A year on the road, over 100 days, across some of North America’s most compelling landscapes. Here are my favorite shots from 2016, with the technique behind each one.

January

The Tombolo in Grand Marais is one of the most iconic shooting locations on Lake Superior. On this morning the clouds were perfect and ice caps on the rocks completed the scene. I used a 3-stop reverse ND grad to darken the sky and a 5-stop ND filter to smooth the water into silk.

February

Light pillars form when ice crystals in the atmosphere catch and reflect light sources below them. Rather than making the pillars the subject, I tucked them behind a tree line and let the stars take the top of the frame — the colors of the night sky did the rest.

March

Getting the camera almost to water level and placing the sun directly behind an old dock piling at f/16 created a natural starburst. The Nikon 20mm f/1.8 is sharp enough that you can stop down that far without losing too much to diffraction.

April

Spring in the Smokies means flowing water, crystal clarity, and dogwood bloom. I hiked back to the car in heavy rain to grab an umbrella, then returned to get this shot. A neutral polarizer pulled out the colors and eliminated reflections from the water surface.

May

This was my first night shoot with the Sigma 35mm f/1.4 Art lens, bought with a grant from the Arrowhead Regional Art Council. The detail the lens pulls out of the Milky Way is remarkable — the core looks enormous behind the Tombolo’s distinctive silhouette.

June

A workshop sunrise in the Badlands. The formations change color dramatically in the first minutes of light, which makes this one of the best locations in the country for golden hour landscape photography.

July

While scouting the Mississippi River bluff country near Guttenberg, Iowa, I spotted the American Queen — the largest steamship currently working the river — coming upstream to lock through the dam. The whole town turned out. A lucky find on a scouting trip.

August

A shot like this wasn’t technically possible a decade ago. Handheld, on the water, in a moving canoe: ISO 3,200, 0.4 second shutter, vibration reduction on. Modern sensor technology and in-lens stabilization made this image. Gear matters more than people admit.

September

The Old Patriarch — the oldest known tree in Jackson Hole — takes some navigation to find in the dark. The hike out felt sketchy but was completely worth it. One of my favorite night images of the year.

October

The peak sunrise of the year came during a fall workshop at the Caribou Lake overlook. I stacked a 3-stop reverse ND grad with a 2-stop soft ND grad (both Singh-Ray) to balance the bright sky against the shadowed foreground and pull detail out of both.

November

Shot after an evening Lightroom class, this moonrise caught the full Beaver Moon clearing the horizon over the Tombolo. The Tombolo keeps giving — it’s a reliable location in almost any light and any season.

December

On the Early Winter Badlands Workshop, I climbed into a notch in the formations and raised my hands to the sky while a student captured the shot. The airglow that night was red rather than the typical green — something I hadn’t seen before and haven’t seen since.