My Favorite Pictures of 2025 - People in the landscape

 

My final favorite pictures of 2025 post. These are the landscapes with people in them pictures. I count dogs as people, and I think these are my favorite pictures of the three posts. Landscapes are just better with people (and dogs) in them. They give a sense of scale, and just make the landscapes more interesting. Tiny little people in the picture just makes the landscape seem far grander. They also create a point of focus - you immediately see the person (or dog) and it gets you into the picture.

I also noticed that not all the photos posted here fit the theme. The picture of the doe and hours old fawn is my only animal picture to make the final cut. A bear picture did not make my final favorites, and I took a lot of decent bear pictures this year. But like flower pictures, I think animal pictures are just sort of boring. Get a good lens - zoom in close and there you go. I'm actually surprised I kept the doe and fawn picture in the final cut.

And finally, I think the second picture here - the one just below - is my single best photo from 2025.

Patrick

White out

 

This is what it has looked like lately on my Pyramid dog walks. This actually is not a true white out. When it is a white out you can't see anything except the dogs when they are close. Yesterday was actually pretty decent skiing and it was not raining.  On most of the other days it has either been sleeting, misting, or raining. The dogs and I get back from our walks totally soaked. On a couple of the particularly wet days  I took a 1/2 hour hot shower when we got back. But hey at least we have snow and can still ski to the road.

Patrick

My Favorite Pictures 2025 - People and Places

 

More of my favorite pictures from 2025. These are my favorite pictures with people in them.  I did not quite have enough 'people' pictures to fill out the post so I added the few random extra ones.

Patrick

My Favorite Landscape pictures of 2025

 

2025 is long gone but I am only now getting ready to post my favorite pictures of the year. This is an annual event and I think it helps my photography when I look back at the year's photos and edit and see what worked and what did not. For some reason, this year it was a lot harder than in the past, and it took a lot longer to edit my photos. I finally edited all my photos down to the top 800 or so, and then picked out 40 from those to post here on the blog. 

I noticed that very few of my macro plant pictures and no flowers made the final cut. I think I have taken so many flower pictures that while they are pretty they bore me. So none here. I also am getting a little tired of my 'sunstars' so expect fewer of those in the future!

In any case, here are my favorite landscapes from 2025. In the next 2 'favorite photos of 2025' posts to come expect my 'People and Places' and 'People in the landscape' themes.

Patrick

Mountain Goat Pho

 

I ended up with a lot of leftovers after cooking up a big mountain goat roast for just myself. I did the hot gravy on thinly sliced meat - yummy. And then I tried something new. I added thinly sliced leftover meat to an instant pho noodle bowl - and WOW!

My big complaint with the noodle bowls has always been the lack of meat. They are just broth and rice noodles and basically lack substance. But adding thinly sliced mountain goat added the needed heft, and made it perfect.

Patrick

Goat Roast

 

This is my dinner from last night. A friend of mine gave me a mountain goat roast, and asked that I give him an honest report of how it came out. So last night I documented the process of cooking up the goat roast and sent him the pictures. 

Basically I browned onions in a roasting pan for 1/2 hour at 350 degrees and then added the goat roast and turned the oven off. Later I turned it back on at 170 and waited for the meat to hit an internal temperature of 127. Low and slow! I then browned the outside in a very hot cast iron frying pan.

I served my goat with home fries made from garden potatoes, and fried onion and hedgehog mushroom gravy. These are mushrooms I collected while I was on Shuyak this Fall.

The goat came out great!

And now I will have it for lunch and for another dinner. I do not re heat game because it often tastes gamy and gets tough when re heated. Rather I will slice it very thinly like cold cuts and then pour copious amounts of hot gravy on top. mmmmmmm

Patrick