My Favorite Photos of 2024

Taken in early May 2024 when I spent a few days in Rocky Mountain National Park.

As I was driving to the trailhead, very heavy fog filled the valleys in Rocky Mountain National Park.  I didn’t think much of it at first.  Then as I was hiking to my sunrise location, I looked down the mountain and could see the fog was heading up towards me.  I kept going, but it wasn’t very long before the fog overtook my location.  Before it did, I made my way to a perch where I could see the valley below.  As the fog enveloped the trees, the scene was absolutely beautiful!

I never made it to my planned sunrise spot, because the conditions presented better photo opportunities.  This is probably one of my favorite photos in my entire library!

This image, like so many images, came from the luck of being in the right place at the right time.

I was in Algoma waiting for sunset to finish up a photo project for a client when a short, passing storm moved through the area.  After only minutes of passing rain, right before sunset, the storm cleared and left behind a beautiful sky.  A rainbow over the lake added to the scene that the drone captured perfectly.

This image taken at Death Valley’s Badwater Basin was an incredible scene.  A huge lake covered the normally dry salt flat due to unusually heavy rainfall.  The lake was around for several months and was a sight to see.  

This image is a sunrise from the edge of the lake looking towards the western mountains.

The last couple of years have been great for aurora viewing in lower latitudes, and 2024 continued the trend.  Due to the high solar activity at the peak of the sun’s 11 year cycle, the northern lights were quite a regular event.  This photo was during the May storm.  I decided to try to send my drone up for some aerial shots of auroras over Anderson Dock in Ephraim.  Flying at night, and photographing at night, with a drone is challenging.  When you can get a nice photo, the hard work pays off.

Another photo from Death Valley National Park shows beautiful sunset light on the mountains surrounding the Badwater Basin salt flat.  This is a simple photo, but I love the lighting on the mountain and the patterns in the wet salt.

I love the sand dunes of Death Valley National Park.  Love them.  There are so many opportunities for photos.  The way the dunes change mean every visit is different and the way the light moves on the dunes means every minute is like a brand new scene.

While hiking the dunes, you can defintiely get some really great wide-angle shots.  But the this is a place where a telephoto lens shines.  A 100-400 lens is my choice.  With that lens you can capture closeups of the light shaping dunes, or get vast landscape photo with great compression of the dunes.  This is a telephoto shot taken at about 120mm of the sunset behind a sea of dunes and the mountains beyond.

I love the layers of this photo.  It’s a perfect example of what a telephoto lens can do for your photos while hiking the sand dunes.  The dunes are compressed beautifully.  And the light is reacting with each dune in such a unique way.  Some of the dunes are in complete shadow, save for a sliver at the tops, while some are completely lit with the evening light.  The dunes fade in to the mountains which fade in to the sunset glow.

Being an International Dark Sky Park, Death Valley is a great spot for some of the darkest skies you’ll see.  So if you want to see and photograph the sight sky, you’ll love Death Valley.  This photo was taken from Badwater Basin’s Lake Manly.  The still water offered some beautiful reflections of the stars.

My eclipse experience was truly amazing, memorable, and chaotic.  Once day I’ll dedicate a whole blog about the experience.

For now, I’ll just give one piece of advice for the super rare moments.  Dedicata all your attention to either photography or the experience.  If you try to do both things, both will suffer.  In my case, I didn’t get all the incredible photos I imagined because I was trying to experience the moment.  And I didn’t fully experience the moment during those times I was messing with the camera.

I have plans to travel to the next to solar eclipses in 2026 and 2027, for those I will approach the experience much differently.

Having said all that, I do really like both these images.

Winter was still hanging on during a spring morning in Rocky Mountain National Park.  There’s no place I would rather be than next to a high elevation alpine lake at sunrise.  The smell of the air and the beauty of the landscape is second to no place on earth.

Baileys Harbor always has a great fireworks show for their annual 4th of July celebration.  I’ve shot this show many times before, but the drone gives a whole new perspective.  I flew the drone over the harbor with the marina and highway leading towards the fireworks.

This is a simple photo, but I really like it.  During a walk next to the river in downtown Chicago, this scene just naturally presented itself.  The yellow boat went on it’s journey past where I was standing and I thought it stood out very nicely amongst the muted colors of the city.

A very colorful aurora appeared over Sister Bay during a September appearance of the Northern Lights.  The reds were quite the sight and the colors shown brightly in every direction.  It really is amazing to see such a beautiful showing without going far north!

This is one of my newest photos taken during a cold spell in December.  When the air temperatures approach 0 degrees Fahrenheit, the warm(er) water will create an eerie cloud of smoke/steam will appear over the lake.  This shot of Cana Island Lighthouse with the steam in the background is an awesome example of Lake Michigan’s wintery beauty.