It may be mid-February 2025, but I still wanted to share my favorite images from 2024. I fell in early November of 2024 and have been living with post-concussion syndrome ever since, so I am just accepting that I am behind in life and late with everything this year. Until this week, it has been too challenging to write, so I am thankful that I can put some thoughts together and share moments from 2024 that meant a lot to me.

1. Coastal Rays – The image above is one of my favorites from 2024 for a couple of reasons. First, I never expected to be at such an iconic location at sunrise along the Oregon Coast over the 4th of July weekend and have this place to ourselves. There was only one other couple there while we were enjoying the sunrise. It was a beautiful, quiet, and peaceful morning as pastel colors and anticrepuscular clouds overtook the sky, and sand and fog hung along the hillsides. This morning was especially special because I was with several family members, too. Most of my photos are taken while I am alone, but this was a family trip, and this morning, my boys, their girlfriends, my brother, and two nieces all came with me. We had so much fun and it is a moment I will always treasure as I spent it with all of them.

2.  Homecoming—captured from Crystal Cove State Park, CA, in August. This is another image captured for a future book project, “Where Time Stands Still.“ I grew up in a small cottage over summers and was the fourth generation to live here in my family. My great-grandparents’ home (The Whistle Stop) is now the Beachcomber Restaurant. My grandparents lived and spent summers here, and my dad was also raised here. There is no place in the world with more memories or history for my family, and every photo I capture here is special to me.

3. An Uncertain Future—One of my favorite moments with grizzly bears from the summer of 2024 was with these two bears, their third sibling, and their mom (in the second image). These cubs are yearlings born in the spring of 2023 and will remain with their mom until early summer 2025, when she will send them off on their own. This is the post I wrote for the top image and why it is titled as it is. As conservation photographers, we are literally having to fight daily to protect the species we love.

“Wilderness without wildlife is just scenery” ― Lois Crisler I have spent a lot of time the last few weeks heading into the new year thinking about my art and why I spend so much time in wild places. It is where I feel at home and find true peace and joy. It is why I fell in love with wildlife and nature photography; it is who I am. As we begin 2025, I am committing to increase my efforts to use my photography, writing, and energy toward fighting to protect our public lands and endangered and threatened species in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. I will also work anywhere else I can as we, conservationists, face the new administration’s stance on our environment. We may lose protection through the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), among others.

As I process this, I constantly think about grizzly bears and all that has gone into creating a viable population in and around Yellowstone over the last 50 years. These bears have been protected, and hunting them is illegal as they are designated threatened species by the ESA. They have also continued to have this protection thanks to NEPA, which requires federal agencies to use the best available science to assess the environmental impact of proposed actions. This has protected grizzly bear management from being turned over to the states of Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana, who all want trophy hunting. There is a good chance their protection changes in the next couple of years, and if so, grizzlies who don’t know invisible national park boundaries and have been protected for 50 years could cross that line and be immediately hunted for trophies. Grizzly bears are my favorite species, and I love nothing more than watching them in their natural habitat and photographing them. Cubs are always such a bonus as they are so playful and incredible to watch as they interact with each other and their mom. I spent an incredible two hours with a sow grizzly and her three yearling cubs in early June 2024 in the northwest corner of Yellowstone. It was an experience I will never forget, and I will do all I can to protect them. 

4. Thermal Rings – an image of Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone captured from the overlook that gives you incredible views over the entire geyser basin. I loved the shapes that were so clear from the edges of the water from above.

5. Northern Radiance – I had never experienced the Northern Lights anywhere…to see them in Colorado twice in 2024 was absolutely incredible. I was able to capture them in May and October of 2024. On this evening, I drove up to Rocky Mountain National Park and captured some images but it was somewhat cloudy there, so I came back home. I headed to a little lake less than five minutes from my house and captured this.

6. Ghost Flowers – I love spending time playing with long exposure and intentional camera movement and captured this image in Rocky Mountain National Park in the middle of the afternoon. I used a 10-stop filter and during bright sunlight was able to capture movement and color.

7. Round Up – I take thousands of photos of elk each fall in Rocky Mountain National Park during the mating season known as the rut. I was busy photographing a bull elk and his harem right in front of me when I turned to check on the herd a mile away in the valley where the largest elk (known as Atlas) had been all day. He had just gotten up from a nap and was in the process of gathering his harem. I loved the way they lined up with him bulging and chasing them from behind.

8. Fractal Forms – an image captured with a telephoto lens of a scene that caught my eye as I was driving up a canyon to our local mountains. It was late summer, but there was a dense fog and ice-like frost on all the pine trees.

9. Intricate Design – I spent a rainy night with four pelicans on the Snake River in Grand Teton National Park in early June. It was cold and cloudy, and only one other photographer was out as it lightly rained. I watched these pelicans for over an hour as they played below the Jackson Lake Dam in the rapids at the start of the river. I love this close-up image that shows the beauty and design in the head and body feathers.

1o. Thermal Remains – A tree destroyed by hydrothermal activity in the middle of the Mud Volcano area in Yellowstone National Park. The steam constantly rises from the mud surrounding this tree and envelopes it in clouds of white.

11. First Tidepools—This is another photo from the beach where I grew up. This was a private beach when I was growing up, and we had a lot of freedom as kids to play and explore here. We had a cottage here, and during the day, our family and friends would all set up on the beach below our small cottage. As kids, we could always go to the “first tidepools” alone without adults because our parents could watch us from their chairs on the beach. This is that area where we would play for hours every day. As you continue down the beach, there are the second tidepools and more as you keep going, and those we needed adults with us to explore.

12. Sand Patterns I and II– Another image captured on the Oregon Coast over summer 2024. I have never seen so many various patterns of sand as I did in Oregon. The beaches of California and Hawaii that I photograph more don’t have these incredible patterns. I spent about half an hour focused on the patterns during low tide.

13. Grand Light – A photo captured on a very stormy early summer night where the clouds overtook the mountains for most of the evening. I headed back to my campground and right as I was pulling in, the clouds started to lift briefly. I drove past the campground down to Jackson Lake, grabbed my camera and ran onto the beach to photograph the Grand right as the clouds parted and the soft sunset light hit the peak.

14. Atlas – one black and white image from 2024 of my favorite elk this past fall. He is known as Atlas and was the largest bull in Rocky Mountain National Park this past fall. I spent as much time as possible with the large bull and was fortunate to capture him swimming across a large pond to chase another bull elk away. The water color was somewhat offputting, and I decided to edit this one in black and white and am very happy with how it turned out.