It is that time again — time to share favorite photographs from the past year. I am sharing “2023: Favorite Photos,” including a dozen representative images. I think it is a diverse set, and I hope you’ll enjoy it!

Below is a single image of the full set of twelve. Subjects include the Sierra Nevada (of course!), Death Valley (also of course!), the California coast, birds in California’s Central Valley, a macro photograph, an urban landscape from Manhattan, and several photographs from our 10-week visit to (mostly) Southern Europe.

It is a group of 12 images chosen from among my 2023 favorites — not necessarily my “12 Best Photographs” of the year. (See the difference?) The process of winnowing the set down to a dozen left out other favorites. I like all of those photographs, but I chose these because they represent a variety of work and cover some of the main experiences, places, and subjects of 2023.

I’ll post each photo separately below, too, adding a bit of narration to each image. I hope you enjoy them!

The individual photographs follow, in no particular order, accompanied by brief descriptions. Click the photographs to display them larger. Click their titles to see and read the original posts, which include more descriptive text. You may leave comments and questions at the end of this article.

Our long visit (ten weeks!) to Europe last summer was wonderful, but I missed almost the whole summer in “my Sierra Nevada.” (I haven’t yet figured out how to be in two places at once.) But once we returned to the USA I turned my attention to the mountains and made my first visit of the (tail end of) summer in mid-September. I was on the East Side on this stormy evening when the sky and clouds above Mono Lake lit up, providing a dramatic and spectacular light show.

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My late-June visit to Point Lobos came only days before our departure for Europe, so these first two photographs bracket that international adventure. I have photographed Point Lobos for decades, yet I still find new things every time I visit. I had stood in this spot beneath the trees, overlooking the rocky cliffs and ocean many times — but never in quite this glowing, luminous fog.

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This black and white photograph is another from my “getting reacquainted with the Sierra” forays after our return from Europe. It is also an example of how subjects sometimes surprise me. I went to this location east of the Sierra to photograph autumn aspen color. As I worked that subject I was distracted by the distant profile of the sequence of ridges rising toward the Ritter and Banner summits in beautiful morning light.

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Believe it or not, this was our first visit to Venice. Yes, we know about the issues with tourism in that remarkable city, but with increasing risks from rising water levels we very much wanted to visit. We found a relatively secluded place to stay, away from the tourist mob-scenes in more popular areas of Venice. I made this photograph one evening as we walked back to our lodgings — in fact, the lit door at the right is where we stayed.

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Planning, location knowledge, vision, and technical skills aer all important in photography, but there is no denying that luck plays a big role, too. We cannot control all of the elements that must come together to make a photograph work. Most often, it doesn’t work — I have far more failures at photographing migratory birds in front of skies like this than I have successes. But if you are out there enough, with your eyes open and ready to act, eventually the parts come together and a miraculous scene like this can appear for a brief moment.

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Patty Emerson Mitchell is the macro photographer in our household, but sometimes I tag along and try, too. We visited a favorite Bay Area garden on this spring morning when the hyacinths were blooming. I moved in close to focus on the small structures of the flowers, producing an image that almost seems abstract.

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We spent five days in Florence on our return visit this summer. Late on this afternoon we joined the crowd — a bit sheepishly — heading for Piazzale Michelangelo, a popular hilltop plaza overlooking the Arno River and the city. We were not sure what to expect, but it turned out to be entirely magical. Yes, there was a huge crowd. Vendors were selling food and drink. Buskers were playing music. And then the crowd began to sing along and the atmosphere magically transformed as we all watched the setting sun.

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I made this photograph on another of my fall color adventures in the Eastern Sierra. By this point I’m pretty familiar with the general lay of the land, spots with reliable color, the “icons,” the pattern of the annual color transition, and I have a mental list of little place I go that aren’t on the maps. In other words, I like to think I know my way around. (Hey, I wrote a book about the subject!) But I spotted this little scene right next to a road that I’ve driven scores of times, somehow completely overlooking this lovely bit of tree-line creek until now.

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Those who follow my photography know that my subjects are rather varied. For example, I love photographing in dense urban areas, big cities, places with lots of people and action. I made this photograph during a fall visit to Manhattan. We headed out on a long walk south through the city, and at one point we angled through the Hudson Yards complex, where I made this photograph of some rather remarkable architectural forms that seem like mountains in an urban landscape.

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We spent a couple of nights in the Italian “hill town ‘of Orvieto this summer. Most visitors apparently visit on day trips from Rome, but by staying overnight we had a different and richer experience. We wandered the town in the early morning and evening when the day trippers weren’t there. As we walked up one very narrow street — I think we may have been looking for a place to eat — I caught sight of this beautifully shaped tree growing against this very weathered wall.

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My first major photography venture of the year was in Death Valley — which isn’t surprising, since I usually go annually in January and again in early spring. This year I made a number of photographs here that I like a lot, including some shot during remarkable dust and wind storms. But as I narrowed down my selection of photographs for this set, I kept coming back to this one, with its layers of textures and curves running in almost all directions in warm, golden hour light.

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I was barely in Yosemite Valley at all this year, but I did manage a brief visit to photograph fall color. After all of these decades, the place feels almost “backyard familiar,” and I was looking forward to the visit as I drove into the Valley… to find it filled with smoke from management fires! After initial disappointment I did a mental reset and looked for subjects made more interesting by the smoke. Here light beams from the sun rising over nearby cliffs angle through the branches of black oak trees and illuminate the smoke.

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In retrospect, it was a great year for photography — from Europe to American cities, to the ocean, the desert, the mountains, and more. And now, on to 2024. Best wishes for a great year with plenty of opportunities for wonderful photographs!

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G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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