemed to get wiped out by the time I revisited in October 2018, so protecting it from damage didn’t seem particularly productive anymore.

I brought some workshop participants to a site nearby last month, so the concept is still available as I lead workshops in the area.

Some images that fill in the rework category go way back, like this image from 2009 that I discovered while considering locations to visit for my fall 2018 trip to Oregon:

Others are more contemporary, like this image from my Yosemite Fall Colors workshop in 2017:

I could go on, but you’ll probably have different favorites among the 100+ images I set aside during the year.

Now it’s time to go out and capture another 100+ from 2019!

My Favorite Landscape / Travel Photos from Each Year, 2005 – 2017

Here are some of my collections from prior years.  It has been a great “baker’s dozen” years of adventure, I can’t wait to see what I can find to show you in the next 12+!

2017 Favorites photo album on Flickr
2017 Top 10 Landscape/Travel Blog Post

2016 Favorites photo album on Flickr
2016 Top 10 Landscape/Travel Blog Post

2015 Favorites photo album on Flickr
2015 Top 10 Landscape / Travel Photos Blog Post

2014 Favorites photo album on Flickr
2014 Top 10 Landscape / Travel Photos blog post

2013 Favorites photo album on Flickr
2013 Top 10 Landscape / Travel Photos blog post

2012 Favorites photo album on Flickr
2012 Top 10 Landscape / Travel Photos blog post

2011 Favorites album on Flickr
2011 Top 10 Landscape / Travel Photos blog post

2010 Favorites album on Flickr
2010 Top 10 Landscape / Travel Photos blog post

2009 Favorites photo album on Flickr
2009 Top 10 Landscape / Travel Photos blog post

2008 Favorites photo album on Flickr
2008 Top 10 Landscape / Travel Photos blog post

2007 Favorites photo album on Flickr 
2007 Top 10 Landscape / Travel Photos blog post

2006 Favorites photo album on Flickr
2006 Top 10 Landscape / Travel Photos blog post