“G Dan Mitchell’s 2025 (Almost) Favorite Photographs” — 16 photographs that almost made it into G Dan Mitchell’s 2025 Favorite Photographs.
Each winter I go review the year’s work and select a set of “annual favorites.”I enjoy reviewing all of my photographs each year, but it is difficult to winnow them down to a manageable 12 to 16 images. As I created my 2025 Favorite Photographs I had to make hard decisions near the end of the process, and inevitably some photographs I liked were left out.
So this year I’m trying something new: I have assembled this set of 2025 (Almost) Favorite Photographs, selected from those I like that did not quite make the cut for my the 2025 Favorite Photographs.
Why didn’t they make it? I photograph a variety of subjects — from landscapes to travel to street photography. Since I want to include multiple genres I must eliminate photographs of one type to make room for others. Sometimes the issue is that I have a lot of photographs of certain subjects. For example, this year I had many photographs of trees and desert landscapes, and I couldn’t include them all.
With this in mind, here’s a set of 2025 (Almost) Favorite Photographs that didn’t quite make it into the final set. Continue reading to view them individually below and then in a gallery at the end of the article, where you can click on an image to view the set as a slideshow.)
Here is a collection of some of my favorite photographs from 2025. Assembling annual collections gives me a opportunity to get a better overview of my work over the longer term. The project also jogs my memory and gives me a chance to relive memorable experiences from the past year.
Here is a set of thumbnails of the selected photographs. You can pick the image for a better view of the set, but continue reading to see larger versions of the photographs read more about each image.
A set of G Dan Mitchell’s favorite photographs from 2025.
I prefer the term “favorites” over “best” since I’m not really able to know which are best — that’s a subjective thing, its not entirely my decision, and it changes over time. But right now, I can say for sure that these are among my favorites.
Choosing the set is challenging! Near the end of the process I must eliminate photographs that are also favorites in order to keep the collection to a reasonable size. (Perhaps I’ll share some of the “(Almost) Favorite Photographs” in a separate post!)
I choose the final set from among all of the photographs that I shared on this website during 2025. The majority were also photographed during 2025, but a few are photographs “captured” earlier that I finished working on this year.
The final set includes diverse photographs since I photograph a wide range of subjects. Some of you who follow my landscape photography may not know that I also do travel and street photography, that I sometimes include people in my landscape work, or that I do some macro photography. So I select a set of favorites that includes examples from various genres. They also come from throughout the year and from many different places — the mountains, the desert, wildlife refuges, American and foreign travel, my local neighborhood.
Continue reading to see larger versions of the photographs and to read more about them. (Click photo titles below to see their original posts. Click on the photographs to view them larger.)
These are my current forty (!) final candidates for my “2012 Favorite Photographs” post that I hope to share later this week. This is still way too many, and my target is to try to get the number down to about half of this. I’m happy to hear your feedback in whatever form works best for you: identifying one or a few favorites, suggesting your “top X number” of them from within the group, your favorites of each of the various types, or even suggestions of photographs of mine that are not included in this list.
If you didn’t already know, this is a tough job!
Some of my criteria for the final selection include:
representing a range of genres – landscape (both large and small), night photography, wildlife, urban landscape, nature, and so forth.
incorporating both color and monochrome work.
balancing representational work with photographs that are a bit more conceptual, atmospheric, and so forth.
recognizing work that others tell me they like.
sharing photographs that are personal favorite of mine.
The gallery thumbnails show below are small and may omit portions of images, so click on an image to see a larger version. Once you click on that first image you can use the right/left arrows to navigate through the larger versions of the photographs throughout the entire gallery.
Thanks for looking and for whatever feedback you are willing to share. (Leaving a comment below is a great way to do this.)
Dan
Winter Haze and Trees, Central Valley
Two Islands, Fog
Birds, Evening Fog, Rodeo Lagoon
Drakes Bay, Fog
Sail Boat, San Francisco Bay
Three Bighorn Sheep
Harbor Seals, Point Lobos
Great Blue Heron Taking Flight
Green and Red Leaves
Two Owls, Trees and Ponds, Dusk
Ross’s Geese, Sunset, Central Valley
Snow Goose Maelstrom
Snow Geese in Motion
Death Valley and Trail Canyon, Morning
Sandstone Towers, Early Evening
The Organ and Courthouse Towers
Cliff, Green River Overlook
Flowers, Wockner Hospice Center Gardens
Iris Blossom, Japanese Garden
Branch With Spring Leaves
Stairway, Building 45
Lee Vining Canyon and Mono Craters, Morning
Trees and Meadow, Morning
Aspen Trees, Shoreline of North Lake
Utah Fall Color, Meadows
Boulder Mountain Aspens and Distant Peak
Aspen Grove, Old Road
Balanced Rock and Cliff, Sunrise
Rain Squall, Monument Valley
Clearing Storm, Morning Light
Autumn Detritus, Zion National Park
Cracked Sandstone
Backlit Trees and Sandstone, Afternoon
Sandstone Patterns, Dried Plant
Arch in Morning Light
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more. Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email
I did something similar when coming up with my 2010 Favorites list – I asked readers to give me their feedback on which of my photographs spoke to them, and I used that feedback to edit the list down a bit and then to determine the order in which the photos would be posted. Michael has set a more difficult task for his readers. Out of his large selection of very wonderful photographs – at least a couple of which have “iconic” potential – he wants to end up with a list of his best 10.
Wander on over there and take a look at his wonderful collection of photographs – and good luck trying to limit yourself to only 10! I took a look earlier today, realized it was going to be too difficult to eliminate that many in order to come up with a small list, and decided to come back later. While you are visiting his site, be sure to poke around a bit. There is a lot of other great stuff there. In addition to his photography, I recommend looking at his reviews of readers’ photographs and at his “how to” videos.
While I have your attention, I want to echo one thing that Michael wrote in his post: “… the judge—me—gets a say too, so if one of my favorites gets panned by everyone else I may still include it. But as one of my photographer friends, Clinton Smith, once said, we don’t get to pick our best images—the world does. So your votes will carry a lot of weight.”
Like Michael, I did “get the final say,” but I strongly agree that we are often the least able to judge the potential success of our photographs. Sometimes I know that a photograph will communicate with others, but very often (more often, perhaps?) I am surprised by the positive feedback I get on a photograph that wasn’t necessarily one of my very favorites and by the fact that my favorites are often not the ones that speak to others. I had to swallow hard and remove a couple from my initial “favorites” list when they didn’t get much response – but I am always very interested to see what the reactions are, and I learned a lot by considering your votes and reading your comments. (My own personal favorite among my photographs was not selected as the “readers’ favorite,” but I was relieved to see that it at least did pretty well! :-)
Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.
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