My Favorite Photos of 2024

This is mostly a place where I write about biblical interpretation, offering reflections each week on some of the readings from the Revised Common Lectionary and other passages. But every so often I throw something else in, and this year for the third year running I’m making a year-end post about photography. I have always been interested in photography, and I try to be decent at it in an amateur kind of way, with whatever iPhone I happen to have in my pocket—no fancy cameras for me.

2024 was not a banner year for my photography. I didn’t have the chance to travel much, so compared to prior years there weren’t too many new landscapes for me to survey. But I ended up with fourteen favorite photos anyway, some from near to home, and others from far away. Here they are, in no particular order!

This photo was taken at Crystal Cove State Park, south of Los Angeles, in October. We traveled out that way for a conference and took the kids along. That’s our eldest child standing on a bit of seabed that has been tilted up and eroded out by the surf, as the long shadows of sunset stretch out across the sand.

This one was captured in late September on Guanella Pass, a perennial favorite of my family and a mainstay on my list of favorite photos. The aspens turn early that high, over ten thousand feet, so it’s like getting a sneak preview of autumn before it hits down in Denver (at only a mile high) a few weeks later.

Abert’s Squirrels are native to a patch of woods east of Colorado Springs known as the Black Forest. We spend a week there most summers, at church camp, where a sighting of these odd squirrels is always a treat. No one calls them Abert’s Squirrels; we call them Squabbits, because of their squirrel-like bodies and rabbit-like ears. I caught this one peeking around a tree, eyeing me warily, just before launching itself onto the ground to run away.

I am not sure anyone likes my canopy photos as much as I like them, but I like them a lot, so there is usually one included in any collection of my favorites. This is from that same day on Guanella Pass, from a cove of forest where aspens and pines crowd in around each other.

In the same way I’m a sucker for a canopy photo, I am always drawn to photos of water droplets. These drops were resting on the grapes that grow along the wall of our garage each summer, shining in the morning sun.

Our youngest child loves to dig in the dirt (as you can see from the state of the fingertips here), and there is no greater prize than the uncovering of some litter-dwelling creature. Here a baby slug has been scooped up for display. The macro features of iPhones have become truly impressive.

On April 8th an eclipse swept across North America, and in Denver we got about 65% of a totality. These are the shadows through a mesh-like canopy over some outdoor tables, each hole in the mesh creating a pinhole camera of the sun’s partial shape.

This creek runs through the same cove where the canopy photo above was taken, and I always make a point to hike upstream as far as I can make it through the underbrush and take as many long exposures of the water as I can. Water is hard to come by in Colorado, and this creek feels like something out of Appalachia or the Pacific Northwest—its own little micro-biome amid the arid landscapes.

These are snowflakes through the light from a streetlamp one night in late January, streaking through the frame just quickly enough to make the whole thing look like brushed steel.

I’m not a huge fan of self-portraits—I’m not the most attractive subject I usually have available nearby—but I do love capturing what I look like after a run on an especially cold morning. This one was taken only a few days into the year, when the temperatures plunged below zero and made my morning run really interesting.

Each year we try to get a permit to cut our own Christmas tree(s) in the mountains, and this year we lucked out and got a permit for a beautiful snowy day in the hills behind Winter Park—a couple hours’ drive from Denver. The snow was waist-deep and the road was slick, but my trusty Jeep got us there and back, with two Ponderosa Pines strapped to the roof.

The youngest child in profile against the Pacific Ocean sunset, in October. The tide was out and the tide pools were full of curiosities and wonders.

This is another view from our Christmas tree cutting expedition, across a valley to where the clouds were gathering atop the high peaks.

We stayed at the beach in California until the very last bit of the sun dipped into the ocean, lighting up the waves and the tide pools. After so many sunsets over the water in North Carolina, where the land can run east-to-west and the winter sun lights up the edges, it’s trippy to watch the sun dip into the middle of the ocean and travel on westward.