It’s always a fun project to cherry pick a dozen shots from roughly 8,000. And those 8,000 represent 10-15% of what I shot as they are just the edits I add to my 2024 image collection in Lightroom.
I decided to stick to landscape images even though one month features bears, it is essentially still a landscape shot. I am featuring one image created during each month of 2024, except for September where I am featuring two. September was such a productive month photographing fall colors in Alaska that it seemed a shame to just feature one, so I included a bonus image. Call it a baker’s dozen of images. Each image was created in the month it’s featured. In 2024 my landscapes range from southern Mexico to my usual spots in New Mexico, Utah and Alaska.
JANUARY
JANUARY
From sunset the 14th: Last light reflects off the Rio Grande through the Lower Taos Box. This view is along the West Rim Trail, about a mile south of the trailhead, near home in Taos, New Mexico.
FEBRUARY
FEBRUARY
From sunrise on the 3rd. First light on the walls of the West Temple. In this desert park, the world’s highest sandstone cliffs bake in the sun 90% of the time. It was a delight to see moody low clouds and precipitation lasting for much of the day. This was a warm storm so the snow level stayed pretty high.
MARCH
MARCH
From the 1AM hour on14th. Northern lights dance above the Knik River and the Chugach Mountains near Palmer, Alaska.
APRIL
APRIL
From early morning on the 20th. Sunrise over Arroyo Seco and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains with crepuscular rays through a low layer of stratocumulus clouds. Shot from my back porch north of Taos, New Mexico.
MAY
MAY
From the 24th. Claret cup cactus in bloom along the Continental Divide Trail, somewhere north of Ghost Ranch from a 95-mile hike from Ghost Ranch to Cumbres Pass at the Colorado/New Mexico Border.
JUNE
JUNE
From the morning of the 30th. Young grizzlies retreating inland on an incoming time along the western shore of Cook Inlet, Lake Clark National Park, Alaska
JULY
JULY
From the morning of the 27th. After hiking to one of my favorite places, Portage Lake, a 4-mile round trip over Portage Pass, the fog lifted in time to capture river beauty in front of the shrinking Portage Glacier. Nice weather is rare here and we were able to capitalize on this opportunity to photograph in nice morning light.
AUGUST
AUGUST
From morning of the 9th. Icebergs and dissipating fog in Kenai Fjords National Park.
SEPTEMBER
SEPTEMBER
From morning on the 11th. The northern Chugach shroud in low clouds over Knob Lake with waning tundra fall colors.
SEPTEMBER – BONUS
From sunrise on the 17th. Altocumulus clouds glow above the northern Chugach Mountains near Tahneta Pass, Alaska. I put 2 images for September because I shot so much as it is one of the most productive months of the year in Alaska for landscape photography. Southcentral Alaska is a gem for fall colors and I wanted to include this sunrise because it shows it all: big mountains, new snow, miles of fall colors and virtually no crowds.
OCTOBER
OCTOBER
From early evening on the 10th. This aurora display over our home near Taos took place just as I was wrapping up a webinar on how to use the weather app, Windy, to forecast for photography. I have much better aurora images from Alaska, but this was such a rare event here in New Mexico and I didn’t want to waste time traveling so we just shot using our house as a foreground.
NOVEMBER
NOVEMBER
from sunrise on the 9th. Lake Chapala, from the town of Chapala, Jalisco, Mexico.
DECEMBER
DECEMBER
From sunset on the 18th. The desert produces many colorful sunrises and sunsets and finding water is always a blessing. The sky colors peaked before most of the cranes came into the roosting ponds at Bernardo Waterfowl Complex in New Mexico.