Great Basin School of Photography

Some of my favorites on Flickr in 2019: 1. The Sunset That Wouldn’t End, 2. Oak and Granite, 3. Milky Way and Sunrise Light, 4. Bodie Milky Way and Mill Reflection, 5. Cottonwood Trees Against Shadowed Pines, 6. Intricate Bodie Sunset, 7. Tufa Island Reflection, 8. Return of the Rainbows, 9. Nevada Mines and Ghost Towns at Night

It’s that time of year again! Photographers are posting collages of their Top 9 most popular posts on Instagram. I only put 42 images on Instagram in 2019 so far, less than one per week. Due to variations in number of people on Instagram at various times of day and how the site’s new post distribution algorithms affect my posts, I didn’t see many of my own favorite images among the most-liked posts on my Instagram account (shown below),so I tend to make my own selection.

I don’t have the privilege or luxury of being able to travel the world to pursue great images, but I live within easy driving distance of spectacular mountains, coastlines and deserts. I anticipate unique sun, moon and star positions to enhance compositions, and in the course of exploring new locations for workshops and sharing them with photographers in workshops in the best seasons, I do capture a nice photo from time to time.

How to find and choose the best? On Flickr I find over 450 photos when I search for “2019”, and I saved over 100 new images into a 2019 Favorites album on Flickr:

As is often the case, some of my favorite images are newly-produced edits of past work, often discovered when revisiting old folders. As my tools, skills and objectives evolve, I see new opportunities for old images, often ones that I’ve never post-processed before. For the sake of my year-end roundup, I sort them to the end of my 2019 Favorites album and attribute them to their prior year.

So for a top ten selection for 2019, let’s go with the 10 images below.

Top 10 Favorite 2019 Images

I don’t like selecting my year-end favorites too early since we often get great weather in early winter, as the following December 13 sunset on flooded salt flats in Death Valley demonstrates:

#1 

Rain is uncommon in the lower reaches of death Valley, where an average of only 1.9′ falls, but sometimes runoff from rain in the mountains above helps temporarily restore prehistoric Lake Manly in Badwater Basin.

A few weeks earlier, I came across great light on an oak in one of Yosemite’s meadows:

#2:

This image quickly became my latest print, and it looks particularly good in a metallic print on paper, selected from my SmugMug site.

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. Although I’ve visited White Pocket, Arizona before, this was my first clear night there:

#3:

I had just picked up the Nikon D850 in December, and not only was this one of my first Milky Way images captured on it, I was interested in testing its dynamic range on the Milky Way reflection.

#4:

I like a good challenge, so Milky Way reflection was on the menu again in June in Bodie State Historic Park:

#5:

Every year I run across new time-light dependencies in Yosemite National Park. Fall opportunities in particular can rely on a single set of vegetation getting spotlighted with light for a few minutes, like these young cottonwood trees by the Merced River:

While opportunities based on sun position are repeatable and predictable, other times an opportunity is more serendipitous, like sunset color on complex storm clouds in Bodie:

#6:

Sometimes we revisit a favorite spot, only to be treated with exactly the kind of lihgt we like to see from it, like this Belt of Venus effect captured at Mono Lake:

#7:

Weather can enhance our compositions, like this third brief double rainbow that appeared one evening in Bodie:

#8:

Other compositions can be anticipated months or even years in advance, you just have to allocate time in your schedule to go get them, like the Milky Way rising over this mine in Nevada:

#9:

Even loctions with iconic compositions can offer great results if you look a little harder at what else is there, like this downstream composition at Kanarra Creek in Utah, which works well without Upper or Lower Kanarra Falls:

#10:

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.

2019 Runners-Up

Other 2019 images I liked but didn’t quite include:

For some reason Thor’s Well seems frequently enough captured that it needs particularly good atmospheric conditions to make it stand out. No doubt I’ll revisit the place more to see what else the site delivers in light and conditions.

Sometimes there’s no place like home, like this winter storm reflected on Topaz Lake:

Prior Years’ Images Discovered or Reworked

Sometimes I can’t get to a particular image in the year I captured it, either because I lack a sufficient tool to do it justice, or I simply don’t have the time required to work on it. My “new or improved” images from past years included some real stunners, particularly ones re-imagined in black and white:

Honors & Recognition

Now it’s time to go out and capture another 100+ from 2020!

My Favorite Landscape / Travel Photos from Each Year, 2006 – 2018

Here are some of my collections from prior years.  It has been a great 14 years of adventure, I can’t wait to see what I can find to show you in the years to come!

2018 Favorites photo album on Flickr
2018 Top 10 Landscape/Travel Blog Post

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