Quick announcement. We are hiring a land steward for the Niobrara Valley Preserve. This person will join our land management team and work with prescribed fire, cattle and bison grazing, invasive species suppression, and much more, across 56,000 acres of Sandhills prairie, woodlands, and one of the most scenic rivers in the Great Plains. It will be a lot of manual labor, but also a terrific opportunity to contribute to an innovative stewardship team looking for ways to manage for biological diversity and ecological resilience. Learn more and apply at nature.org/careers.

Well, we’ve almost made it through 2025. To say it has been an eventful year seems like a massive understatement. As I’m sure is true for many of you, I tried to manage stress and anxiety by spending time in nature – exploring with curiosity and wonder, and giving myself a break from the rest of the world for a little while. It helped.

Here are some of my favorite photographs from 2025, taken while I was out wandering (or lying on the ground) with my camera. I hope you all get some slower time in the next week or two to do things like scan through some nature photos – or whatever brings you joy and peace.

The above image is one of my favorites of the year because I like the photo, but also because it was taken on the very last day of my most recent year-long square meter photography project. The 2024-2025 iteration of that effort yielded photos of about 320 different species of plants, animals, and fungi. More importantly, it was an incredibly powerful and personal project for me – even more fun and engaging than my first attempt in 2018.

Below is a brief slideshow of some of my dragonfly and damselfly photos from this year.

Bullfrogs aren’t great, ecologically, in our Platte River Prairies wetlands. They’re not considered native to the area and can have pretty serious negative impacts on populations of other frogs. Dang it, they’re sure attractive, though – especially when I manage to sneak up close enough to stare into one’s eyes without it ducking away underwater.

During the dormant season, I still go out quite a bit – especially when there’s any snow or frost to provide accents to the landscape. The slideshow below includes some of my favorite cold-weather photos.

Early mornings in the summer prairie usually include a lot of dew drops. That means wet socks and pantlegs, but the photo opportunities more than make up for that.

I ended up with a lot of sunflower photos this year, including several different species. The slideshow below includes just a few of these. All but the first one were taken during the same short trip to the Niobrara Valley Preserve.

I meet a lot of skepticism whenever I post photos of, or talk about cattle grazing as a tool for prairie management. I get it. Many people have only seen poor examples of cattle grazing – chronically-overgrazed sites, for example, where both wildlife and plant diversity has been lost. If that’s your experience, it’s no wonder you’re skeptical.

That’s not because cattle are bad, though. That’s bad management. I like the photo below because it helps illustrate the idea that cattle (and/or bison) grazing can be used for good, as well. Many ranchers are doing a terrific job of managing their sites in ways that make them money while maintaining diverse, resilience prairie communities. I love working with cattle on our prairies, trying to keep them fat and happy while getting their help managing plant competition and shaping habitat structure. Bison are great, too, don’t get me wrong. But cattle can be used in a lot more places today than bison can, for a number of reasons, so I think it’s important to work with and learn about both.

At the end of May, I took a quick solo trip out to the Nebraska Panhandle for a couple days. I car camped and spent nearly all my waking hours wandering with my camera. I got some good photos, but also came back with renewed energy, ready to engage with work, family, and the rest of the world. The slideshow below has a few of my best shots from that trip.

Insects are always a favorite photo subject for me. This slideshow includes the ones I liked best from 2025.

During one trip to the Niobrara Valley Preserve this summer, a lightning storm came from the west and then skirted around us to the north, flashing all the way. I spent quite a bit of time watching it from a few different vantage points, enjoying the show and capturing some fun lightning photos.

The slideshow below features pollinators I photographed in 2025.

Here is a slideshow of 2025 spider photos. There are eight photos, not 2025. 2025 is just the year they were taken in.

Speaking of dewy summer mornings, insect photography is a lot easier when my subjects are slowed and sparkly. The two hoverflies below posed very nicely for me.

I don’t take a lot of sunrise and sunset photos, at least relative to how often I’m out at that time of day. Instead, I’m usually taking advantage of that early and late-day light to photograph spiders, flowers, or something else. The slideshow below, though, includes some of the images I got by including the sun itself in the photo.

It’s hard for me to walk past a milkweed seed without stopping to admire and/or photograph it. This one was suspended near the Niobrara River this fall (the light color in the bottom half of the background is the river, with the red/brown of the far bank above it).

A lot of you probably got to see some great northern lights displays this summer. It sounds like it might be a while before those of us who don’t live in northern latitudes get a show like that again. I was lucky to get two nights when the color was great and wind was calm.

Toward the end of the year, I made several visits to Lincoln Creek Prairie, which is where my square meter photography plot was. I wasn’t visiting my plot, though. I walked right through the prairie and down to the steep, eroded banks of the creek itself to photograph floating leaves. There were many thousands of leaves, so it was a fun challenge to find compositions that were pleasing to my eye.

Thank you, as always, for any time you spend looking my photos or reading what I write about. I am constantly grateful for the audience of this blog. You’re consistently kind, even when you offer a different perspective or opinion from mine. That interaction – both through the comments and when I get a chance to meet you in person – is why I keep doing this. I love learning from all of you, and hearing that anything I write or photograph brings you joy or inspiration.

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!