My Top 10 Favourite Photos From 2025
- Tristan Todd
- 3 days ago
- 8 min read
2025 was a great year, full of adventures and memories. Some good, some a bit crazy and some maybe borderline traumatic. The important part? Real places, real experiences and real photographs.
I made a lot of photos that I'm very happy with last year, and it required a lot of effort going through the whole photographic process. Hiking in the pouring rain, scrambling and scooting around canyon edges, bushwhacking, driving thousands of kilometres, not getting enough sleep, carrying 50 lbs on my back up mountain passes, having my tent destroyed by a winter storm, struggling to figure out a composition that doesn't totally suck, praying to the weather gods that lightning doesn't strike my tent... You get the idea!
I have zero interest in sitting at a computer, typing a few words and mass generating eye candy or visual clickbait for quick dopamine hits and social media clout. In 2025 it became possible to create very realistic videos with AI, while AI images became more convincing than ever. Yet this paradigm shift also makes our unique human experiences more important than ever, and it turns the artistic process itself into something more deeply existential. That process of making a photo, whether successful or not, is something I enjoy very much, and I wouldn't trade it for anything.
This all made me realize that our photographs no longer stand on their own, and it's not really enough to just post about them. We need to talk about the process too. I've done that a little bit on my blog, but not nearly enough! I'm going to write more about my experiences and my photographs, providing a window that looks into the human side of things. You can basically consider this blog the start of all that!
Anyway, enough rambling. Here are my top 10 favourite photos from 2025, in no particular order.
1: "Limerence"
March 5, 2025 1:07 PM
A rainy day in the Brothers Creek canyon of West Vancouver. This has become one of my favourite little spots to sit and have a snack while enjoying the present. There are so many things to observe and enjoy. The rocky walls, all the lush greenery, the cool patterns carved into the rocks by water, the beautiful western redcedars, the sound of the rushing water itself and the bubbles it makes... I could go on and on!
This was my second attempt at making a photograph of this scene. My initial attempt was on a sunny day and it wasn't bad, but it was missing something to make it more special. I came back on a rainy day and the soft light coming into the canyon was exactly what I needed. There is a fallen mossy tree across the canyon, which I used as a frame on the right side. If you look closely there are water droplets on it from the rain. The focus stacking was a bit tricky, but with a lot of patience, and squeezing out as much depth of field overlap with f/22, I managed to make it work.
2: "Eudaimonia"
September 25, 2025 9:56 AM
How do I describe the feeling of being here on such a beautiful morning? I suppose that's the point of the photo. The fog raced through this pass in Nlháxten/Cerise Creek Conservancy for hours. And when I say raced, I mean it. The wind was howling and I've never seen fog move so quickly. During one moment, the mountains would suddenly appear out of the mist, sunlight occasionally striking the lake, making it shine like a jewel. The next moment everything would disappear under that wet, cold blanket. Between the humidity, the temperature hovering just above zero and that evil wind, it was literally a face-numbing cold as a result, and the fingers were on fire trying to operate the camera. Even when I eventually donned gloves and handwarmers it was a struggle to keep the fingers warm. That wind was relentless!
I initially scouted this viewpoint on the previous trip in August, but the blue sky conditions weren't what I was looking for. In my mind I envisioned something more moody - low clouds/fog, dappled light and even a dusting of snow. While watching the forecast in September, a weather window aligned with some time off for me and Blake Randall, so we made the trip up there. There were two things that I needed to make the photo work for me: low clouds, and light in the background but not so much the foreground. The snow dusting was an optional bonus. Unfortunately we didn't get snow that morning, although it did snow a bit on our hike out the following day!
For the end result, I did a time-blend of two exposures to increase the visual feeling of depth and to better convey the feeling of being there. I'm a big fan of time-blending for the same reason people often like long exposures: it allows you to showcase multiple moments of an experience in one photograph. In the case of time-blending, it gives you more creative control over the photo while still remaining faithful to the scene. This is important because we don't experience time in discreet chunks, if that makes any sense. My memories aren't 1/100th of a second snapshots. That being said, I'm also quite happy with my single exposure version and will be entering it into NLPA this year!
3: "Altered State"
June 6, 2025 11:17 AM
I'd been meaning to get into this canyon for years and finally made it happen during a 1300 KM road-trip around Vancouver Island with Morgan Carmont. At the advice of a local friend, we knew what time the sun would be directly above the canyon, shining in. This ended up making the experience so much better - we got to watch an incredible transition of light throughout the canyon, and it was exactly what I needed for this photo.
What surprised me is just how many different potential compositions are in this canyon. It's pretty much endless. A lot of photos online are quite limited in what they show and would have you believe otherwise, but the whole thing is just mind-blowing. It's one of the most beautiful places I've ever stepped foot, and I made sure to take my sweet time moving through it, observing everything and trying to figure out interesting compositions. I suspect a lot of photographers try to rush through it and miss things. This one was my favourite from the day. I want to go back again, ideally on a sunny day immediately following a few rainy days.
4: "Undaunted"
October 21, 2025 12:45 PM
These are tricky mountains to photograph nicely. In the warmer months it's basically just a lot of boulders where all that snow is, and boulders always make things tougher. My fifth trip up to this mountain pass in the Waddington Range, and I finally figured something out. The snow covering all the boulders helped out a ton, allowing me to frame the mountains with trees while creating some nice tonal and textural separation between foreground and background. Some wonderful atmosphere and light helped out a ton too! Speaking of trees, I'm a huge fan of trees in the subalpine. They always have so much character thanks to the harsh growing conditions that they have to endure. Single exposure, 165 mm, 1/250 s, Æ’/11, ISO 100.
5: "Autumnal Dance"
October 19, 2025 12:27 PM
The changing of seasons in a photo. Winter above, fall below. We were waiting for the weather to improve so we could load up the helicopter and get dropped off in the Waddington Range, which gave us some time to photograph the beautiful autumn conditions. When it comes to trees, I think they're most photogenic after peak colour and some leaves have dropped. Especially with trees like this - it really complements their delicate yet strong and rugged appearance.
6: "Cinderscape"
August 6, 2025 12:54 PM
Hiking Panorama Ridge via Helm Creek rather than Garibaldi Lake is one of the best choices you can make. It is a little bit longer, but the hike takes you through some spectacular otherworldly terrain. The land up there was shaped by volcanic eruptions and glaciers, making for a very unique experience. It's quite stunning to be walking across the dark cinder flats that are occasionally interrupted by vibrant splashes of colour from trees, wildflowers and glacial meltwater. The trees in this photo are a great example of what I'm talking about!
7: "Timeless Places"
September 3, 2025 1:14 PM
What to do on a smoky, sunny September day? Go in the canyon, of course! I wanted to finally get into a section of Cypress Canyon that I'd yet to visit, because my annoying fear of heights gets triggered by the ledge you have to traverse and in the past I'd chickened out. But this time around I was determined to get there. The path you have to walk can be seen in my photo below, on the left side of the canyon. I brought a rope and tied it to the tree in the top of the frame, just left of centre, letting it hang down so I could use it as a handhold for extra stability. Having Blake along for the adventure helped provide some extra motivation, as he's a certified mountain goat compared to me. Then I had to clone the rope out of this photo - a small price to pay!
8: "On Light Wings"
August 6, 2025 5:40 PM
On my hike up to Panorama Ridge, I saw two other hikers who were on their way down. Once I got to the summit, I realized I had the entire place to myself which was pretty special. The view of Garibaldi Lake was stunning. I hung out for a while and tried to make some photos, unsuccessfully. Eventually it was clear a storm was starting to roll in, so I slowly made my way back down the mountain. I stopped at this viewpoint of the Helm Creek headwaters and sat for a few minutes to take it all in. Eventually I realized it would make a beautiful photo, so I put my bag down and got to work. I find it funny how I couldn't make a nice photo of the main attraction of the area, but this random lookout? No problem!
9: "The Endless Light"
September 3, 2025 2:30 PM
A silver lining of forest fire smoke is that it does make for nice light in the canyons. Plus the air at face level is generally still quite "fresh", as canyons don't just funnel water, they funnel air too. In 2025 I began to experiment with black & white landscape photography and this scene was a perfect candidate for conversion. If you want to see how I edited this from start to finish, check out my black & white editing tutorial!
10: "Beautiful British Columbia"
October 21, 2025 12:02 PM
If I had to choose a single favourite from 2025, this might be it. Coming up with the title was pretty easy - it felt like the right photo to borrow our province's slogan for! I'm still pecking away at the blog for this trip... there's a lot to write about. My main complaint about the conditions is that it wasn't cold enough. Camping in -10 c or colder is easier than when temperatures hover just below or just above zero. Dealing with all that moisture is a pain, particularly in the tent. Plus it would have been incredible to get some fresh ice on the lake. Oh well, beggars can't be choosers! If you want to see some footage from this trip, I've embedded it below the photo.
Thanks for taking the time to read through my blog and take a look at the photos. I hope you enjoyed it! This particular blog entry was intended this to be a companion for my new Frames of 2025 ebook. It contains every photo I made in 2025... and it's pay-what-you-want, which includes nothing. So you can have it for free if you'd like!
You can check out Frames of 2025 by tapping the above image, or clicking here.