Best of 2025: My Favorite Photos and Moments of the Year

As I’ve already mentioned, 2025 was a busy year. I squeezed in quite a few trips (thankfully including family in some cases), and from summer to fall had my busiest stretch of travel in a decade. This included a three week journey to Brazil, the longest I’ve been away from home since my son was born.

This means it wasn’t easy, but the memories will be something to treasure, and in at least a few cases I returned home with photos I was pretty happy with. Frankly, it’s a miracle I have been able to keep up on processing (and even find time to reprocess a few older collections), so let’s celebrate the accomplishment by going through some of my favorites from the past twelve months.

 

Best Photos and Standout Moments of 2025

As always, these selections represent my favorite images or moments from the past twelve months. They’re listed in chronological order. See my favorite images from other years here.

 

January 14: Otters and Coyotes

As I mentioned in my Not Quite Best of the Year post, 2025 may have been the Year of the Otter. Otters showed up with surprising frequency during my adventures, and it all started in Yellowstone. I’d only seen otter-coyote interactions once before (in a memorable encounter back in 2011 that isn’t even in my archive yet, but can be seen on Flickr). So what a treat it was to finally get the two rivals together again.

I suspect otters and coyotes have a healthy respect for each other. Coyotes will follow otters in hopes of stealing a fish (as they were on this day), and will even kill an otter given a chance. On the other hand, otters do a decent job standing their ground, and as I saw back in 2011, they can be the aggressors. There wasn’t a terribly dramatic moment on this day—park visitors did see the coyotes steal a fish from the otters a couple days later—but it was a lot of fun photographing the two species together.

Incidentally, my client Jenny landed an even better “lineup” photo than my second shot above. Check out the Best of Clients showcase to see it!

 

January 15: Surprise Saw-whet

The last several years, I’ve been putting in a little extra effort tromping around in the woods during winter Yellowstone trips in hopes of seeing my first Boreal Owl. It’s the top bird on my bucket list, and this year was probably the closest I’ve come to finally landing a sighting. In late December of ’24, I was one day late in spotting one. Then, during one of my forest walks in January, I ran into my neighbor Rob, who beckoned to me and then put me in front of a smallish owl. He thought it was a Boreal, and I did too… only because it had been ages since I’d seen a Northern Saw-whet Owl.

It was indeed a Saw-whet, probably the cutest owl out there, and one that’s extremely hard to find. Saw-whets are wee, and perch in thick vegetation during the day (sometimes below eye level!). I’d only seen this species in Canada, so it was always high on my Yellowstone wish list (something I wrote about several years ago), just not as high as the elusive Boreal. Nonetheless, I wasn’t going to look a gift owl in the mouth. This was a rare and super exciting find!

Oh, and another Boreal was seen in these same woods the day after I left Yellowstone and flew home.

See more photos from this trip in the Yellowstone 2025 gallery.

 

February 17: Penguino

February’s family trip to the Galápagos Islands was a chance at redemption. My previous trip there (way back in 2015) was going to be my first big opportunity to do some “serious” underwater photography. But my underwater housing leaked on the first swim, killing my camera and dashing any hope of snapping some serious photos while snorkeling. It felt like a major missed opportunity, since much of the underwater wildlife of the Galápagos is as tame as the terrestrial creatures. A decade later, I was armed with a proper “professional” underwater housing (though not any experience using it… I bought it five years ago and promptly left it in a closet until this trip).

So I felt a little better about my chances of at least not killing my camera body, an older DSLR model I specifically kept to use with the housing. I wasn’t as confident that I’d come away with many decent photos. Underwater photography, much like macro photography, is a discipline that requires different skills and presents challenges one doesn’t face on the surface documenting mammals and birds. I didn’t really know what to expect.

I snapped away happily, and often blindly. When a small penguin is zooming by you at high speed while chasing fish, there’s isn’t exactly time to line up an artistic composition. “Spray and pray” was never more fitting. But hey, a few shots turned out relatively sharp, and I was especially pleased with this wider view, presenting the little torpedo in its beautiful environment, complete with the small fish it was targeting. Of all the shots in this year’s collection, it’s probably the one I’d have the hardest time recreating… but nailing it once is plenty.

See more photos from this trip in the Galapagos 2025 gallery.

 

May 7: Caracara Chase

Puma action during my May Patagonia tour was surprisingly subdued at times. Guanacos—the cats’ favorite prey—had left the area in the weeks prior to our arrival and were just beginning to filter back in. And for the first several days most of the pumas we were seeing were congregating around a single roadside carcass. In fact, we visited a couple kills during the course of the week… but we weren’t the only onlookers. Multiple species of caracaras were hanging around as well.

Caracaras are birds that resemble hawks in size and appearance (perhaps they look more like small eagles, even), but they’re actually most closely related to falcons. Regardless, they are active scavengers, even scouring the picnic areas and parking lots of Torres del Paine National Park while investigating human refuse.

On this day we were checking out a shy puma that had made a kill, and spied a pair of White-throated Caracaras on a nearby hill. They were passing the time by flirting with each other, but things got serious when a larger Southern Crested Caracara took interest in the carcass. The smaller White-throated pair took to the air a couple times in order to bully the Crested and chase it out of the area. During the second fly-by, I managed to get the three lined up. The shapes, patterns, and textures seemed perfect for a black-and-white rendition.

See more photos from this trip in the Patagonia 2025 gallery.

 

June 22: Family Time

I may not be a huge bear fan, but I am a fan of bear cubs. Cubs of the year, especially, since they still possess endless amounts of energy and spunk, and don’t spend every waking hour grazing or foraging. In Alaska, we were fortunate to find one sow with new cubs who was quite tolerant (more unusual than you’d think, since this part of Lake Clark National Park gets almost no tourist traffic). As a result, we had a couple of fantastic photography sessions with the family.

When my tour client Stacy first spotted these bears, one of the cubs was on Mom’s back… but they were so far away we couldn’t get much in the way of usable photos. It wasn’t until a couple days later, when we encountered them again, that we got the piggyback scene at closer range. This was particularly gratifying for me, since I’ve rarely witnessed this behavior over the years. In Yellowstone, I had a very distant view of one of “Quad Mom’s” four little ones climb on her back, and then I famously missed the memorable photo op (which everyone else got) of grizzlies “Blaze” and her cub “Hobo” exhibiting this behavior. Those moments occurred 14-15 years ago. So this was a long-awaited photo opportunity.

The second image comes near the end of the encounter, when the mother brought her brood onto the beach before heading off for a late afternoon nap. It was an opportunity to compose the bears with the rugged Alaska scenery (which we didn’t have in our other Lake Clark locations) surrounding them.

See more photos from this trip in the Alaska 2025 gallery.

 

July 16: Romantic Evening?

My July Brazil trip started in the southern Pantanal. Here things are a bit different from the northern Pantanal’s familiar rivers and boat-based jaguar excursions. In the south, you’re mostly exploring on land. We were stationed at a large cattle ranch whose owners happen to also support wildlife and conservation efforts in the region. As a result, it’s one of the best places for land-based jaguar safaris. Though as we learned, the presence of a jaguar research project means a lot of the cats have radio collars. Thankfully, we also found some uncollared jaguars, and lucked into a couple of evening encounters with a courting pair.

The male was dutifully following the female wherever she went, but she wasn’t quite ready to accept his advances. As dusk fell over the savanna, our guide shined a spotlight into the darkness, right as the female (foreground) started giving him the business. It made for a fun and very different jaguar photo compared to anything I’ve taken before.

 

July 16 – 17: A Rare Double

As our time in the southern Pantanal wound down, we had one final night drive on our way to a lovely dinner in the bush. On the way, we stumbled upon one of the Pantanal’s rarer mammals, a maned wolf! This was only my second time seeing this handsome canid. The last time was during my 2017 Brazil scouting trip, and the pair we saw then only appeared after sunset way too far away. This time at least, we were close enough to nab a closer portrait with help from a spotlight. The maned wolf is a beautiful and elegant creature (and largely omnivorous, with fruit being its favorite food), but it is rarely seen in the Pantanal. This was only the fourth time my guide Fred had seen one there.

The very next day, we were flying to the Amazon rainforest, where we met a boat which would ferry us to the Cristalino Lodge. The plan was to drop off our bags at the lodge and then head upriver for some immediate wildlife exploration, but that was scuttled as we were beckoned onto shore by the lodge staff. Earlier that day, one of the workers had made an amazing discovery. During his smoke break, he saw what he thought was a cupuacu fruit… moving in a tree! Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be an animal that most folks at Cristalino didn’t recognize: a silky anteater! The silky anteater is one of the tropical rainforest’s most elusive mammals, in part due to its diminutive and nocturnal nature. A couple years ago I wrote about my first amazing encounter with this adorable creature… and this time we had even a better view. This marked the first time Fred had ever seen this species (not a bad pairing with his first giant armadillo sighting, which we also shared at Cristalino many years ago), and it was the first documented sighting for the lodge.

Not a bad 24 hours, huh?

See more wildlife photos from this trip in the Brazil 2025 Wildlife & Scenery gallery.

 

July 24: Parrots on the Rio Roosevelt

A big reason I agreed to a three week Brazil trip was because it gave me the opportunity to visit unexplored territory. For years, Fred had been telling me about the deep Amazon, and the area around the Rio Roosevelt. That is, the same “River of Doubt” that was the focus of Teddy Roosevelt’s infamous 1913-1914 expedition. Having an opportunity to travel to a remote part of the Amazon, isolated from modern civilization and tourism, was incredibly appealing. But I wasn’t prepared for how beautiful this place was. For the first time in ages, I felt transported to another world, despite the fact that I’ve spent plenty of time on jungle rivers in Latin America.

For four days, we were the only tourists around (probably for a couple hundred miles), as we had the lodge and the river system to ourselves… excepting the uncontacted indigenous tribes in the area. The overall experience was incredible, though the wildlife experience was definitely challenging! You think of a pristine jungle as being full of life and incredible diversity, but finding it—especially in an undeveloped area where the animals aren’t used to seeing many people—requires patience. We eventually did track down four new monkey species, found some interesting critters during night walks, and landed some other fascinating bug and reptile sightings (as seen in the Not Quite Best of 2025 series).

But the highlight had to be the parrot spectacle at the nearby Santa Rita rapids… the same waterfall that took out some of the canoes on the Roosevelt-Rondon expedition a century ago. Each morning, hundreds of Yellow-crowned, Blue-headed, and Orange-cheeked Parrots come in to feed on the succulent vegetation growing along the edge of the river. I was aware of this event, but wasn’t sure what kind of show we’d get. And on our first morning, it wasn’t much to write home about. That was our own fault, probably. We stood on the opposite river bank in the open, and the birds never came in to feed. So a couple mornings later we sequestered ourselves in the thicket until the flocks felt comfortable enough to land on the river’s edge. Then we could slowly make our way out without disturbing them.

This river is as treacherous for the birds as it was for the Roosevelt’s team. Sometimes they slip and get swept away in the rapids. Or a predator such as a hawk-eagle might swoop in and snatch an unsuspecting parrot. For us, it was a magical experience (well, for me at least… I’m probably a bit more enthusiastic about birds than my guests). It was such a unique and beautiful setting for this behavior that I immediately knew it would land on my Best of the Year list.

See more bird photos from this trip in the Brazil 2025 Birds gallery.

 

August 18: Otter of the Year?

Yes, more otters! The highlight of the August South Africa adventure (for me) had to be another otter sighting. This was another lifer, to go with the marine otters in Chile and the smooth-coated otters in Borneo. But this one was perhaps the biggest surprise, because I knew that Cape clawless otters are incredible rare in the Greater Kruger area. First of all, who would even expect to find otters surviving in an environment where you have super dangerous animals in the water (crocs and hippos) and equal threats on land (lions, leopards, wild dogs, hyenas…). It’s amazing to me that a mustelid that doesn’t exactly possess the attitude and weapons of a honey badger—though, to be fair, otters are jerks—can endure among such substantial threats.

Anyway, I’ve known about them for years, but had essentially written off any realistic chance of seeing them during my visits to MalaMala. They’re not even listed on the MM wildlife sightings scoreboard. Our guide Mike had seen more pangolins during his decades of guiding at MalaMala than he had seen otters. And yet, we started this trip with a reported sighting from another vehicle. We missed them, however. A bit later, we stopped to photograph some kingfishers on one of the small bridges spanning the almost-dry stretch of the Sand River… and we saw them! Two dark shapes just under the surface. I snapped a photo of a brownish blob, and let me tell you, I was pretty excited about that blob! I figured we were done, and would be have to satisfied with what was truly a rare find. But then we crossed that bridge again later in the trip… and they appeared again! This time, the adult had caught a fish, which gave them a perfect excuse to pause just beneath us, so we could snap photos. I never would have imagined that we’d get such a prolonged and good sighting with this species. As a bonus, we landed 200 extra points for the scoreboard!

See more photos from this trip in the South Africa 2025 gallery.

 

October 13: Gonmatong Caves

The remote Amazon location was the first spot I visited this year that felt like another world. Borneo’s Gonmatong Caves was the other. For years I’ve seen documentaries of these and other similar caverns in the tropics, places that are homes to oodles of bugs and bats, where the floor is covered in mountains of guano. Finally, I had a chance to step into one, and it did not disappoint. Yes, there was a huge mountain of bat and bird poop, crawling with cockroaches, centipedes, and crabs. Almost immediately, we found a baby bat that had fallen from the ceiling, now abandoned and blindly swimming through guano before its inevitable end at the claws of a crab or other scavenger.

Twelve species of bats call the caves home, and we next climbed 700 stairs to watch them stream out at dusk. How long does it take 2-3 million bats to leave a cave? Over an hour! We weren’t the only ones on hand to watch the show. Several Wallace’s Hawk-eagles swooped in to snatch a bat snack out of mid-air (other raptors too… check out client Kevin’s amazing shot in the Clients collection!). In the final frame, a hawk-eagle protects its catch before digging in.

The whole experience was an amazing spectacle unlike anything I’ve ever witnessed in nature.

 

Photo of the Year, October 19: Planthopper Defense

For the second year in a row, I’ve chosen a macro photo as my favorite image of the year. The 2025 choice was on a much smaller scale than last year’s, however. Toward the end of my Borneo adventure, I had an opportunity to introduce my tour group to the fun (and challenging) experience of a rainforest night walk. The Danum Valley is known for its biodiversity, and the night walks I’ve undertaken there are some of the best macro shoots I’ve ever had thanks to loads of small critters. During our couple nights out, we photographed spiders, frogs, snakes, caterpillars and more. It was a lot of fun, and thankfully my group seemed to respond positively. They were more than happy to go out for a second night of macro action.

At one point during our search—shining flashlights and headlamps on pathside leaves and branches looking for potential subjects—our guide Hamit pointed out a small planthopper nymph. It was being approached by a giant forest ant, one of the world’s largest ant species. There’s often a symbiotic relationship between ants (including giant forest ants) and planthoppers. The ants gather a tasty, sweet secretion emitted by the planthoppers, while providing protection for them. One might say they’re using the tiny insects as livestock.

That was not the relationship between these two. Every time the ant would approach, the nymph pointed its waxy tail filaments at it in a defensive posture. The ant tried a different trajectory, and the planthopper immediately swiveled its bum at it, keeping the larger insect at bay. After several attempts, the ant finally gave up and went on its way.

This is one of many examples of fascinating insect behavior we witnessed and documented during our night walks. Not only is it cool being exposed to new animals, but also new animal behaviors. I learn a lot during these outings. Combined with the fact that I’ve always considered myself a middling (at best) macro photographer, I was thrilled to come home with some solid shots of scenes and subjects like this. It marks my growth as a wildlife photographer, and has me eager to try even more macro photography in the future (which should happen soon… I’m currently in Guyana!).

See more photos from this trip in the Borneo 2025 gallery.

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More Year in Review Content

My 2025 Favorites in Entertainment and Literature

My Tour Clients’ Best of 2025

My Not Quite Best of 2025

Sharing the Top 2025 Work From My Peers (January 2)

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.