Overall, I’d say 2025 was a successful year. Busy as heck, yes, but thankfully every one of the adventures that pulled me away from home were fun and shared with some wonderful people (on a related note, check out the Best of 2025 from My Clients!). And one thing that was nice was the sheer variety of locations and experiences sprinkled throughout the calendar. My year in photography involved walks, game drives, canopy tower and underground hide sessions, and even underwater and macro work. So my list of favorites and the runners-up (seen below) show off a lot of different stuff!
As always, these are the moments and photos that struck a chord but just missed my year-end favorites list (which I’ll publish in early January). Be sure to check back over the next week or so for both the Best of 2025 from my peers, and my own favorite images of the year.
January 12 – 22: Bison and Foxes
It’s no secret that bison have become one of my favorite subjects during my winter trips to Yellowstone. Once again, they featured prominently during my winter tours. This species continues to open my eyes to new photographic possibilities, whether it’s working in black and white imagery more, shooting wider “animalscapes,” or experimenting with different techniques behind the lens. Or sometimes there’s just a particular interaction that is a little more unique, like when we came upon a calf trapped in a frozen depression in the park interior. It had been there for more than a day by the time we arrived, and even if the park service had a policy of interfering with nature (they generally try avoid “rescues”) the location in a fragile thermal meant they wouldn’t be able to send in personnel anyway. Rumor has it that the calf eventually escaped, but whether that is confirmed or just speculation, we’ll never know.
Red foxes are another popular subject in winter, but their activity seems cyclical. I find that in deeper snow years—only two of which I can recall in the last 15 years—there’s a lot of daytime fox activity. This wasn’t necessarily a “big” snow year, but for whatever reason foxes were everywhere. As with the bison, it was nice to photograph them in the wider winter landscape, to experiment with close-ups (like using foreground snow to isolate the subject in the first portrait above), and to capture some good mousing action.
As a bonus, we ended up getting the two species together, as a couple foxes were taking advantage of the bison herds’ presence to make hunting easier. Trampled snow brings you that much closer to your prey, after all…
See more bison and fox photos in the Yellowstone 2025 winter gallery.
February 14: New Shorty
February’s Galápagos trip was the third for myself and Jenn. Our main goal was to share the experience with our son and friends who decided to join us. We didn’t have high expectations for new experiences, but you never know with places like this…
In fact, we were adding a new island to our list (no, we don’t actually keep an island list), as the longer itinerary allowed us to make our first visit to Genovesa, found further north in the archipelago. I was excited for this, in part because it offered an opportunity to potentially see the only owl found in the Galápagos. It wasn’t a new species, but the Short-eared Owl (which landed on my Top Ten Birds list earlier this year) here is a distinct subspecies, and is noticeably different in appearance than our Pacific Northwest variety.
After hiking out to a coastal lava field, it didn’t take me long to spot my first Shorty. Due to their darker plumage, they blend into the lava landscape quite well. It seemed like an ideal hunting ground in that respect… but what do they eat? Back home, Shorties primarily hunt voles and other rodents. In the Galápagos? They go after seabirds!
Unfortunately, the first owl we saw was quite far out, so I wasn’t optimistic about landing decent photos. But suddenly our friends Jessica and Jeff alerted me to another owl, this one flying in our direction! As an added bonus, it had a Storm Petrel clutched in its talons. It was exciting to land the top new animal on my island wish list, and as far as “only close owl sightings” go, this one was pretty darn good!
February 17: Nightmare Fuel
One reason we felt our son was ready for the Galápagos experience was because of his skill and enthusiasm in the water. He loves swimming, and following our first real snorkeling adventure in Belize in 2023, we knew he was probably ready for a boat-based trip. Snorkeling, after all, is what makes Galápagos trips so fun. It’s great to mix some aquatic adventures in with the terrestrial outings, and with snorkeling opportunities nearly every day, we knew he’d have fun with this one.
One of the endemic species found in the islands is the Flightless Cormorant, an excellent swimmer that one can sometimes see while snorkeling. In this case, this cormorant took a little too much interest in me. I don’t believe it’s been fed (I have faith that local guides would prevent that sort of behavior from tourists), but it may have caught sight of its reflection in my dome port. Regardless, it came after me, so I had to keep backing away. And after it gave up, it actually took an interest in the kids before backing off! Though not frightening in any respect, I felt this underexposed shot brought an amusing overly-creepy vibe to the proceedings. It was certainly an unexpected and memorable meeting!
February 18: Iguana Mountain
For me, the marine iguana is usually the star of the show in the Galápagos. While it’s a common species, there’s no getting past how unique a marine lizard—which looks like and actually inspired the concept of Godzilla—can be. Usually we see our largest bunches of marine iguanas on Isabela and Fernandina Islands. We had plenty of close-ups (see the cover my photo yearbook), but I was distracted by this distant view of a host of iguanas sunning themselves with low-hanging clouds in the background. Though in reality this mound was less than a few meters high, it almost appears as though they’re perched atop a high peak. It should be noted that I actually desaturated the scene a bit to get the most appealing mix of grays and blues, so perhaps it’s a bit of an illustration.
See more photos from this trip in the Galapagos 2025 gallery.
May 6: Meeting the Magellanic
As I detailed in my Top 10 Birds article, the Magellanic Woodpecker ranks among my favorite avian species. Just two years ago I was thrilled to finally see it again during my Patagonia tour. And this year we got lucky with it again. Just as we were sitting down to lunch, a pair of these huge woodpeckers arrived outside the restaurant. So we abandoned our order, grabbed our gear, and spent the next hour with them. The female (shown here) is stunning, but this also marked my first time seeing the male. And of course, I was delighted that my guests got their first views of this amazing bird.
It was a nice surprise when this close-up revealed the moment when the female pulled a grub out of the tree. And client Aska got a similar shot of the male doing the same thing!
May 7: Puma Walk
The “Puma Walk” experience—strolling with wild mountain lions in southern Chile—has made this list before. I don’t feel weird featuring it again, because it’s one of the most magical wildlife experiences one can have during my trips. This year, we had to wait a while before my clients could finally experience a proper Walk. Cats had mostly been hanging out along the periphery of the private land we explore, feasting on a roadside carcass. There was no need to walk anywhere!
Finally, the three-day meal was finished, and the cats took to the hills. We spent most of our time with this mother and her two large cubs during the week, and for part of our group, they put on the best show when they roamed their territory over the course of an afternoon. As long as you can keep up, you’ll usually get a chance to photograph the cats against the spectacular mountain backdrops of Patagonia, and capture some tighter shots as well. I was especially fond of this portrait of Mom (whom I’ve seen and photographed since she was a newly independent teen back in 2019) and daughter.
See more photos from this trip in the Patagonia 2025 gallery.
May – October: A Lotta Otters!
It’s possible that 2025 was the Year of the Otter. Otters have long been one of my favorite animals, but it had been many years since I saw a new otter species. That changed this year, when I went from 4 to 7 life species in less than six months!
Not all of my memorable otter encounters are shown here (check back in a couple weeks… hint, hint), but these certainly qualify as highlights. At the end of my Patagonia adventure in May, we had a spare day in Santiago before flying home. So we booked a day trip out to the coast, where we were mostly targeting birds. But one possibility was the marine otter. Unfortunately, the boat outing we had scheduled was cancelled, but we were able to search the rocky shoreline north of Valparaiso. Eventually, across a small channel, I spied an otter popping its head out of the water. It was a marine otter, another of the worldwide species that looks very similar to our own North American river otters. We never landed good close photo ops, but it’s always exciting to see a new mammal species, much less a new otter!
Otter antics continued in Brazil, which was expected. We usually see giant otters in the Pantanal, and neotropical river otters are a possibility in the Amazon. This was probably my best trip for the latter. We saw them just about every time we ventured onto the Cristalino River, and got some nice fishing action. The big surprise occurred during one of our final outings, when we discovered an otter that had caught a turtle!
Another of the new otter species this year was a big surprise. With a menagerie of possible animal sightings on tap in Borneo, seeing otters wasn’t even on my radar. At some point we mentioned them to our guide, and he didn’t entirely dismiss the idea, but I didn’t think we had a realistic chance of seeing them. Lo and behold, while exploring a side channel along the Kinabatangan River in search of elephants, we came across a family of smooth-coated otters! They stuck around for a while, affording us some excellent views. Client April shared a wonderful portrait from this encounter in my Client series, if you haven’t seen it.
And just to confirm that this was the Year of the Otter, check back for my Best of 2025 selections in early January!
June 26: Cave Bear
My June Alaska tour was a big success. We ventured into a fresh area of Lake Clark National Park than I’ve visited in the past, and experienced a different sort of Alaska bear adventure. The peace and solitude of this more remote area—well away from tourists—was refreshing, as was the different scenery. Our group enjoyed mountain backdrops framing the coastal meadows and, on our final day, an newish environment when we encountered this younger individual resting on a rocky shoreline. The surrounding walls and cave backdrop made for a very different feel from the usual coastal bear scenes we’d been photographing.
July 14: Fish Ladder
Some of the biggest surprises from my year in photography were provided by smaller critters, and this is a perfect example. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to encapsulate one of the greatest spectacles we saw in Brazil in a couple photos. They really don’t do it justice.
We were driving along in the southern Pantanal, ostensibly looking for jaguars but open to any sort of interesting wildlife, when we passed over a series of small ponds. That’s when we noticed some activity just below the bridge: fish were wriggling up a small waterfall attempting to reach a larger body of water. Seeing a miniature version of our own salmon migration in the Brazilian wetlands was not on the itinerary, but it was fascinating to watch! At least three different species were writhing and jumping, trying to reach deeper water. The shallow pond they were exiting was attracting herons, storks, and other predators (even ocelots were known to come at night, though we never saw one), so they had good reason to make the trek.
When we returned to this spot later in the evening, a few dozen jumpers turned into a roiling mass of thousands. It’s surprises like this that educate me more about the animal kingdom and make these adventures even more fun!
July 26: Bee and Butterflies
Another small scale attraction in Brazil was the bugs. Butterflies in particular put on a show. In the deep Amazon portion of the tour, we saw loads of them leeching minerals along the river banks. I was really happy to finally get close views and photos of some of the “88 butterflies,” which sport a namesake numerical pattern on their wings. Oh, and there were a lot of bees around too. I was surprised how much I enjoyed getting low and trying to photograph these colorful characters. It wasn’t the last time that insects would grab my attention in 2025.
July 26: Caiman Point
On that very same peninsula—which we had only stopped at to take a group photo!—we found not just bugs, but a full caiman nursery.
Stumbling across shallow pools occupied by baby caiman was a great surprise. Sadly, I forgot to break out my polarizer, so I ended up reflected in some shots. This one I could barely crop properly in order to eliminate a distracting branch, but at least I’m not a part of the scene!
There were a few older caiman around as well, and I took time to shoot with a wide angle lens, showing off the remote Amazon rainforest environment to really give a sense of this beautiful and memorable spot.
See more from this trip in the Brazil 2025 Wildlife & Scenery gallery.
October 9: Python vs. Squirrels
My final tour of the year was memorable for a variety of reasons, and it kicked off with an unexpected and unique encounter. Venturing onto the elevated boardwalk at the Rainforest Discovery Center in Sepilok, we heard loud chittering in the distance. Prevost’s squirrels were bouncing around in the trees high above the forest floor, raising a ruckus. The cause of their angst? A reticulated python (the world’s longest snake species)!
It was my first time seeing this spectacular snake in person, and I never expected to see it at eye level 20 meters above the ground, while being surrounded by angry rodents. It was very challenging getting both snake and squirrels in the same frame, but you can just see the python peeking out of the foliage above.
See more from this trip in the Borneo 2025 gallery.
More Year in Review Content
My 2025 Favorites in Entertainment and Literature
Sharing the Top 2025 Work From My Peers (January 2)
My Best of 2025 (January 7)
See my favorite images from other years
Purchase PHOTO/25, my annual photo yearbook. This year’s issue is 64 pages and contains dozens of images from my various adventures, including my Best of 2025 selections. $19.99 for the print magazine, $6.99 for a digital copy. Purchase a copy of PHOTO/25 here.
