A look back at my life, accomplishments, and best photos of 2024
Whew... 2024. What can I say? It was quite the positive year for my photography business, but it often felt like everything else was falling apart and/or on fire around me.
To start the year, my mom suddenly got sick and passed away in the span of only five weeks, then our cat's kidney disease progressed into end-stage failure (and we had to say goodbye just over a month ago), I have two new scars to show off the importance of annual (or more frequent) skin checks, an extended family member also passed after a tough battle with cancer, and then we got Heather's breast cancer diagnosis in October. We even managed to end the year by coming down with horrible colds!
In many ways, this past year can be summed up in a modified version of this classic cartoon from The Oatmeal that was published at the end of 2020:
With all that summarized and out of the way, I want to - am very ready to - move on, but first, I also want to recognize that there was a lot to celebrate throughout the year from a photography standpoint.
Oh, photography! What would I have done without you?
I'll be sharing my best/favorite photos from 2024 below, but - as a mental health exercise for myself more than anything else - I want to recap some of my accomplishments, too. If you missed anything throughout the year, I've also provided links to the referenced interviews, etc.
Interview with F-Stop, Collaborate, and Listen
Back in early February, I had the opportunity to sit down virtually with my friend and podcast host extraordinaire, Matt Payne. We covered a wide range of topics over the course of nearly two hours (including recording a bonus episode for his Patreon members), but a large focus for our discussion was on my belief in authenticity in nature photography and how I'm working to counter the influx of AI and advanced photo manipulation tools.
We also chatted about my journey over the past few years as a full-time photographer, and some of the challenges I've faced along the way. In the bonus episode for his Patreon supporters, we covered my foray into releasing new work in the form of free PDF ebooks instead of relying solely on social media or other forms of distribution.
I also have to express my tremendous gratitude to Matt, once again, for sharing the YouTube version of the interview with me before it went live, so I could share it with my mom before she passed.
Be sure to subscribe to F-Stop, Collaborate, and Listen, if you aren't already. It's the longest-running landscape and nature photography podcast out there, without a single week missed since its inception in 2017, and the discussions Matt facilitates are always of interest!
Interview with Landscape Photography World
In October I had the pleasure of chatting with Grant Swinbourne, a photographer and podcast host based in Australia, for his show, Landscape Photography World. Once again, we covered several topics throughout the interview, from my experience adjusting from a career of almost 30 years to being my own boss to my thoughts on pineapple on pizza.
I've really enjoyed Grant's podcast since it came to my attention about a year ago, so I was excited for the opportunity to be a guest when he reached out to me.
Interview with VoyageDallas
In June, I was featured in VoyageDallas, whose mission is to provide a platform "that fosters collaboration and support for small businesses, independent artists and entrepreneurs, local institutions and those that make [Dallas] interesting."
Most of the interview focuses on my background, the challenges I've faced as an artist, and my personal beliefs as they related to authenticity in nature photography and the importance of accurately representing nature even while applying my own creative vision.
I Wrote... a Lot
I published 19 blog posts in 2024, from trips reports to my thoughts on the current state of photography, to Lightroom tutorials. This was something I spoke about during my interview with Grant: I've always loved writing and wanted to further embrace that creative outlet from a photography viewpoint.
I Also Recorded and Produced a Lot of Video Content
It seems impossible given all that happened in 2024, but I managed to produce and release 16 new videos for my YouTube channel, too. I also shifted my focus a bit: instead of relying solely on new Lightroom tutorials I dove deep into recording behind-the-scenes and educational content during my in-field outings and trips.
Those in-field videos don't perform nearly as well with the YouTube algorithm, but I've really enjoyed branching into that subject matter (which is ironic as back in 2023 I announced I wasn't going to record video in the field!). Regardless, it's nice being able to bring viewers into the field with me and talk through my (usually) related musings, processes, and challenges as I work.
I Began Offering Patreon Memberships and Perks
Speaking of video, just about all of them from 2024 are also available ad-free on Patreon, which is one of the exclusive perks for paid members.
I had been mulling over the decision of launching a Patreon membership for a while and finally decided to move forward around the middle of the year. In an age of diminishing returns from social media, reduced ad revenue on YouTube, and other headwinds, Patreon is the top platform that provides fans of artists a way to directly support them on an ongoing basis.
Besides ad-free video access, member benefits for my patrons range from early access to new content (free ebooks, videos, etc.), sneak peeks at new images I'm working on, exclusive field check-ins (written or video), and, for the two highest tiers, discounted - or even free - limited-edition folios and prints.
My Patreon community is still small and slowly growing, but I'm extremely grateful for their support. $5 or $10 a month may not seem like much, but it adds up and means the world to me and my ability to keep producing new work and content as a photographer.
New Relationships and Partnerships
Being a full-time artist can often be a lonely endeavor. I don't go into an office filled with coworkers, I don't have regular meetings with the same people, and, living in Texas, especially, it's hard to even meet up for a photography outing or just lunch with my peers.
And so, I'm very grateful for the relationships I have been able to forge over the years, both online and in person (I discussed this in greater depth in a blog post this past year, too: see link below).
The year started out with a small photographers' conference in Lone Pine, California. Organized by Brie Stockwell and hosted at Joshua Cripp's gallery, it was a great few days of meeting others in the nature and landscape photography space (including people I'd only known online and others that I had never run into before, online or otherwise).
Virtual friendships and acquaintances are all well and good, but there's nothing that compares to being able to spend time with others in person.
Out of that February meetup came having lunch with Shanda Akin (one of the founders of the Outdoor Photo Alliance) one afternoon during my July Colorado trip and, later in the year, talking to Jeffrey Tadlock about partnering up to co-lead his Great Smoky Mountains workshop in April 2025.
Another partnership came about this past year was with Nathan St. Andre. Unfortunately, I had to pull out of co-leading his Fall in the Canyons of Escalante workshop in October due to Heather's breast cancer diagnosis, but we'll be teaming up for his second workshop in October 2025. I can't wait!
As I said, nothing beats getting to connect and know people in person, but that's not to dismiss social media. Sure, there's a lot wrong with it these days, but with a little effort one can still create connections with others. All it takes is engaging with others and putting yourself out there a bit. I tried to embrace that attitude all the more as I was forced to start over on Facebook and Instagram with new accounts.
I'd also be remiss if I failed to mention the Landscape Photographers Worldwide Discord server that was founded by Tristan Todd. I admit that Discord can be a bit intimidating at first, but once I got my head wrapped around how it works, I discovered an amazing community of photographers who not only share their work but also their knowledge. We've had some really good laughs, too!
Whether it's just general chatter about photography to asking questions about more specific things like running a business or diving into the world of printing, LPW has been an absolutely fantastic community.
My Best Photos of 2024... So Far
Below, you'll find 15 photos that span my work from 2024, as well as several images from past years as I spent a significant amount of time working in my archives. I've also produced an expanded collection of my favorite 2024 photos that includes more than twice as many photos plus 35 pages of text that covers related backstories, insights, and personal thoughts for all of the photos.
This expanded collection is presented in my latest free ebook, Reflecting on 2024.
What defines one's "best" work? As with every year-end, I've seen a lot of photographers sharing their nine most popular posts on Instagram. Others are writing blogs similar to this one, sharing their personal favorites. Michael Frye takes a fun approach and asks his readers to vote for their favorite photos (I don't yet have enough email subscribers for something like that!).
I used to play the social media favorites game, but, invariably, the favorites are the most eye-catching photos. Subtler images often get overlooked when viewed on a small phone screen while they're competing with the general "noise" of social media feeds. If a photo can't catch enough attention to get someone to stop scrolling, it's bound to wallow with less engagement and views.
Besides, I create my art for me. Why would I let the whims of social media dictate the images that are defined as my "best" work?
To me, my best work encompasses the photos that have strong memories of their making - unique conditions, strong emotions, or something else that ingrained them more deeply in my mind - rather than just picking and choosing the ones that may have the most dramatic light or rarest conditions (although those are certainly not eschewed, either).
So, without too much further ado, let's get into my selections. I included the "so far" caveat simply because I'm not finished with all my 2024 files.
Click on any image to view a larger version.
I didn't get to spend much time in Utah this past year. My lone trip was unplanned, a detour after the meetup in Lone Pine wrapped up. I have often said Utah is my happy place, my realm of quietude and peace. Even though I had a great time at the meetup, I needed some time on my own to clear my head as there was a lot of uncertainty - and not much hope - with my mom's cancer diagnosis at the time.
I only had a few days in Utah and managed to come down with a cold by the end of my time there, but it was exactly what I needed. I spent the time exploring a couple new-to-me locations, which included a hike along the Paria River. As usual, I also snapped several phone pics throughout the trip to share with mom when I had a cell signal.
I made this photo towards the end of my second day in Utah, along the shoulder of Cottonwood Canyon Road. I spent quite a while in this spot, framing up several different compositions as the late-afternoon light shifted and the sun flirted with passing clouds. Indeed, I have an alternate take on this exact scene but with softer, cooler light as the sun was briefly hidden (it's included in the expanded collection in the ebook).
I can't say I really prefer one version over the other, but one of my goals of the past year or so has been to embrace stronger direct light, so the above take on the scene gets the nod here.
While I stood waiting for the light, intermittently running up and down the side of the road to find and photograph new compositions, I was distracted by a couple big horn sheep passing over the hills behind me. Aside from a couple deer at Bryce Canyon years ago, it was my first wildlife sighting in Utah, and my first time encountering big horns. Even though none of the photos I took were all that special, the experience itself was quite memorable.
I made this photo towards the end of my first outing with the camera after mom passed away a month prior. Lots of emotions that morning, to say the least...
For years, mom had always wished for deer to visit her yard. She loved all wildlife and always had a multitude of bird feeders visible from the kitchen window. Ironically, when deer did finally start making regular appearances, it was a bit of a love/hate relationship as they also liked to eat the flowers in her garden (another passion of hers).
As I was starting to make the trek back to the parking lot on this morning, a deer wandered across the path ahead of me. I don't usually bother photographing deer in the park but, this time, I quickly pulled out my camera with my 100-400mm lens and fired off some bursts as it passed towards the meadow beyond the trees lining the trail.
I'm not religious, or even spiritual, but when it paused to look back at me, all I could imagine was mom sending me a message that all would be well.
I rarely head out with the camera with any preconceived expectations in mind. I have found, over my photography journey, that doing so is a great way to stunt my creativity and, more often than not, it just leads to frustration when reality fails to align with my expectations.
In this particular case, though, as I returned to my local park two days later, I was hoping to find a scene such as this: a fallen branch surrounded by spring wildflowers. Knowing that an "upper" section of the park had been full of vibrant flowers the prior spring, I headed back there to see what I could find.
As luck would have it, I came across this fallen branch just off the trail as the morning sun was still filtered slightly by thin clouds. This photo evokes all kinds of emotions: it reminds me of mom's love of flowers while the branch represents loss and the inevitable march of time. The flowers also represent the eternal renewal and hope of life, even when it seems there's little reason to feel much hope at times.
In May, I was able to get away to northern Arkansas for a handful of days. It was an area I'd been wanting to revisit since 2019, when I joined my friend Jon Fischer (then a stranger) and several others for his annual birthday photography trip. Although it was beautiful back then, nothing was really green yet in early April and I wanted to get back later in the season. The trick is timing things to catch the greens of spring with the seasonal flow of water.
The flow was a bit less this past year, but holy cow were conditions beautiful! I revisited some old spots while also exploring some locations I hadn't yet seen. The above photo is from one of those revisits.
This photo was from one of the newly visited locations. I had some idea of what to expect thanks to Tim Ernst's fantastic guidebook (affiliate link), but I still wasn't prepared for just how beautiful this triple falls was.
In a bittersweet coincidence, it dawned on me while driving to this location that it was Mother's Day: she would have absolutely loved the photos I made here. Surprisingly - and thankfully since I had a bit of a "moment" thinking about mom - I had a good 30-40 minutes on my own here as I lost myself in the flow of photography and memories of mom.
Heading to Colorado was a bit of a last-minute decision, at least in terms of planning for such a trip. Heading into 2024, I wanted to get at least one more big trip in for the year, which meant heading somewhere during the summer. While mom's illness and passing precluded a late winter/early spring trip (aside from the truncated stopover in Utah on my way home from Lone Pine and the shorter journey to Arkansas), I was able to keep this one to Colorado on the books.
My last time in Colorado had come in 2020, when I visited twice in the span of a few months. I was supposed to have joined a few other photographers for a fall trip in 2023 but caught Covid a week prior to leaving and I was in no shape to travel, camp, or do any hiking at elevation by the time I would have needed to be on the road to join them.
My first stop this past July was at Molas Point Overlook, right before I encountered the only summer rainstorm of the trip. I returned a few days later to spend more time exploring and, in particular, to hike down to a small pond that was covered in lily pads. After hiking down to the pond, I realized that the best spot to photograph the lilies was from atop the overlook, but it was also pretty challenging as the wind rarely let up. More often than not, if I had calm winds up top, the surface of the pond was disturbed by gusts of wind, or vice versa.
Luckily, there were a few brief moments where everything came together, and I was able to get some photos of the pond with its calm surface.
The rest of the trip, I was faced with the challenge of hazy skies due to wildfire smoke blowing in from Utah and other parts of Colorado. Without any rain to help clear the skies, it often made for challenging shooting conditions for anything other than small scenes that excluded the sky, with a few exceptions.
I made this photo during a rough, steep climb in the 4Runner, as I headed to an alpine lake to camp for the night. I don't often include human elements in my photos, but I felt the road far below helped provide a sense of scale and added interest (it's also the road from which I started out). Otherwise, I loved the ridgeline row of trees in the midground between the wildflowers and distant mountains and, thankfully, the sky was mostly clear from the otherwise persistent smoky haze.
Later in the trip, I headed north a bit to explore other areas at the recommendation of a friend. And what a recommendation it was! Not only did I spend my last two nights in a secluded, beautiful campsite, but the whole area showed potential for photography.
At one point, I had stopped to photograph a scene when, off to my left, I noticed this buck meandering through a meadow full of wildflowers and corn lilies. After quickly detaching my camera from the tripod, I scrambled to adjust my settings for handheld, somewhat low-light shooting, and was able to come away with the above photo.
Not only had I been greeted by singing birds and buzzing hummingbirds at camp that morning, but a few deer had wandered through my campsite, too, continuing on the spring theme of remembering mom through encounters with wildlife. I love the photo for that as much as for it just being a beautiful scene in a beautiful location on its own.
I wasn't sure this was going to be my last morning, but I was leaning in that direction after seven nights of sleeping in the back of the 4Runner and the constant undercurrent of emotions as I progressed through this first big photography trip since mom's passing. I spent quite a long time at this spot that morning, waiting to see how the light might play out as storm clouds came and went in the distance. Light rain occasionally fell as I explored and photographed different compositions.
At one point, as I sat beneath the tailgate of the 4Runner, enjoying a mug of hot tea and listening to music while I waited on the light, I was surrounded by birdsong. Swallows, robins, and unseen cardinals - mom and dad's favorite - serenaded me and danced through the meadow and sky overhead, and I was paid a visit by another hummingbird that was bold enough to fly up and hover only a foot or so from my face, seemingly staring into my eyes.
It was at that point that everything came to a head, and I completely broke down, crying harder and more freely than I had at any point since mom's passing. I collected myself after a minute, feeling some relief after the cathartic release.
It was at that point that I knew it was time to bring the trip to a close.
After the Colorado trip, my camera gear sat untouched for a few months as I waited for the heat of another Texas summer to subside. It was during that window of time that we also learned Heather had breast cancer, filling the latter weeks of summer with more uncertainty, fears, and anxiety.
Mom's birthday falls late in October: my original intent had been to spend the day hiking through one of the Utah canyons she had especially liked from my 2023 fall trip. With Heather's diagnosis, I cancelled the Utah trip, but I was determined to spend mom's birthday out in nature with my camera.
Although it was early for fall in Texas, I was still able to find pockets of color within my local park. It was fairly breezy, creating a challenge for capturing fall colors, but I embraced slower shutter speeds to make the most of the conditions. In the case of the above photo, it actually helped as the foreground grasses would have been impossible to get in focus given the depth-of-field that would have been required; the slower shutter speed helped "mask" the out of focus grasses within their own movement.
The lake the park hugs has not recovered from the severe droughts of 2022 and 2023. In fact, this past October was one of the driest on record (it's usually our second rainiest month of the year). This presented new photographic opportunities as I was able to walk along the exposed sandy beach and look towards the shoreline for compositions that would not normally be accessible.
The above photo is one such composition, made as the morning sun rose higher in the sky and backlit this kaleidoscope of autumnal leaves. Wind was still an issue, and, in this instance, I was glad for it as I wanted to showcase the dance of the leaves.
Overall, it was a wonderful way to celebrate mom on her birthday.
Returning to the park in early December, I really didn't know what to expect in terms of fall color given the lack of rainfall in October. I was pleasantly surprised to find plenty of vibrant hues throughout the park.
As usual, I leveraged my longest lens more often than not. As noted in blog post linked above from mom's birthday outing, I was disappointed that the water district that manages the park had inexplicably blocked access to several of the smaller side trails that have been around as long as I've been exploring the park (over a decade, now).
I've always preferred to use the long lens to photograph smaller scenes on the boundaries of meadows and what not, but with some of the new restrictions in place it made the added reach of the lens even more valuable. This outing also represented my first opportunity to play with the Canon RF 100-500, which I had snagged refurbished during Canon's holiday sale.
I visited the park a couple times in early December. In the above photo, I once again embraced more direct sunlight on the subject, using a circular polarizer to help control glare on the leaves and showcase the brilliant oranges and reds that surrounded the inner, stark structure of the tree.
On my second December visit to the park, I revisited a scene I'd photographed back in 2020. When I photographed it four years prior, the water level of the lake had been much higher, and I was limited in how I could compose the shot. I'd also left my 100-400mm lens at home for some reason that day, opting to bring my 70-200mm instead, and the scene could have benefited from more reach.
So, with the added range of the 100-500mm lens and the greater accessibility provided by the exposed sandy shoreline, I played around with trying to improve upon the 2020 photo. Whereas that previous photo was a portrait-orientated frame showing more of the main tree's trunk structure, I opted to use a horizontal composition to show off more of the tree's surroundings this time (and to avoid simply remaking the previous photo). The golden leaves contrasted nicely with the cooler shadows of indirect morning light.
Above is one of the last photos I made in 2024. I suspect my attraction to the scene is obvious; if not, the contrast of the cool tones of the dead branches, reflecting early morning light and contrasting against the deep reds of the leaves, is just... exquisite. I initially thought I would need to focus stack to get everything sharp, but I was happy to find everything was in good focus when reviewing the initial test shots in my viewfinder. This ended up being one of my favorite photos from the entire year.
Not a bad way to wind down 2024! Don't forget to download the free ebook to view more photos and enjoy additional writing - roughly 30 short essays - related to all the images included in the ebook.
Parting Words
I'm not sad to be on the other side of 2024: it was, by many measures, an awful year. Thankfully, my photography was a bright spot. As crazy as it seems, it was my third year as a full-time photographer, and I finally felt as though I was getting my feet under me a bit (granted, the rug was also pulled out from under me several times, but overall... positive movement forward for my art and the business).
We still face some big challenges as we get into 2025, but I'm very excited about what the future holds for my photographic work, the sustainability of the business, and life in general.
Especially as Heather and I are now engaged! I popped the question the week before Christmas.
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