Category Archives: Commentary

Annual Favorites, Commentary, Ideas, Site News

Choosing 2025 Favorite Photographs: The Process

Image December 28, 2025 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

It almost seems a requirement that photographers share a set of our “best” or “favorite” work at the end of the year. I’ve been doing this just about every year for the past two decades. (I prefer the term “favorite” over “best,” since the latter is such a subjective concept.)

I think there’s value in reviewing one’s work from the past year. We get caught up in what we are doing right now, and it is easy to lose track of the bigger picture. As I review photographs I also enjoy recalling the experiences behind them — the places I visited, the people I was with, the things I’ve seen.

At the same time, it isn’t an easy task! I start by reviewing all 365 photographs that I posted in 2025. (Some were “taken” earlier but not released until this year.) From that starting point I do a quick select of those that I think are most interesting to me. This year that left me with the 91 photographs seen above!

That is, of course, way too many to share as annual favorites, so the culling work continues. I group photographs by subjects and then try to pick the most interesting (to me!) in each category. In some categories I may winnow them down to just a couple, but in others I’m still looking at a half dozen or more photographs. It is hard to choose — I like them all!

This morning I cut the number approximately in half, and there are now “only” 44 photographs remaining, as shown below.

I expect that I’ll need to do at least two more cuts to determine which photographs are in the final set of 12-15. But the process only becomes more difficult as the group shrinks — it is harder and harder to give up the “near favorites.” By the end, it almost feels brutal as I ponder the last few eliminations.

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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” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him. Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others.

Commentary

The Wrigley Building

Image December 14, 2025 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

I photographed Chicago’s famous Wrigley Building while we were out for a walk last November. We were in the city for most of a week, originally to meet up with others, but in the end to explore, eat at interesting places, and attend a couple of concerts. On this day we had walked to the opera house to make sure we’d know where we were going when we attended an upcoming performance, We were looping back from there along the Chicago River when I made the photograph.

When the light is right, I’m bit of a sucker for photographing big buildings like The Wrigley. They feel like they come from a different and perhaps more innocent era, and in Chicago they evoke the “City of Broad Shoulders” heritage of the place.

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All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others.

Commentary

2024: Favorite Photos

Image September 5, 2025 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

For various reasons it took me a long time to commit to a set of favorite photographs of 2024. I chose the title of this list carefully, as I do every year. Note that it is not “Best Photgraphs” or “My 15 Favorite Photographs” or similar — it is just Favorite Photographs of 2024. Why is that? These are, indeed, among my “favorite” photograph from 2024, but I can’t say for sure that they are the favorite, much less that they are my “best” of the year.

Making this annual list is both a pleasure and a big challenge. The pleasure comes from reviewing hundreds of photographs and, in the process, both rediscovering some of them and reliving the experiences behind making them. The challenge? There are several. The first is that it is very hard to winnow them down to a manageable number. I probably stared with nearly 100, made a quick cut to half that many, labored to make the next 50% cut, and finally got the number down to the 15 you see here. (My target was a dozen, but now that I’m eight months late… it was time to just put them out there!)

The photographs include several themes in my photography: The Sierra Nevada, travel and street photography, the desert and ocean, wildlife and nature. To qualify as a “2024 Favorite” the photographs had to have first been publicly shared in that year. First up is a display of the whole set, followed further down that page with larger individual files with a bit more information. (Clicking on the larger photographs opens their original posts in new tabs.)

2024: Favore Photographs — G Dan Mitchell

View larger versions of the individual photographs below. Click on any of them to visit the original posts, which include additional background information.

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Commentary, Equipment, Fujifilm, Reviews

Considering the Fujifilm X-E5

Image June 30, 2025 G Dan Mitchell 4 Comments

Fujifilm recently announced the X-E5, the latest camera in their X-E series. I think this model series is intriguing.. It is small and lightweight, well designed. has a lot of useful features, incorporates a high resolution sensor and IBIS (in body image stabilization) , and is compatible with Fujifilm’s excellent lenses. It has a few other features that may or may not appeal, along with one “elephant in the room” issue.

Fujifilm XE5 Silver Body — Fujifilm XE5 Silver body. (Used with permission from Fujifilm.)

(Notes: I omit the hyphens between X and E in this article. I have rounded prices to the nearest dollar. Photographs of Fujifilm products used by permission from Fujifilm. Affiliate links in this article lead to B&H Photo — they return a small fee to this website if you use them to make a purchase — thanks in advance!.)

Right up front, let me be clear about one thing: I have not had my hands on the XE5 yet. I owned the XE1, my first Fujifilm camera, about a dozen years ago. Our photographic household has had the XE2, XE3, and XE4, and I have recommended all of them to various potential buyers over the years. While I cannot give a “hands on” review of the new camera at this point — hey Fujifilm, I’m here if you have one to loan! — I am qualified to comment on its features and who may find them appealing.

The XE Series

Let’s start with a bit of XE history. The original XE1 camera came out in 2012. At that time it was one of only two interchangeable lens x-trans* cameras from Fujifilm — the other was the more expensive “flagship model,” the XPro1. The XE1 was a smaller, less-expensive alternative for those who wanted a Fujifilm rangefinder-style camera with interchangeable lenses. Importantly, the XE1 (like later XE models) used the same sensor found in high-end Fujiflm APS-C cameras, which at that time was the 16MP sensor used in the “flagship” XPro1.)

(*”x-trans” refers to Fujifilm’s unique arrangement of the red, blue, and green photo sites on the sensor, a design that was said to help control aliasing/moire on cameras that do not use anti-aliasing filters, among other things.)