This is my third of three “year in review” posts. If you have not read the first two, you can find the first one with my black and white photos here and the second one with my plant photos here. For this final post, I am sharing my favorite color nature photographs from 2024 along with some reflections on how my photographic process has continued to evolve over the last year.
With 2023 and 2024, my transition from “landscape photographer” to “nature photographer” feels complete. I do not consider these labels to be important but do find them helpful for explaining how the scope of my work has expanded in recent years. Although I still consider myself a beginner and do not have many photos to share so far, I am enjoying bird and wildlife photography more than I ever expected I would, especially since it stretches my technical skills, is a nice way to fill in downtime, and is a good entry point to learning more about a landscape and its ecosystems. As I have broadened my photography interests to include grand landscapes, intimate landscapes, smaller scenes, abstracts, portraits of plants, and now more wildlife photography, my general enjoyment of this craft continues to grow.
Earlier in my photography career, I spent a few years focused almost exclusively on “chasing the light” and wide-angle grand landscape scenes. While I still find this kind of photography exhilarating and challenging, spending all my time focused on a type of photography that heavily relies on weather aligning with one or two composition options turned out to be unsatisfying. Having everything come together is one of the real highs that comes with nature photography but it can also get pretty old to experience frequent disappointment with conditions. This is one of the main reasons that increased enjoyment and satisfaction, at least with the photographic process, has accompanied the expanding scope of my work. With this broader approach, there really always is something interesting to photograph.
I’ve also come to think of adaptability as the essential basis from which all of my other practices flow and have been working on improving my practices in this area. Adaptability starts with a flexible mindset, minimizing expectations, and an openness to sparks of inspiration. In addition to this creative framework, the adaptive mindset is accompanied by a range of practical skills, including attentiveness, deep observation, technical versatility, ability to work quickly, and openness to experimentation. I’ll use the photos below to expand on these ideas and provide concrete examples, some of which I hope are helpful for you in thinking about your photographic practices for 2025.
The two photos above represent one of the most special experiences I have had as a photographer. On this morning after a heavy rain in Death Valley National Park, we woke up to heavy fog. In retrospect, we should have immediately headed to this viewpoint, Dante’s View, which looks down on the Badwater salt flats and across to the Panamint Mountains. Thinking the fog would quickly dissipate once the sun rose, we decided to initially head to a closer location but the dense fog continued to linger.
Since Ron had a work meeting, he decided to head back to our RV and I headed up to Dante’s View. Once I arrived, I could see the cloud inversion just starting to break up, revealing the ephemeral Lake Manly below (you can see a quick video here). I stayed as long as I could, departing too soon to attend an important meeting of my own. Getting back to the trailer then allowed Ron to head out to see how the conditions were evolving. He ended up seeing the fog burn off around the Zabriskie badlands, which he considered an equally special experience. We both wish we hadn’t had to work that morning but without the RV + remote work situation, we likely would have never caught this type of rare event without our extended visit.
This is another photo from Death Valley and it has become a favorite from all my time in the park. One of the things I love most about the Mojave Desert is how the light interacts with the landscape, taking minimalist scenes and sometimes turning them into something special. As the backdrop to the Furnace Creek area, I have spent hours contemplating these little hills popping up from the Panamint mountains and how they came to be in terms of their geologic story. Although it is way too far to actually do, I’ve also wondered what it would be like to hike across the valley and up that alluvial fan to turn around and view Death Valley, along with the Funeral and Black Mountains, from an alternative viewpoint.
Here, these beams of light bring depth to the hills and animate them in a fresh way. These light beams lasted for only a few moments so we quickly pulled over on the side of the highway, got our gear, and took a few photos before the clouds closed up, flattening the scene in an instant.
This photo is from White Sands National Park (you can see my full collection of photos from White Sands in this free portfolio ebook). I like this photo because of the little frills of sand catching the last direct light of the day. I had been photographing in the opposite direction when I briefly turned around to check in on the sunset. Seeing the frills made me scramble for a composition and I lucked out with a nice combination of elements. One skill related to adaptability is situational awareness. Here, I saw the frill of sand, immediately decided to shift my attention, quickly found a composition, decided on a focus stack, and created a few photos before the sun dipped behind the mountain.
Our entire trip to Iceland in June turned into a weeks-long exercise in adaptability. We rented a 4x4 campervan and conducted extensive research on some areas in the Interior Highlands that we wanted to visit for the first time. We used the dates from a previous trip to decide on the best timing and then … we had absolutely awful weather almost the entire time we were there. With heavy snow, intense winds, and a lot of rain, exactly one interior mountain road opened on the day before we left (far too muddy to drive, as we found out a few miles in). Even some of the paved Ring Road intermittently closed due to windy and wintery conditions. Aside from not bringing warm enough clothes, we were still able to find all sorts of things to do. We mostly revisited favorite places since they were open, experiencing a few moments of weather magic along the way.
The lesson from the photo above: Do not fully rely on the weather forecasts in Iceland to make photographic plans or decisions. We expected a crystal clear sunrise and woke up to thick fog. It lingered, moving in and out for hours. While the light tended toward moody and blue, the sun broke through for a few moments, illuminating the landscape with a bit of soft light.
While wandering around the same tidal flat as shown above, I found this curious scene. I am not sure where the orange color comes from but these patterns seemed to form as lines of foam were blown across the flat, accumulating in graceful lines, and then drying in place on this patch of shiny dark sand. I also found another spot of dried foam that looked like white lace. By approaching a scene like this without judgement, it is easier to find beauty and mystery in something that most people would view only as a patch of gross, dried scum. This is also an example of following sparks of inspiration. While surrounded by impressive mountains and a lively coastline, this abstract scene is what interested me most so it is where I turned my attention.
I just love this little tarn with its mix of resident plants and have photographed it during a few different trips. On this trip, the merging of the willows, birches, and blooming sedges along the edge seemed most interesting and pretty. This area is surrounded by dramatic mountain scenery that can pull the attention from smaller scenes like this. This is another example of tuning into what sparks your interest the most. While the mountains might be the most conventionally impressive part of this landscape, the mix of quiet, soft colors in these plants drew me in for an extended photo session.
Aerial photos of Iceland’s river deltas are commonplace now and I’ll admit to rolling my eyes every time such a photo does well in a competition (seriously, not another one… especially if there is a bridge with a single car driving over it included). These landscapes from above are incredibly beautiful, diverse, and full of unexpected colors but there is not a lot of room for personal interpretation with a subject like this anymore. And in photographing these scenes for myself, I didn’t care a bit about any of these things. Nature’s abstractions are among my favorite subjects and I am not going to pass up this photographic opportunity because others have done it before me.
In a year full of great experiences in nature (like viewing a total solar eclipse and seeing Lake Manly in Death Valley), photographing puffins nears the top. I’ll eventually write a full post about the experience but will simply say here that it was incredible to be able to be so close to these charming birds and observe their behaviors for an extended period of time. The weather was incredibly cold so this was not a pleasant photography experience but it certainly was a joyful one. Their flights and landings fall into predictable patterns so in addition to photos like the one shown above, I ended up with about a dozen pretty decent photos of puffins in flight. When planning our trip to Iceland, I certainly did not expect to be photographing puffins in the snow in June but it was so fun!
During our fall trip, Yellowstone National Park made for a convenient stopping place. This landscape continues to be among my favorite for photographing smaller scenes and abstractions, especially in the fall. With colder temperatures, the steam from the geothermal features adds another dimension to the experience and fog can be common in some areas of the park. Our few days in the park were among my most productive of 2024, with this small sampling representing a few of my favorites. In addition to the lovely landscapes, Ron also managed to dislodge the safety clip on his bear spray while carrying his tripod over his shoulder, spraying some bear spray directly into his face. Aside from some massive irritation, he ended up being fine but with a good story to tell.
As I mentioned in my first post of this series, we unexpectedly ended up in the Upper Midwest for our autumn trip and it was great—after we figured some things out. We started our trip in the Porcupine Mountains in Michigan and headed to this spot along Lake Superior for our first sunset in the area. It was so nice to photograph the lakeshore without worrying about sneaker waves and incoming tides. On this clear day, the last light on the breaking waves was so pretty and perfectly matched the colorful stones.
The figuring-things-out phase of this trip started when we arrived in Wisconsin. During the planning phase, we looked at a map and selected an area with a lot of recreation sites, campgrounds, and hundreds of lakes. On the computer screen, it seemed like this region had to be ripe with photographic opportunity—and it was. I, however, failed to realize that Upper Midwesterners recreate via boat more than they recreate via foot.
I wrongly assumed that all of these lakes would have multiple access points and trails. Nope! Many of them have just a single small dock. With more research and a lot of scouting, we eventually found some nature trails, Nature Conservancy sites, and national forest trailheads where we could explore in our usual way. The fall colors were very late but with a flexible itinerary, we were able to wait around until the trees changed. The rainbow of colors in the maples and oaks in particular rivals any other fall color display we have seen in the United States.
And finally, we wrapped up our autumn trip to the Upper Midwest … in Zion National Park. As we started heading back west, we looked at a Zion park webcam and could see that the trees were late in changing there, too. Why not add two weeks to our trip? So we did. You can see all the photos and read about that trip in a joint ebook from me and Ron, which you can download here with a single click. On our last day in the park, we were treated to a clearing storm, with misty clouds hanging and swirling around the sandstone pinnacles for a few hours. When photographing a scene like this, it is helpful to take photos over time to see how the low clouds and mist move around. In this case, the little peak being visible made this file the best of the bunch.
And with this, I’ll wrap up this series of posts with a thank you. With so many demands on our time in modern life, I am so grateful to everyone who takes the time to appreciate my photography. Your support and kind comments are very meaningful to me and your support helps make it possible for me to do this as my career. Although it is a bit belated, I wish you the very best for 2025. Cheers!
Sarah Marino is a full-time photographer, nature enthusiast, and writer based in southwestern Colorado. In addition to photographing grand landscapes, Sarah is best known for her photographs of smaller subjects including intimate landscapes, abstract renditions of natural subjects, and creative portraits of plants and trees. Sarah is the author or co-author of a diverse range of educational resources for nature photographers on subjects including composition and visual design, photographing nature’s small scenes, black and white photography, Death Valley National Park, and Yellowstone National Park. Sarah, a co-founder of the Nature First Alliance for Responsible Nature Photography, also seeks to promote the responsible stewardship of natural and wild places through her photography and teaching.