12/29/2025
2025 was another succeful year for my photography. I was fortunate enough to visit some new places, including 5 new national parks!
Every year I like to gather my best photos from the past twelve months and make a post sharing my favorites. In recent years, and especially in 2025, I feel like my best photos have never been seen before. Even by me! If you follow along with my social media accounts, you may have noticed as of late that I don’t share as much as I used to. It’s not because I’m not out there taking photos, it’s just seems like I love taking photos more than I love developing them. So they sit on my hard drive, mostly unseen. I’m not sure why that is. Social media fatigue, I suppose. But I realize that many people do like to see what I am out capturing so I hope to be better about that in 2026.
As for how 2025 went. It was a year of new experiences for me.
One of the new places I visited was Banff, Alberta, Canada in early February. That was an incredible experience! Banff is one of the most beautiful and epic places I have ever visited. The mountains are absolutely stunning. And the area of rugged wilderness is extremely vast. Driving the Icefields Parkway, between Banff and Jasper, should be on everyone’s bucket list. It is easily the most stunning drive I have done. It’s very long, epic, and there’s the most stunning mountainous landscape around every corner. My visit to the area was during an extremely cold snap. Daily highs hovered around -20°F. It was cold, but it was amazing! I have always loved shooting in cold weather.
In June, my family and I joined with some family on a visit to Gatlinburg, Tennessee which is of course the gateway to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Gatlinburg itself reminding me a lot of Wisconsin Dells on a much larger scale, but I loved it! The attractions were quite fun for the family. Dolly Parton’s Stampede show was a highlight! In between family adventures, I was able to sneak away with my camera and head up to the Smokies for some morning and evening photography. The Smokies definitely earn that name with the almost constant fog the envelopes the mountains. The mountains are not large like the rockies, but they are no less beautiful. A highlight for me was getting a chance for some impromptu wildlife photos when a couple black bears made an appearing on a morning visit through Cade’s Cove.
Finally, in July I had a very quick and last minute trip out to Mt. Rainier National PArk in Washington. I have always wanted to visit this mountain and it didn’t disappoint. I spend a couple night camping in the park and visiting all sides of the mountain for several day hikes and landscape photography sessions.
Not to forget about my muse, Door County! This beautiful place I call home provided so many photo opportunities as it always does. From the deep freeze of January, to the cherry blossoms, to the fall colors, and an incredible aurora borealis appearance, I was incredibly happy with many of the photos I was able to take without going far from home. All of which seem to be taken with my drone, which was definitely my camera of choice this year.
My favorite photo of the year was probably a northern lights photo taken from Anderson Dock in Ephraim in mid-November. You can see that below.
As for my favorite photos of the year, I have them all below. These are all listed in the order that they were taken. Many of them are from my travels, but some were taken right here in Door County too. You will notice that the theme of the year was definitely “fog.” haha
Thanks for following along and I can’t wait to see that’s in store for 2026!
