2025 Year in Review

Hello everyone! It's that time again - time to review what went well in 2025 and ideas for what 2026 might see!

I. Highlights of 2025

1.) Camping trips

2025 wasn't as excellent of a camping year as some prior years have been. One trip, to the Teanaway area, was cut short when a windstorm shattered a tent pole. I had to scrap a later trip I had originally planned for California, and the trip that happened instead - through northern Washington - involved a lot of coping with intense heat. A third trip planned for the end of summer also had to get cancelled. So, not the best camping year I've ever had, but I think I generally made the best of my short time and the tricky weather.

From my Teanaway trip, I got a couple classic flower-and-mountain landscapes on the Esmeralda Basin trail that turned out pretty well:

From my northern Washington trip, here are a couple more flower-and-mountain landscapes from Maple Pass Loop, including the classic view down to Lake Ann. I don't love the harsh midday lighting, but it's what I had to work with:

Fireweed flowers and Lake Ann

Paintbrush flowers

Pasqueflower seed heads

From later that same trip, an quick and easy hike to Cutthroat Lake prior to the worst of the day's heat:

Lastly from that trip, an early-morning landscape from the Bowl and Pitcher area in Spokane. 

2.) Non-floral closeups

I often talk about using my macro lens for subjects other than wildflowers, and this time, I did enough of this to merit a section! My favorite might be this one, of raindrops or dewdrops on Indian plum growth in late winter.

There's also this one from the Boulder River trail, for an alternative perspective on the iconic double waterfall there. Those are vine maple leaves and seeds in the foreground.

Next, bunchberries and bunchberry leaves in late summer and early fall. 

Near Boardman Lake

From the Quartz Creek trail

I also took a few fungus/mushroom pictures! I'm not much of a hand at identifying these, so we'll just have to enjoy the way they look. I think I've started to train myself to see these amid the forest, so hopefully there will be more pictures like this in future years. Might be a fun way to find color in the off-season.

From Cougar Mountain

From Cougar Mountain

From the Middle Fork Snoqualmie trail

3.) Fall in the forest

I didn't really get any opportunities this fall to hike some of the most photogenic open-country fall hikes in the mountains, with red huckleberry foliage in the meadows and such. I did, however have some success photographing the subtleties of fall in western Washington's forests. The foliage is often a more muted yellow, which doesn't always stand out amid all the remaining greens, so finding compelling compositions takes a bit more patience, and sometimes the inclusion of strong visual elements other than foliage.

The upside of fall color hiking in the woods is privacy; the high-country hikes and larch hikes tend to concentrate the crowds. For instance, on one one of my forest hikes, the Quartz Creek trail, we saw only one other hiking party all day. This made it easier to keep the tripod set up for a long time and finesse a shot. It was also fun because, the longer I stayed in one spot, the more sounds I heard from the birds and other little forest animals.

Here are a few fall highlights:

Devil's club along the Quartz Creek trail

Along the Quartz Creek trail

Along the Lime Kiln trail

From Cougar Mountain

Along the Middle Fork Snoqualmie trail

Along the Middle Fork Snoqualmie trail

4.) Wildflowers of 2025

As every year, here's the roundup of my favorite wildflower pictures from 2025!

First, I was really happy with this image of partridgefoot. By keeping the camera quite low to the ground, I was able to bring a lot of depth to these flowers, which are small and easy to overlook while walking.

Near the Big Four Ice Caves

Next, chocolate lily. These are also easy to miss, due to their darker color.

Deception Pass State Park

Another lily - tiger lily. I've photographed these before, but I liked the raindrops on this one.

Near the Big Four Ice Caves

Next, death-camas. The deep blue background color from the distant water is a fun element.

Deception Pass State Park

The camas picture below isn't very much of a closeup, but I liked how the whole composition came together.

Deception Pass State Park

Here's something that was new to me: what seems like a color variant of scarlet gilia (as the name suggests, it's usually red).

Esmeralda Basin trail

Shooting star, also from the Esmeralda Basin trail. I've photographed these before, but this picture adds some fun contrasting linear elements.

Western red columbine, with Sitka valerian out of focus in the background.

Near the Big Four Ice Caves

Next, a couple images where trillium flowers really pop; these pictures also showcase the way trillium petals turn purple as they age.

Along the Perry Creek trail

Dash Point State Park

Lastly, some bunchberry flowers just starting to bloom.

Along the Denny Creek trail

5.) Honorable mentions

Lastly, some pictures that don't fit into any particular category, but are still interesting enough to note in this blog. First, a really fun example of some natural framing, with bigleaf maples framing Hall Peak along the Perry Creek trail.

Here's one that I wasn't sure about initially but that I keep coming back to: a view of the Sauk River through alder and maple trees. Just enough of the river is visible for this one to work.

When I photograph moving water, I usually opt for a longer exposure time to blur the water's motion and get that classic silky look. Here's one where I tried a shorter exposure time - 1/320 of a second - to freeze the water's motion. It's a bit underexposed but I still like the effect:

Along the Oxbow Loop trail

A little waterfall I found along the Quartz Creek trail:

The Middle Fork Snoqualmie river in the late fall. I liked the subtle color variations throughout the composition:

Hawkins Mountain from the Esmeralda Basin hike. I liked the framing from the weather-worn trees.

Lake Evan, off the Mountain Loop Highway, with nice reflections on the still water:

Hazy views of Goat Lake, one of my favorite hiking destinations. The haze, from wildfire smoke, took away some of the detail, but created a new late-summer/early-fall mood that I hadn't photographed at the lake before.

A view out to the Olympics from Deception Pass. I like how the mountains pop in this one.

A spring view from the Oxbow Loop trail. This stage of spring, when the bigleaf maples are a very distinct yellow-green, is spectacular but fleeting, and it was fun to get a picture that represents it well.

Lastly, a view from Heybrook Ridge near Index. I like the clarity of the mountains, and the very subtle color contrast between the foreground trees and the mountains.

II. Ideas for 2026

I'm going to hold 2026 goals pretty lightly; mostly, I'm just hoping to be able to devote a little more time and mental energy to photography/hiking/camping this year. Here are a few ideas, though:

1.) Continue my work with non-floral closeups! This is one of the few areas where I think my work really improved in 2025. I want to keep finding fungi, leaves, little berries, and other subjects that aren't flowers to use my macro lens with.

2.) New travel destination: This was a bust this year, but I'd love to go camping somewhere new, even if it's just part of Washington I haven't visited. I've gotten increasingly curious about some parts of northeast Washington, like the Kettle Crest, have long wanted to check out the Mount Adams area, and also have some new spots on the Peninsula that I'd like to see. We'll just have to see what happens (and also see what shape parts of the state are in after the wildfires and floods).

3.) Dawn or Dusk Photography: I don't think this happened at all in 2025, so it'd be fun to get some sky or even moon photographs around sunrise or sunset this year!

3.) Get close! I got a few decent wildflower pictures this time around, but it's been a while since I've gotten really close to something. It might be fun to push the limits of my macro lens just a bit, for a new way of looking at things.

Happy New Year!