Best images of 2014

As another year draws to a close, it's time to look back on my favorite images of the past 12 months. It's an exercise I've been doing in some form or another for virtually my entire time as a nature photographer. When I'm down, looking back can be inspiring. It can also help me see if I'm in a rut and challenge me to go in a more creative direction next year.

This year, it's an especially interesting exercise, given that I spent much of the year looking back over my entire career. My new book, Living Wilderness, is a fine-art portfolio of all my work so far. To produce it, I had to comb through nearly 15 years of work to select fewer than 150 standout images that could still work together.

I also traveled less than I usually do. But that just made me work harder close to home. In fact, two of my favorite images came from the yard around my house.

So here they are, my 10 favorite images and why (you can click or tap on any image to enlarge it):

Best of 2013

In terms of the images I produced, 2013 was an unusual year for me. Over the course of most years, I shoot a wide variety of nature images. But 2013, like the title of the book I just completed, was for me the Year of the Eagle. Easily two-thirds of my images were about bald eagles as I worked hard to fill gaps in the story I wanted to tell.

But the year wasn't just about bald eagles. I made my third trip to Iceland. While there, I photographed the inside of an old volcano's magma chamber, the only known one in the world people can climb inside. I also got to capture an incredible northern lights display perfectly reflecting in a lake that is normally quite choppy. I also worked hard to capture beauty close to home.

In the end, I think my annual best-of collection is still quite varied. Here are a few of my favorite images of 2013:

Best images of 2012

While it is a new year, I do want to take a moment to reflect back on 2012. Compiling a few of my favorite images from the past year has become an annual affair. This task isn’t easy. Artists generally aren’t all that good at editing their own work. Boiling an entire year down to 10 images can seem like an impossible task.

But it can also help you look at your work in new ways. The passage of time has helped me evaluate some of my images with new eyes, freeing me from some of the emotional attachment to the image at the time of capture. That, in turn, helps me figure out what I like — and don’t like — about the work I’ve been producing, helping me to grow and set a direction for the new year.

In no particular order, here are a few of my favorite images from 2012:

Shoot now, edit now

If I had to sum up what’s involved in being a nature photographer, I’d say it’s 1 percent being in the right place at the right time, 9 percent waiting for the right time, and 90 percent sitting in front of a computer editing photos and finding clients.

That last part is my least favorite, of course. I took up nature photography as a break from my desk job. I have yet to find any shortcuts to finding clients, but over the years I have found a few ways to save time when editing images. Anything that cuts the amount of office work is a good thing.