Today I would like once again to take a look back at the past year – a special year. This year too, I will start off in a “statistical” way before moving on to some images from nature 😉 Long-time blog readers know that I have made it a habit to give an insight once a year into how much effort goes into the images and how much “output” comes out of it. If you don’t need that, simply scroll down to the collages and my qualitative review… let’s get started!
This year I focused very strongly on two genres of nature photography: landscape photography and bird photography. But a few other genres also made an appearance from time to time, as you can see from the graphic:
Overall, I spent 89 “days in the field” out in nature – most of them abroad. During that time, I produced 401 images; a handful from this year I will only be showing shortly.
A small note: this year I refined the way I calculate the figures. Up to now, by “images” I always meant the number of publications that were visible on the website. However, this is imprecise when it comes to the question of how many images are actually produced sustainably in a given year. With a time lag, there is always some attrition between the images you publish in the short term and the images you ultimately keep in the long run or still like in retrospect. I am now making this gap visible.
The “cleaned” image count can, after all, be displayed in Lightroom at the press of a button. Images that no longer meet my quality standards are no longer in my catalogue at all. If you’re interested, I have described this in detail in this article about my workflow.
For the number of images published on the blog and in the gallery, however, all years had to be manually recounted, which was quite a lot of work – unfortunately there was no other way, as over the years there have repeatedly been shifts / additions / deletions, for example due to the change of year. Just for your information. So now, on with the numbers:
The average number of “cleaned images” per day in the field was therefore around 4.5, which I am very happy with. For an individual sunrise or sunset session, that works out at an average of 2.5 images, as I did not have two sessions on every day in the field.
If you’re interested, you can find the detailed figures in the historical overview below. As just mentioned: the number of (cleaned) images refers to those that meet my current “quality standard”. Or, put more simply: these are the images I still like today 😉 For example, in 2009 I already spent a lot of time on nature photography, but by today’s standards only a single image has remained in my Lightroom catalogue:
In this year, some figures increased slightly, as we also spent our parental leave abroad in wonderful landscapes, and the camera was usually with us on our shared outings. The number of blog posts was also 31, making it the highest it has been in four years.
So much for the pure quantity in 2025, which of course says nothing about the quality 😊
However, I was also extremely happy with the quality. For several reasons, this was not something that could be taken for granted this year, especially as it was the first full year in which we travelled with our little Ben. We had no idea how it would work and simply took things as they came – and it worked wonderfully 😊 The little one is a nature fan, especially of all the animals in it 😅 By now he even runs towards the subjects…
I think the following collages give a small impression of the wonderful moments and light moods we experienced. By the way, the images in the collages are all cropped, but all of them are available in full size in my gallery 😉
Here are 20 moments from 2025 in landscape photography:
Once again, on none of our trips did we have even two consecutive days of rain or other unphotogenic conditions – at most for a few hours at a time. For some reason, we’ve had luck on our side in that respect for several years now.
My wildlife year was certainly varied as well, with four new bird species added to my portfolio and several image ideas that I’d had in mind for a very long time and that finally worked out this year. Here are 20 moments from wildlife photography:
And finally, 20 wonderful moments from the world of nature details, colours and forms.
Especially when it came to the laurel trees on Madeira, the gladioli on Mallorca, and the waves of the Algarve, this was particularly enjoyable for me this year:
At the moment, we are back in Portugal, where we are once again leading a 9-day photography tour this year and enjoying the wonderful winter climate of the Algarve. Afterwards, we will be spending almost two more weeks privately with our little one, soaking up the atmosphere in the south.
I would like to wish you all a happy new year in advance and a few relaxing days over the holidays.
And above all, I would like to say a heartfelt thank you for your interest as blog readers!
I am always happy to receive feedback by email, and you are also very welcome to leave me a review on Google if you enjoy the blog 😉
Best regards,
Thomas