
Above and below is a long offering of other photos from the past year that I liked -- the honorable survivors of my efforts to brutally evaluate my own work.
One of those survivors is above -- sunset over McGee Canyon in the Eastern Sierra. I literally shot this one as I was getting in the car after a long dayhike. At the time, I thought it was a throwaway, but I really like how the frame is divided into thirds: dark mountain, less dark mountain, sky with an interesting cloud. That's it. Very simple.
As I wrote the other day, I think it really helps to look back at work and see what still impresses and doesn't after some time has passed since shooting and/or processing an image.
I find that my contempt for much of my work grows with time. Flaws magnify. Questions gnaw (what the fuck was I thinking?). Doubt festers. And a little self-contempt is a good thing.
In the competitive field that is photography, the only way to really get better is to practice, practice, practice and make a good, fine mess of things. If you do that, something will come out the other side that doesn't entirely suck.
If I made any progress in the past year, it's on a few fronts:
•I never put my camera on automatic any more. EVER. This forces me to consider the fundamentals of photography every time that I shoot: aperture, shutter speed, focus and ISO.
•I spend a lot of time thinking about composition and shapes -- and getting rid of extra crap from my photos. I found this post by Ken Rockwell on composition to be extremely helpful.
•I actually remove my tripod from the trunk of my car and use it. This allows me to shoot at low ISOs, slow shutter speeds and narrow apertures when called for.
•I rounded out a nice lens lineup for my Nikon D5100 by purchasing two used lenses: the Nikon 70-300mm telephoto (on a DX camera it's the equivalent of a 105-450mm lens because of the smaller sensor) and the Nikon 85mm macro lens (Nikon calls it micro, but it's macro). They joined my existing Nikon DX 35mm 1.8 lens and Nikon DX 10-24 wide angle lens. All four of my lenses are sharp and they all have specific uses.
•I found some presets for Lightroom 4 that I really like that make my digital photos look more like film -- and also speed up the time I spend processing. I limited my post on my best work to 14 photographs.
I was more forgiving with the honorable mentions -- it was a nice chance to revisit some photos/memories from the past year and offer up some insights/critiques.
All of these photos are available as prints at very reasonable prices, including mounted options that are ready for hanging. More info here. Please feel free to check out my SmugMug site for all my work.

A nice view of Mt. Morrison and the Eastern Sierra near Mammoth Lakes, taken from Benton Crossing Road. It's a nicely composed photo. The only real knock is the light could have better. This was shot in the early afternoon of an early March day.

It's just a common fly. But there are two things in this photo I really like. The first is the fly seemingly looking at its own shadow. The second is the composition: three leaves neatly divide the frame with a little bit of black space thrown in. I didn't include in my "best" photos because the primary leaf is perhaps just a little too shiny and that shininess is smack in the middle of the frame.

The peaks of Zion National Park as seen at sunset from a vista on nearby BLM land in a photo that's about the interplay of light and shadow in red rock country. If there had been a few puffy white clouds, this probably makes my "best of 2013" list.