The votes are all in and counted, and here are my top photographs of 2018!
We had a great response this year: over 300 people looked through my initial selection of 40 images and voted for their favorites here on the blog, Facebook, Google+, and through email. A big thank you to everyone who took the time to look through these photographs and voice your opinions! I also really appreciate all the kind words so many people included with their votes. I wish I could respond to every comment and email, but please know that I’ve read them all and am very grateful for all your support. And also, many thanks to my wonderful assistant Claudia who tallied all those votes!
To express our gratitude we’re giving away a print to one of the voters. We assigned each person who voted a number, and used a random number generator to pick the recipient. And the winner is… Larry Petterborg! Larry will receive a signed and numbered 16×20 print of his choice from among the 40 original selections. Congratulations Larry!
Here’s the list of the ten images that received the most picks, and the number of votes they each received:
1. Image # 12, Half Dome and Clouds at Sunset from Glacier Point, Yosemite, 148 votes
2. Image # 16, Milky Way over a High-Country Lake, Yosemite, 140 votes
3. Image # 1, Three Brothers at Night, Yosemite, 114 votes
4. Image # 33, Cottonwood Leaves Swirling in the Merced River, Yosemite, 110 votes
5. Image # 35, Misty Sunrise, Half Dome and the Merced River, Yosemite, 109 votes
6. Image # 19, Paintbrush and Peak, Sunrise, Inyo NF, California, 106 votes
7. Image # 9, Milky Way over the Mesquite Flat Dunes, Death Valley, 102 votes
8. Image # 36, Pines, Oak, and Mist, Yosemite, 99 votes
9. Image # 2, Misty Moonrise, Half Dome and the Merced River, Yosemite, 91 votes
10. Image # 26, Cattails and Aspen Reflections, Colorado, 86 votes
Filling out the top 15 were numbers 13, 4, 15, 3, and 29.
Overall I think it’s a well-rounded selection, with daytime grand landscapes, nighttime images, and a few more intimate scenes. Interestingly, two of the photographs were made on the same night, and two on the same day: numbers 1 and 2 were photographed during the first few hours of January 10th, and numbers 35 and 36 were both captured on the morning of November 24th.
If you’re wondering about my personal favorites, most of them are in this top ten. I was happy to see that number 33 (Cottonwood Leaves Swirling in the Merced River), number 26 (Cattails and Aspen Reflections, Colorado), and number 36 (Pines, Oak, and Mist) were so popular, since they’re more intimate, personal photographs. Some other smaller-scale landscapes that I’m fond of, but didn’t make the top ten, include number 27, Autumn Hillside in the Fog, Colorado, number 28, Aspens and Conifers in a Snowstorm, Colorado, and number 40, Oak Tree above a Fog Layer, Mariposa County. And number 7, Sunbeams Above a Flock of Ross’s Geese, conjures up memories of an incredible experience, when Claudia and I watched some 20,000 geese lift off with sunbeams overhead.
But again, I think this final ten makes a nice, well-rounded collection. I’m happy with it, and it would be hard to take any of them out. As Clinton Smith once told me, we don’t get to pick our best photographs; our viewers do that.
I think every photographer has images they love that aren’t very popular. You can keep pushing those favorites out to the universe, but if the universe yawns and scrolls past them there’s nothing you can do about it. Photography is a form of communication, and communication is a two-way thing. If one of your favorite photographs only communicates something to you, and no one else, then it can still serve as a great memory for you, but it hasn’t succeeded in conveying to others what you hoped to convey.
Becoming a better photographer means learning to become a better communicator. That doesn’t mean trying to make images that you think will be popular, and losing your own voice in the process. It means means finding common ground, where you’re expressing your own personal vision of the world, yet other people get what you’re trying to say. That’s not easy, but if it was easy it wouldn’t as challenging, interesting, and fun.
I’ll be submitting this post to Jim Goldstein’s blog project shortly. Thanks to Jim and G Dan Mitchell for providing the original inspiration for putting together this list back in January of 2011, and helping to start this tradition.
Again, thank you so much for your participation. This has been really fun for me, and I hope you’ve enjoyed it also. Here are the top ten images:
12. Half Dome and clouds at sunset from Glacier Point, Yosemite
16. Milky Way over a high-country lake, Yosemite
1. Three Brothers at night, Yosemite
33. Cottonwood leaves swirling in the Merced River, Yosemite
35. Misty sunrise, Half Dome and the Merced River, Yosemite
19. Paintbrush and peak, sunrise, Inyo NF, California
9. Milky Way over the Mesquite Flat Dunes, Death Valley
36. Pines, oak, and mist, Yosemite
2. Misty moonrise, Half Dome and the Merced River, Yosemite NP, CA, USA
26. Cattails and aspen reflections, Colorado
Related Posts: My Best Images of 2018: the Nominees; My Top Photographs of 2017; My Top Photographs of 2016; My Top Photographs of 2015
Michael Frye is a professional photographer specializing in landscapes and nature. He is the author or principal photographer of The Photographer’s Guide to Yosemite, Yosemite Meditations, Yosemite Meditations for Women, Yosemite Meditations for Adventurers, and Digital Landscape Photography: In the Footsteps of Ansel Adams and the Great Masters. He has also written three eBooks: Light & Land: Landscapes in the Digital Darkroom, Exposure for Outdoor Photography, and Landscapes in Lightroom: The Essential Step-by-Step Guide. Michael has written numerous magazine articles on the art and technique of photography, and his images have been published in over thirty countries around the world. Michael has lived either in or near Yosemite National Park since 1983, currently residing just outside the park in Mariposa, California.
Thanks, Michael, for this opportunity. I only had three in the voted top ten, but I also had three of your favorites. I loved what you said about learning to express your personal vision; I used to tell my art students, learn the basics, emulated the great artists, then find your own vision. It works in any artistic endeavor. So many times people don’t understand what you are trying to say as an artist (you call that art?), but a good artist/communicator tries to extend their personal voice and help people understand what she/he attempting to convey. Cheers!
Thanks Bob – I like your comment about extending your personal voice to help people understand what you’re trying to convey.
Outstanding work!
Thank you Mark!
Love your work, Michael. Brings back so many fond memories of backcountry and climbing trips in Yosemite and beyond, starting for me in 1967. You, sir, are a master!
Thanks so much Bruce!
Always impossible to narrow it down to YOUR “best of” because it’s always the best of the best❣️❣️❣️❣️❣️
Photo ON!
Happy New Year to you and Claudia!
🎉🍾🎉🍾🎉🍾🎉🍾🎉🍾
🙂 Thank you Kelly and Happy New Year to you too!
Like you (or I presume like you) I’m always surprised by which of my images become popular and which don’t (many of which might be my favorites). We all respond to different things, but I’ve never figured out the pattern.
I do want to add that I’m glad there are photographers of your caliber who don’t go for the hyper-‘realist’ HDR look. It’s like the flip side of the Velvia craze of twenty years ago.
It is sometimes hard to figure out the “pattern,” as you put it. I know that, in general, people usually like my big landscape scenes better than my more intimate scenes. Maybe that’s because with the big scenes a viewer can imagine herself or himself there enjoying that spot, while intimate landscapes are often more about design or color than the place. Of course there are exceptions, and sometimes an intimate scene captures something that a lot of people can relate to, like perhaps a mood or a sense of beauty in nature.
You are an inspiration, Michael.
Thanks Ken! 🙂
Beautiful shots Michael. I was originally attracted to your work through your light painted night images. Interesting how things change: my favorites here are the swirling leaves and the pines, oaks and mist. Both are just wonderful. Have a great 2019.
I somehow missed your initial post with the opportunity to vote. I am so happy to see the cattails photo in the final selection since it was my favorite, along with the Three Brothers at night (a surprise for me since I don’t typically connect with night photos). Anyway, I love the diversity of your initial selections and the top ten. It shows your versatility as a nature photographer, which is one of the things I respect most about your work. Happy 2019 to you and Claudia!
Thanks so much Sarah! I love nature and like photographing everything nature has to offer, big and small, animals, plants, rocks, clouds – all of it – and I’m sure that’s what leads to the diversity you mention. Anyway, Happy New Year to you and Ron! I look forward to seeing your images this year.
Love all the photos, especially the night views. Capturing that special moment has always been a special skill of yours that I have admired. Thanks for sharing them with us. I still remember that winter day running around Yosemite chasing the weather hoping for that right moment. That day has helped me a lot in my personal photographic journey. You put so much thought into your photos! Nature never disappoints:)
Thanks so much Tom! Nature may not always give us what we photographers want, or think we want, on any given day, but then we just have to look harder for the beauty that’s always there.
This is another stellar collection, Michael. I especially love the many moods of Yosemite that you capture, which immediately transport me there. Wishing you and Claudia all the best in 2019!
Thank you Russ, and all the best to you too!
You know what Michael – I am kind of glad I missed the voting opportunity, despite having followed your unique way of selecting these over the years. Too darn hard to pick and order among these, all of them.
I think it would make for an interesting post if you went back over all of your years of doing this vote-inspired type post to see if any trends emerged. Are people’s interests changing? Are they gravitating more towards realism or abstraction? An interesting dataset to explore no doubt.
Well there’s always next year Mark. That’s an interesting idea. I haven’t noticed any changes in people’s tastes over the years, but I haven’t tried to quantify anything. Even if some trend was discernible, I’m not sure that such a trend among a small set of images from one photographer would tell us much about any larger trends. But if we could somehow get a bigger dataset about people’s tastes in photography that could be quite interesting to study.
You get better with age, my friend. All great images and I can see why no. 1 is no. 1.
Have a great 2019.
Jim
Thanks Jim, but I don’t recommend the aging thing. 🙂 I hope you’re doing well and have a great 2019 also.
Love them all.
Thanks Mary Jane!
Hi Michael greetings from Northern Ireland All of these are stunning photos beautiful. Michael not many of these are what people call wide angle our ewa as we are told we need a wide angle lens for landscape photography it would be nice if you could share your camera settings for the photos Paul
Thank you Paul. I don’t know where this idea came from that landscape photography = wide-angle lens. Ansel Adams never thought that. Neither did Eliot Porter, or even David Muench. Muench practically invented the extreme wide-angle, near-far style of landscape photography, but he also made many of wonderful images with telephoto lenses. This idea that you have to use a wide-angle lens for landscape photography is a new one, and I think it’s a strange and limiting idea.
I do sometimes share my camera settings in my posts, but not in a post like this.
Micheal, Great images for 2018. My favorite would be the Aspen Trees and swirling leaves with Halfdome a close second. I try to drop by Yosemite once a year to photograph and enjoy seeing your images in the galleries and other locations. Look forward to seeing next years images already.
Thanks very much Raymond!