My Top 10 Travel Photos 2019

Some of my favorites on Flickr in 2019: 1. The Sunset That Wouldn't End, 2. Oak and Granite, 3. Milky Way and Sunrise Light, 4. Bodie Milky Way and Mill Reflection, 5. Cottonwood Trees Against Shadowed Pines, 6. Intricate Bodie Sunset, 7. Tufa Island Reflection, 8. Return of the Rainbows, 9. Nevada Mines and Ghost Towns at Night 

It's that time of year again! Photographers are posting collages of their Top 9 most popular posts on Instagram. I only put 42 images on Instagram in 2019 so far, less than one per week. Due to variations in number of people on Instagram at various times of day and how the site's new post distribution algorithms affect my posts, I didn’t see many of my own favorite images among the most-liked posts on my Instagram account (shown below),so I tend to make my own selection.

I don't have the privilege or luxury of being able to travel the world to pursue great images, but I live within easy driving distance of spectacular mountains, coastlines and deserts. I anticipate unique sun, moon and star positions to enhance compositions, and in the course of exploring new locations for workshops and sharing them with photographers in workshops in the best seasons, I do capture a nice photo from time to time.

How to find and choose the best? On Flickr I find over 450 photos when I search for “2019”, and I saved over 100 new images into a 2019 Favorites album on Flickr:

2019 Favorites album on Flickr 

As is often the case, some of my favorite images are newly-produced edits of past work, often discovered when revisiting old folders. As my tools, skills and objectives evolve, I see new opportunities for old images, often ones that I've never post-processed before. For the sake of my year-end roundup, I sort them to the end of my 2019 Favorites album and attribute them to their prior year. So for a top ten selection for 2019, let's go with the 10 images below. Top 10 Favorite 2019 Images I don't like selecting my year-end favorites too early since we often get great weather in early winter, as the following December 13 sunset on flooded salt flats in Death Valley demonstrates:

Badwater Basin, Death Valley National Park

#1    Rain is uncommon in the lower reaches of death Valley, where an average of only 1.9' falls, but sometimes runoff from rain in the mountains above helps temporarily restore prehistoric Lake Manly in Badwater Basin. A few weeks earlier, I came across great light on an oak in one of Yosemite's meadows:

#2:


This image quickly became my latest print, and it looks particularly good in a metallic print on paper, selected from my SmugMug site. New places were featuring prominently in my favorites, perhaps partly because they're new, but also I think that it's easier to take an entirely fresh look at a location when it's your first time there. Although I've visited White Pocket, Arizona before, this was my first clear night there:

#3:


I had just picked up the Nikon D850 in December, and not only was this one of my first Milky Way images captured on it, I was interested in testing its dynamic range on the Milky Way reflection.

#4:
I like a good challenge, so Milky Way reflection was on the menu again in June in Bodie State Historic Park:

#5:
 Every year I run across new time-light dependencies in Yosemite National Park. Fall opportunities in particular can rely on a single set of vegetation getting spotlighted with light for a few minutes, like these young cottonwood trees by the Merced River:



While opportunities based on sun position are repeatable and predictable, other times an opportunity is more serendipitous, like sunset color on complex storm clouds in Bodie:

#6:

Sometimes we revisit a favorite spot, only to be treated with exactly the kind of lihgt we like to see from it, like this Belt of Venus effect captured at Mono Lake:

#7:

Weather can enhance our compositions, like this third brief double rainbow that appeared one evening in Bodie:

#8:

Other compositions can be anticipated months or even years in advance, you just have to allocate time in your schedule to go get them, like the Milky Way rising over this mine in Nevada:

#9:

Even locations with iconic compositions can offer great results if you look a little harder at what else is there, like this downstream composition at Kanarra Creek in Utah, which works well without Upper or Lower Kanarra Falls:

#10:


I still have dozens of places on my "to do" list, come experience the thrill of discovery! So that last image was a bonus, and the one prior isn't really one of my "best" photographically speaking, but you can find dozens of contenders in my 2018 Favorites album.

2019 Runners-Up

Other 2019 images I liked but didn't quite include:



For some reason Thor's Well seems frequently enough captured that it needs particularly good atmospheric conditions to make it stand out. No doubt I'll revisit the place more to see what else the site delivers in light and conditions. Sometimes there's no place like home, like this winter storm reflected on Topaz Lake:



Prior Years' Images Discovered or Reworked

 Sometimes I can't get to a particular image in the year I captured it, either because I lack a sufficient tool to do it justice, or I simply don't have the time required to work on it. My "new or improved" images from past years included some real stunners, particularly ones re-imagined in black and white:




Honors & Recognition

 

View this post on Instagram

 

“Sunrays On Yosemite Valley Morning Fog” By Jeff Sullivan. Find out the story behind the shot in our latest issue, which covers all areas of black-and-white photography. . . . . . . #OPNovember #OPWildlife #landscape_lovers #landscapephotography #fantastic_earth #landscape_captures #ic_landscapes #ig_exquisite #ourplanetdaily #landscape #landscapelovers #instanaturelover #welivetoexplore #allnatureshots #specialshots #landscapestyles #nature_perfection #explorecreate #artofvisuals #wonderfulplaces #wildernessculture #lifeofadventure #travelstoke #liveessential #peoplescreative #visualgang #welltraveled #NationalParks #wanderlust

A post shared by Outdoor Photographer Magazine (@outdoorphotomag) on Nov 28, 2019 at 12:01pm PST

Photo Of The Day: “Sand Dunes Black and White 2015” by Jeff Sullivan. Location: Death Valley National Park. View our Photo Of The Day gallery at https://t.co/Kp4tdqKo1L pic.twitter.com/Iegz4Y794e

— Outdoor Photographer (@OutdoorPhotoMag) December 5, 2019

 

View this post on Instagram

 

Congratulations to @jeffsullivanphotography for winning the recent Your Best Photo of 2018 Assignment with the image, Golden Hour on the Oregon Coast. “Sometimes, the most interesting photos we take are from a new location or from a fresh look at a place that we haven't visited in a long time,” says Sullivan. “In 2018, I took a 2,000-mile road trip to revisit some of my favorite places in Oregon. Although I lived in Oregon for years in the 1980s and revisited a lot in the mid to late 2000s, I hadn’t been to some of these places in years. I had a great time on this latest lap, but even with 2-plus weeks it wasn’t enough time, so I’ll just have to go back soon! “My main exposure here was 1/8th of a second at f/16, ISO 200, and that produced a useful result, but HDR processing in Photomatix provided more shadow detail and highlight color, for a better overall result. The images were adjusted in Adobe Lightroom prior to HDR processing, then additional adjustment was conducted afterward as well.” * * * #OPAssignments #Oregon #landscape_lovers #sky_captures #landscapephotography #fantastic_earth #landscape_captures #ic_landscapes #ig_exquisite #ourplanetdaily #landscape #landscapelovers #instanaturelover #welivetoexplore #allnatureshots #specialshots #landscapestyles #nature_perfection

A post shared by Outdoor Photographer Magazine (@outdoorphotomag) on Feb 26, 2019 at 10:30am PST

Now it’s time to go out and capture another 100+ from 2020! To join me in the pursuit of images like these, check out my workshops listed at the top of the blog on my Web site.

My Favorite Landscape / Travel Photos from Each Year, 2006 – 2018

Here are some of my collections from prior years.  It has been a great 14 years of adventure, I can’t wait to see what I can find to show you in the years to come!

2018 Favorites photo album on Flickr 
2018 Top 10 Landscape/Travel Blog Post

2017 Favorites photo album on Flickr 
2017 Top 10 Landscape/Travel Blog Post

2016 Favorites photo album on Flickr 
2016 Top 10 Landscape/Travel Blog Post

2015 Favorites photo album on Flickr 
2015 Top 10 Landscape / Travel Photos Blog Post

2014 Favorites photo album on Flickr 
2014 Top 10 Landscape / Travel Photos blog post

2013 Favorites photo album on Flickr 
2013 Top 10 Landscape / Travel Photos blog post

2012 Favorites photo album on Flickr 
2012 Top 10 Landscape / Travel Photos blog post

2011 Favorites album on Flickr 
2011 Top 10 Landscape / Travel Photos blog post

2010 Favorites album on Flickr 
2010 Top 10 Landscape / Travel Photos blog post

2009 Favorites photo album on Flickr
2009 Top 10 Landscape / Travel Photos blog post

2008 Favorites photo album on Flickr
2008 Top 10 Landscape / Travel Photos blog post

2007 Favorites photo album on Flickr 
2007 Top 10 Landscape / Travel Photos blog post

2006 Favorites photo album on Flickr
2006 Top 10 Landscape / Travel Photos blog post

My most popular photos on Instagram in 2019. #bestnine2019[/caption]

Where to Shoot Yosemite's Horsetail Fall

A happy Valentine's Day: February 14, 2017, Yosemite National Park

Two flows in 2016!

Horsetail Fall in Yosemite Valley is backlit by the setting sun for roughly two weeks each year. As the sun falls behind the vertical face of El Capitan, it selectively lights this waterfall with its orange sunset glow.

This is an amazing spectacle to witness. Lasting only about 15 minutes before the sun goes down, the lighting gradually grows in intensity and color for the last 5 minutes or so. It is often like seeing a narrow strip of lava flowing down the face of El Capitan.

The weather and the water flows often don't cooperate.  You need enough snow above El Capitan, high enough temperatures up there for some of that snow to melt, and you need clear skies where the sun sets on the western horizon.  I was shut out by back to back blizzards in 2007, so I was fortunate to see this on two consecutive evenings from two different angles in 2008, and several times since then.

Nearly no water in 2012, it still looked great!

Sometimes there is little water flowing down the rock, but from a position to the south, the selective light on the wet spot makes it look like the waterfall is there anyway!

Other times, if there's clearly too much cloud cover or valley mist to allow light through, heading somewhere else for a more traditional landscape shot may be the ticket for that evening.  You have to first anticipate where the best light will be, before you can be in the right place to react to the light as it develops.

In 2017 I experienced a new variation: there was little direct light on the waterfall at sunrise, but there was intense sunset color on the horizon a few minutes later, and while the main flow of water didn't pick that up with any particular intensity, the surrounding wet spots on the rock reflected it beautifully.

Unfortunately most photographers seemed to have been waiting only for the direct light of the sun, so there was a pulse of traffic as they drove away, probably not seeing the sunset light that developed after the official sunset time.  Folks, that's how sunsets usually work!  The best color is minutes AFTER the theoretical (zero degree horizon) sunset time. So stick around for at least 10 minutes "after sunset", or even 15 or 20, just to be sure that you don't miss that night's color, whatever it may be.

February 28, 2008

1) Along the bank of the Merced River near the turnout just East of the Cathedral Beach picnic area (which is closed for Winter). This location is described on page 24 of my 320-page guidebook "Photographing California Vol. 2 - South".

This angle provides the composition that compresses the complete length of Horsetail Fall against the rock of El Capitan.  You can zoom in for a composition with no sky, or use a wider focal length to include the profile of El Capitan.  This seems to be the most crowded location in recent years, as photographers pack together to shoot through an opening in the trees.

This is arguably a more complete view of Horsetail Fall, showing a longer stretch of its descent, making it look longer and skinnier.  The view of more of the vertical drop makes the water flow look skinnier, and seeing it all from a longer distance makes it look more abstract and lava-like.

2) In the vicinity of the Cathedral picnic area on Northside Road in the valley, 1/2 mile East of the El Capitan bridge. That North road is closed for maintenance, so it's a 1 mile walk each way from where the El Captan bridge road hits Southside Road. This location is also described in "Photographing California Vol. 2 - South".

This is more of a side view than the position on the south side of the Merced River, with the upper reaches of the waterfall against the sky.  By showing less of the vertical drop, the flow of the water looks wider, and you see more of the rock face relief in detail.

The more northern location is probably the more common and iconic shot you see, although I don't mean to imply that's better.  It's just another nice variation on a rare and amazing solar alignment event.

No Horsetail, 2007.  So what?

The conditions required to make Horsetail Fall are unpredictable, so it's important not to rule out all trips that look iffy.  You're probably more likely to miss it than catch it, but it's important to remember that Yosemite is beautiful this time of year, and generally more so if there are passing storms!  So missing Horsetail Fall may be the best possible outcome for your trip.  You may catch far better photos, of far more unique conditions.

Plan on some dates, prepare yourself for the trip (carry chains), enjoy a winter trip to Yosemite, and consider Horsetail Fall to be possible icing on the cake!  And expect to enjoy return trips to Yosemite in the winter if you don't get the Horsetail Fall photo that you want on the first one.  Seriously, even when I lived in Sacramento, only 3 hours away, it was nearly impossible to predict when conditions would be great.

Life isn't a destination, it's the journey that occurs as you pursue your goals.  Enjoy and make the most out of every moment.

If you want a little help maximizing your odds of success and anticipating the light to be in the right place while you are in the park, I update my annual list of Yosemite photography workshops here.

Upper Yosemite Falls reflection on a moonlit night, February 15, 2017

Top 10 Travel Photos: 2014

Milky Way rising behind the Standard Mill in Bodie, California

Continuing the retrospective look at my last decade of travel and landscape photography, 2006 - 2015, here are some of my favorites from 2014.

The Minarets and Sierra Nevada at sunset

Mono Lake tufa rock formations selectively lit by the sun

Sunset in Bodie State Historic Park, California

NASA's Orion EFT-1 launch at Kennedy Space Center, Florida

There's no place like home.  A rock sheep enclosure at sunrise, Topaz Lake (on the California/Nevada border).

One of the Death Valley slot canyons disclosed in my "Photographing California - South" guidebook

Moon setting over the Sierra Nevada, while emerging from the earth's shadow during a lunar eclipse!

Wild mustangs in the Eastern Sierra

Playing with depth of field in the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest (iPhone 5S)

This was a selection of a few of my favorites from an album of over 45 photos from 2013, so there are many more that you might prefer over these. To see more of them, click on the link or album photo below.

More of my favorite photos from 2014:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/jeffreysullivan/albums/72157650285822751

Top 10 Favorite Travel and Landscape Photos from 2015

Bandon Sunset Reflection, Oregon Coast

Ansel Adams once stated that "Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop."  Perhaps Ansel would be more efficient and productive today with digital photography, or perhaps he simply had a really high bar for what he considered "significant".  

I often produce a few dozen photos per year that I'm pleased with and collect into albums on Flickr, so reducing them down further, to something like an annual "Top 10", doesn't always reach the top of my "to do" list. But as the "Photographing California" book that I finished and released in 2015 starts to go into retail auto-pilot, I can take a moment to reflect on my past year of photographic adventures as I look towards 2016. 

Great Light in Eroded Hills, Eastern Nevada

The photo above was captured early on in my 3500-mile "victory lap" road trip that I embarked on in September, as my book was about to ship to wholesalers and Amazon.com. I visited Mt. Shasta, Lassen Volcanic National Park, and Crater Lake National Park before turning west and heading for the coast. I arrived just in time for sunset. 

In March I took a quick trip across Nevada to scout for locations for possible Nevada photography workshops in 2016. I've been doing this for a few years now, but it takes a lot of experience to get to know a region, in detail, in a variety of season s and weather conditions. The photo to the right shows one of the sites that I really enjoyed for its geology and geometry.  Other sites in Nevada are good for wildflowers, dark, clear night skies, history (petroglyphs, mining areas and abandoned ranches), or cultural details. The state is huge though, and supporting resources such as gas, restaurants and lodging are spread out, so it'll pose some interesting challenges to cover efficiently and comfortably with a group. Access can also be complicated by weather and washouts on the often unpaved roads, so vehicles with appropriate all terrain tires and adequate ground clearance can also be a consideration.

A year wouldn't be complete for me without astrophotography, so in late April I headed out to the Mojave Desert in search of some photos of the Milky Way rising. In the case of the image below, I captured a sequence of 54 photos around 2 am to show the movement of the stars.

Milky Way Rising Behind Joshua Trees, Mojave Desert

In June I still had the Milky Way on my mind, as I dropped by Mono Lake to capture a 360-degree panorama featuring the lake's tufa calcium carbonate rock formations under the arch of the Milky Way.

Mono Lake Milky Way Arch Panorama

By July we had a nice summer monsoon season of sporadic storms, not enough to end our drought in the Eastern Sierra, but storms are certainly a plus for landscape photography! In this case a shaft of golden hour sunlight struck a column of rain, producing a warm-tinted sunset rainbow.

Shaft of Water and Light, Topaz Lake

Although there are so many stunning photography locations to cover in California I only included a handful of backpacking destinations in my book, I personally love backpacking, so I took the opportunity to visit the Golden Trout Wilderness in July. Little did I know that the remains of Hurricane Dolores would come ashore that night, creating "super historic" record July rainfall across much of Southern California. Fortunately there was a break in the rain on the following day, so I could head to the trailhead to dry out my gear before selecting my next adventure.

Muir Lake Morning Reflection, Golden Trout Wilderness

In August the big event for me is usually the Perseid meteor shower. Sometimes I like to maximize sky in my meteor shower photos, but in this case I decided to include an interesting Joshua tree. So back to the Mojave Desert I went.

Perseid Meteor Shower and Milky Way over Joshua Tree, Mojave Desert

Another location that I visited during my whirlwind September road trip was Morraine Lake in Alberta's Banff National Park. I was fortunate to arrive right after the first snowfall of the year, and it was still snowing lightly as the last light of the day faded, so there weren't many people out in the cold to wander into this shot along the shoreline. I also picked up the more typical elevated view from a nearby knoll, showing the glacial blue color of the lake, on the following morning.

Morraine Lake, Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada

I captured a number of nice Bodie and Eastern Sierra fall colors images this year, but one of my favorites was this late, snowy fall colors shot from Conway Summit in early November. Many of the compositions I was capturing on this morning were a little too evenly lit, but for a moment a thin spot in the cloud cover had the lower portion of this line of trees brightly lit while the trees and hill in the ravine in the background fell into darker shadow. This highlighted the lower line of trees and gave the whole scene a more 3D feel to it.

Snowy Fall Aspen, Early November in Mono County

Later in November I headed to Death Valley to pursue some new locations for an upcoming detailed guide to the park that I'm writing, but one of my favorite images ended up being from the Mesquite Flat Dunes near Stovepipe Wells. I had other photos with arguably better light, but the photographers add scale and a nice point of interest. I've photographed these dunes a lot, but the combination of low angle sun and broken light passing through breaks in the clouds created some unique opportunities.

Exploring the Dunes in Death Valley, Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes

New 2015 Results from Past Years

Valley View Calm Evening Reflection, Aug 2007

As I was working on the book I occasionally came across good photos from past years... when either I lacked the tools to complete a nice result, or I simply overlooked an image due to time constraints or simple oversight. Fortunately I can rediscover and rescue these old files on future visits to the folders that they're in. The one to the right was from Yosemite, way back in August 2007. It was captured on a Canon Digital Rebel XTi! A little adjustment in Lightroom 5, and voila! It's as good as new. I used it as the title page for my guidebook.

One of my more stunning finds was from an incredible sunset in Bodie during one of my workshops on June 29, 2013. Bodie was just outside of the area I was covering with my book, so post-processing photos from there hadn't been a priority. My loss then, and gain now! It was an unusually purple-tinted sunset, as confirmed across many photographers and cameras from various manufacturers.A few shots in the middle of the sunset's transformation had a wide variety of colors, ranging from orange-yellow to magenta-pink and blue to indigo shades, in addition to the base purple that dominated many adjacent shots.

Sunset Over Bodie Main Street, June 2013

There was another surprising overlooked shot that I found in an old Yosemite folder from 2008. Covering Half Dome at sunset from Glacier Point, the Yosemite chapter had already gone through layout before I found it in February, but it's a nice addition to my Yosemite portfolio for future uses!

Runner-up Images for 2015

I named my Top 10 for people who prefer the predictability and order of a preset and finite number, but I'll show a few of the other contenders for people who prefer not to be arbitrarily constrained.

This sunset shot is from the Cambridge Hills south of Yerington in Mason Valley, Nevada. I was looking for some old cars that were supposed to be in the area, but they were apparently either moved or stolen. The road had to serve as the subject and leading line, heading to that last bit of orange sunlight on a shaft of rain int he distance.



This dune shot was captured at 200mm to isolate the dune ridge and blowing sand from the dark background. I was hoping to see a desert tortoise or two in the area, but the burrows I found had cobwebs in their entrances.



At the bases of Death Valley's mountain ranges, on the edges of their alluvial fans of gravel and debris, you sometimes find small springs. In a landscape that only receives an average of 1.93" of rain per year, these are precious sources of water for nearby wildlife.  They are delicate places as well, with soft mud that will easily become severely trampled if hordes of visitors show up and love them to death.



I spend a lot of time in Bodie, and occasionally I'm there for the evening break-up of afternoon thunderstorms. In this case I saw a rainbow forming over town, and I knew that if I shifted my camera position a couple of hundred yards, I could place the rainbow over the Standard Mill. These opportunities can change quickly, so I hopped into my car, and drove east to move the rainbow.



This rainbow and reflection shot was one of my favorite mobile phone images in 2015, and one of my first photos taken on an LG G4 smartphone that I was provided with as part of the #G4Preview program.



This sun shot captured through geyser basin fog in Yellowstone is another of my favorite mobile images, this one captured on my 2 year old iPhone 5S.  It won an +Instagram / iPhone assignment being conducted by Outdoor Photographer Magazine.



I have many more images that I considered for my favorite photos and moments of 2015, and I've collected over 50 of them in a 2015 Favorites album on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jeffreysullivan/albums/72157651316649769

Favorite Photos from Prior Years

Here are some of my collections from prior years.  It has been a great decade of adventure, I can't wait to see what I can find to show you in the next 10!

2014 Favorites album on Flickr

 

2013 Favorites album on Flickr 



2012 Favorites album on Flickr 



2011 Favorites album on Flickr
2011 Top 10 blog post



2010 Favorites album on Flickr 2010 Top 10 blog post



2009 Favorites album on Flickr
2009 Top 10 blog post



2008 Favorites album on Flickr 2008 Top 10 blog post



2007 Favorites album on Flickr 2007 Top 10 blog post



2006 Favorites album on Flickr 2006 Top 10 blog post