Tag Archives: photography

IBIS Does Not Replace Your Tripod

Recently I have heard some photographers suggest that IBIS-equipped cameras have made tripods obsolete. IBIS is a fine thing, but that overstates the case.

Photographer Patricia Mitchell
“Photographer Patricia Mitchell” — Photographer Patricia Mitchell at work in early morning autumn light in the Eastern Sierra Nevada.

Contemporary cameras incorporate remarkable advances in camera and lens image stabilization. Some newer cameras with IBIS (In-camera Image stabilization) claim to extend the useful range of shutter speeds for handheld photography by as much as seven stops.

IBIS can be very useful for photographers who shoot handheld. I do urban night street photography using a handheld, IBIS-equipped camera that supports high ISOs — and I can capture subjects that would have been just about impossible to photograph a few decades ago.

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2025 (Almost) Favorite Photographs

G Dan Mitchell's 2025 (Almost) Favorite Photographs
“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.)

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2025 Favorite Photos

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.

2025 Favorite Photographs
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.)

Continue reading 2025 Favorite Photos

The First Light Group, Through My Eyes

I will have more to say about this video and its context in a later post (though see below for a bit more information), but I wanted to share this Scot Miller video about the band of photographers known informally as “The First Light Group” and my role in the group.

There’s a lot more to say about the First Light project, but for now here is a little background. In the early 2000s the group assembled, with support from the Yosemite Conservancy, and headed into the Sierra Nevada backcountry with a special mission: to place landscape photographers in the wilderness for extended periods of time to create photographs that embody the character of these remote places. Over a period of nearly two decades we photographed all over the range.

You can subscribe to Scot Miller’s YouTube channel, where you’ll find more First Light videos and plenty of other material from him.


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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

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