Best Photos 2025

Hello, everyone. Happy New Year's. Hope you're all doing great out there. Maybe a little bit of a hangover, hopefully not too much. It's the time of year where I look back on the previous year, on the year that we've just had, and show you my favorite photos of 2025. As always, I'll cover composition settings and if there's anything interesting editing wise. I really wish that more of my co-photographers here on YouTube would do the same thing because I personally find it to be super interesting how they perceive their own photos. And as always, I cover them chronologically. These are my favorite photos. I don't care whether they have performed well on social media or not. This year is my expression. This is my art. So this first photo of the dead tree in the water is one of my top favorites of the year. I absolutely love it. I love the mood. So much. I purposely went out on a day with terrible weather and even ripples on the water. And I went for this long exposure effect to just flatten it completely. And I hardly even have a reflection. No doubt a reflection will look beautiful here and I will photograph that in the future. But I just really love the mood in this photo. I also made another photo here that has performed really well on social media. And if it wasn't for this first photo here, that photo would probably be my favorite of the bunch. But there's just something about this one here. It's not too much in your face. It's not too dramatic. It's more about the mood and the atmosphere, which I really love. This year, I also had my first trip to Japan. I went there with Sophie for 10 days and then we went to like a Sigma event afterwards. And oh, I know that all of you who've been to Japan absolutely loves it, because how can you not? We completely fell in love with Japan. And one of my favorite photos from this year is, of course, also from Japan. It has been quite interesting because I took a lot of photos that I really love in Japan. But this one here, even though it was actually quite experimental when I took it and edited it, I purposely removed almost all cold colors from it. I simply just took the HSL sliders and brought them down. There's a little bit of blues in the sky, but else it was because I was very inspired by these Japanese ink paintings. So I really went all in on the black and white. However, left the reds and the yellows and oranges in there, which you've probably seen on Japanese ink paintings. The next photo here is also one of my top, top, top favorites. And one I've printed and I have on my wall in another room. And I just love the atmosphere. I love that this is Denmark. I love that something like this is possible in Denmark because it reminds me more of like the Lake District in England or somewhere in southern Germany or somewhere else, not Denmark, because we have the hills, because we have the atmosphere. And then I, of course, use myself as a model in the scene. Without me as a model in the scene, this photo wouldn't really work as well. But because I'm there and I work as the focal point, then that actually helps, of course, create scale because you can see the size of me, but it actually also emphasizes the context. It emphasizes the landscape because you have something to relate to me standing there on the hill. This is also a photo I've photographed several times and I've wanted to get something like this for years. So I'm very happy that I managed to do so back in the spring. On my previous versions of this photo, I actually decided not to include the immediate foreground that I've included on this one. But I actually found that I missed a little bit more depth in those photos. So this one here has a little bit more three dimensionality to it because of that immediate foreground. And the fog really helps separate the immediate foreground from the hill where I'm standing and then, of course, to the background forest and trees. And if you want to learn much more about depth and how to apply it in your photos, be sure to get my e-books on composition and landscape photography. Here I cover all the different compositional tools, as I call them, that I use whenever I compose my landscape photos. The minimal text and tons of examples makes the e-books super easy to read so we get to the point fast. And I've added extended EXIF data to all the different photos so you can see the settings and you can see whether I've used a filter, if I've exposure bracketed, if I've focus stacked it and so on and so forth. If you're in doubt whether you want these e-books, you can get the three free lite versions whenever you sign up to my newsletter. But if you want to go ahead and get the full versions, you can also get them bundled up with my e-book on lite for a small discount. There are links to everything down in the description of the video. So one thing I've not really done a whole lot over the past years is to photograph the spring Milky Way. So the spring Milky Way is where you can get the Milky Way as an arch over the sky, more so than just like straight up. And when I got the chance to go to a small island here in Denmark called Samsø, I jumped on that opportunity. So me and a photo body of mine, Martin, we went to Samsø to photograph the Milky Way during night because it's decently dark over there. So we found this mill and it just lined up perfectly with the Milky Way. This was a notoriously annoying edit, but the result, love it. The following day we went out into some hills and found a bunch of lone trees and we were super lucky to have this beautiful sun halo in the sky over an hour, maybe even two hours. So we actually had time to go around and find some interesting trees, line them up with the halo. And I asked Martin in this example to model for me there in the background. So you get a sense of scale and context also in this landscape. I also made sure to place the halo so it lined up exactly with the bottom branches of the tree. And I think that looks pretty cool. So on this year's Tuscany trips, we had amazing conditions, especially the first week this year was just we got so much morning fog, just got them at the perfect locations. And this blew our photo from the completely most photographed place in all of Tuscany, the beautiful villa Podere Belvedere with the surrounding fog in Val d'Orcia and you have those beautiful cypress trees just sticking out of the fog and you can just see the layers and the hills and the other villas there in the background and then the beautiful pre-dawn sunrise colors. It's just, oh, I so love this photo. And I've really been battling with myself whether I preferred this photo or this photo because I just had to include both of them from the same morning. So this year is, of course, just after sunrise where the fog just continued. And we got those beautiful early sunrise colors and then those blues in the shadow. And the fog was actually rising a little bit during sunrise, so it helps separate the different elements in the scene even more. As you can see, I've also photographed this one a little bit tighter than the previous one, maybe honestly a little bit too tight. I would have preferred to have a little bit more separation between the lower left trees and the frame. But nevertheless, I still absolutely love this photo here. And it's one of my top, top, top favorites of the year. After all, these are also the conditions that you just dream about when photographing this location. Like, I don't think it can get any better than this. One of my best experiences this year, even though I've traveled so much as I have, is actually just staying here in Denmark, where I went to a small island called Åmø. And here I wanted to photograph this beautiful yellow lighthouse. And I purposely went when there was a clear sky because I wanted the sunset and sunrise colors and photograph the lighthouse during the blue hour. However, after I've slept for about an hour and I woke up to photograph the early morning colors, I had fog that had rolled in. That was a massive surprise to me because I had not calculated with that. So I had this beautiful ground fog that just helped, of course, like separate the scene, but also add so much atmosphere. Besides the fog, I also love the color of the scene. So I have the yellows of the houses and the lighthouse. And I, of course, have that contrasted with the blues of the blue hour. And it just works so well, this type of color contrast. If you want to learn more about color, I have an entire chapter about that in my e-book about light in landscape photography. It was also very fun because I asked on Instagram, which one of the four photos from this session that you guys like the best. And luckily, my own favorite photo was actually also the one that won. This year I also went to Germany because over the past like half decade or so, I really wanted to photograph more of the beautiful German castles. And my top castle I wanted to photograph was Castle Hohenzollern. So I spent some days at Castle Hohenzollern in early August and waited for some fog to happen. I didn't get my perfect fog, but I did get something that was close enough to what I had envisioned. And I came away with this photo here of the castle popping out of the fog, which just like looks. This is just like a fairy tale, right? Like this is like Hogwarts on a mountaintop surrounded by fog or low clouds. Compositionally super simple. The castle straight in the middle. I even went with a 16 by 9 crop because I found that we don't want it to be too minimalist, I guess. And yeah, I can't believe that this is actually real, that there's such a fairy tale castle. And then you can photograph it on top of a mountaintop or a hilltop surrounded by low clouds or surrounded by fog. What's not to like? Dream photo. Another castle I also really wanted to photograph was Castle Neuschwanstein, which is just like the most famous fairy tale castle in the world. I decided not to spend as much time here as I had at Hohenzollern. But the weather that I got when there was just bonkers. I got amazing light, amazing atmosphere. And at one point where I was photographing it during evening, I got like rain clouds coming in. And at some point the sun broke out through those rain clouds and just lit up the atmosphere and the rain, which resulted in this photo here, which I just absolutely love. I captured several different versions of this, but I think this vertical here is my favorite. This year we also returned to Greenland, Ilulissat, where we just got again some bonkers photos. I got more whale photos on this single trip than I've got on all other trips combined. On the last morning, Jeroen has spotted a couple of humpback whales and they were just chilling around in the water. So they were quite easy to photograph with the drone so we could fly them out and just photograph straight down. Of all the many, many, many, many, many whale photos I got on this trip, I think this one here is probably my favorite. It's really hard to choose, but I really like that there's so much ice debris around the whales because it helps create context. This photo here is also part of my 2026 calendar. So if you haven't got the calendar yet, you can still make it. There's a link down below. Another photo from Greenland that I just absolutely love is this huge panorama. So this is actually a drone photo where I think it covers about 180 degrees. We found this beautiful big iceberg when we were sailing around in the ice fjord. And this iceberg is just super complex. Look forward to the Ilulissat video because I have even more photos from this area and they are bonkers. But what I really love about this shot is, of course, that we have the boat in there to help create scale, but also that the iceberg in and of itself is complex, but not overly complex. And we have some repetition of some different patterns with the lines in the... I don't even know what are outcrops of the iceberg that I also really like. And then, of course, the blues and the yellows contrasting. There's just so much to look at in this photo. The Dolomites also yielded so many beautiful photos this year. And I had to make some choices about which ones I like the best. But I do think that this one here of the Cardini Mountains is actually my favorite. It's one of those photos where you're like, I was just standing there with a Radler in my hand and photographing it and talking with the group and we were having a chill time after actually going and photographing the Cardini Mountains. In the morning, we went to the ridge, as you can see in the photo right here. But it was actually when we had walked to the next refugio and we actually got some low clouds moving in and around in the area that I could take a whole lot of different photos that I then added together as a time blend where I could come away with a photo where I have so much separation. I have the immediate foreground. I have some of the tourists or the hikers walking there in the foreground to create scale. And then I, of course, have the separation of the different layers throughout the scene. And this mountain range, like I photographed it for so many years, but I just absolutely love them. They're so epic and they're so pretty. And if you, of course, want to know how I edit my photos, such as time blending, blending different layers together, be sure to get my big post-processing course, Photoshop for Landscape Photographers. I've designed it so it's easy to get started. If you already use Lightroom, it's very easy to jump in. I use Camera Raw, which is a super simple and minimalist layout. It's the raw converter to Photoshop. But nevertheless, it's the same editing algorithm because Lightroom is built on Camera Raw. And I cover all my different editing techniques in more than 30 different editing videos. The entire course is more than 20 hours. And it's not because I'm slow. It's because there's a lot to cover. But you are going to learn so many different and very, very efficient ways of editing your photos. There's a link down below with a coupon code where you can get $45 off. Throughout the year, I've also tried to photograph the Northern Lights several times, and there's one location that I've returned to, I don't know how many times, five, six, seven times to photograph the Northern Lights. And I finally managed to get my Northern Lights with these two boats in the foreground and the reflection of the Northern Lights in still water here at the beginning of October. I finished like six different photos from this session, but I think this one here is my favorite. This is actually the second time I photographed this specific location with Northern Lights because I actually also managed to get one in spring, but I do prefer this one here as I find that the pillars are a little bit stronger than the spring photo. This year, I also managed to return to Iceland for the first time in like five years. I cannot believe how fast time flies. But yeah, it's actually been five years since I've been to Western and Northern Iceland. Jorunn and I run a workshop and we got so many good photos on this trip. One of my favorites is this one from Stødlagill Canyon. I wanted to get a shot with myself there for like, since I was there in 2019, I just didn't dare go down there at that point because it was so slippery. But this year I was like, no, I'm going to go down there and model. I got the shot here. And this this area is just so incredible. This canyon with these massive pillars of basalts. And then, of course, the river going through them. It just looks bonkers. I absolutely love this shot. And you can also see I've cropped it a little bit from when I presented it in my video from Northern Iceland. But I found that the foreground was a little bit too large relative to what I actually wanted to show with the photo, which was the basalt rocks. So I've cropped off the bottom and made it a 16 by 9 crop instead. Another of my top favorite photos of this year is a repetition of this shot here that I photographed for the first time back in 2019. I think I may have been the first one who got this angle because I shot it with my drone back then, which was a DJI Mavic 2 Pro. But to get this shot back then, you had to really crop in because you didn't have the longer focal lengths on the drones. This year, I could finally get a photo in higher quality because I could now zoom in. This year is actually a panorama of two photos or two horizontal photos with the six times zoom on the DJI Mavic 4 Pro. So one for the bottom and of course one for the top. And yeah, Aldeafoss, which is here and then me standing in front. It's just such an epic shot. And it just shows actually way better how big this waterfall actually is. It's hard to get that sense from most wide angle photos, but this one here definitely helps showing how big and dramatic the scene actually is. Another super productive trip this year was the one to Slovenia. We got so much fog this year, arguably a little bit too much at some points. But nevertheless, we got so many amazing photos. One of my favorites is this classic shot from Lake Bled. We actually had a really good morning. Both blew our photos like a burning sunrise with beautiful pink clouds. But I think my favorite is this one, which is just like mood with a bit of light coming through. And then, of course, the fog on the lake to help create that separation throughout the scene. And to the background, I just absolutely love the colors, how the orange roofs really come through the autumn colors on the islands. And of course, yeah, the church tower there in the middle. Super simple photo as it is. Reflection photos are one of those that most people agree that it's OK to put the horizon line straight in the middle of the shot. I got a shot last year where I introduced some leaves in the foreground. But when I have this fog and I have this atmosphere, I think this one here is just it just works so, so well. So my probably favorite photo from Slovenia this year is this one here of the church at Jamnik. So usually you want to go and photograph this place during morning because then you got the morning fog. Now, we also did that, but we got a little bit too much fog. The church did show itself for like a few seconds. But yeah, we didn't really get any shots. We were just standing in a cloud the entire morning. So we knew we had to return to get a photo of it. So we decided to go here during evening because we knew that there was actually a chance of getting a little bit of fog. According to the weather forecasts, we got the perfect foggy conditions here. Like you cannot get anything better because we get this local fog. We got the fog to separate the foreground from the church and the church is separated from the background mountains. And the thing that is so special is that you get those sunset colors with fog, which is not a phenomenon you see that often, even at this location. On top of that, I knew that I wanted to also get the light on the church. So I just kept this composition throughout the blue hour. And when the light went on on the church, I also got a shot. And then I blended the light from that shot onto the church from the sunset session. And I just think this just works so, so well. I love the cool colors of the fog. And then, of course, the warm colors of the church and the background mountains. And how to blend light into a scene like this is something I also cover in my Photoshop course. This photo here is also one of my absolute favorites of the year. I love everything about it. I make a very detailed breakdown of it in my recent video from Iceland. So if you want to see that, you can definitely check that one out. But here, the light, the composition, the depth, myself in the shot to give some scale, the sun star from the Laava 10mm. I don't even know. I can't say more than what I've already said about this photo. And my final favorite photo from this year is this one from Reynist Ranga. I don't think I need to say a whole lot more about this one either, because I also talk about that in my video from Iceland. But I finally got a burning sunset behind these beautiful, iconic sea stacks. I absolutely love them. And a detail I also really love is just how many seagulls are in the air flying around. This just looks so epic. As always, I want to end with a little montage of the photos that almost made it to my top favorite photos of the year. Thanks a lot for following along throughout the year. I really, really, really, really appreciate it, guys. I really appreciate all the comments that you leave on my videos. I really appreciate and must say a massive thank you to all of you who get my products, my e-books on composition and light, my Photoshop course. You are the ones who make this my job. And of course, you guys who also go on the different workshops. There are links to everything down in the description of the video and see you next week.