🪾Why Stick Season Deserves a Second Look

Let’s raise our tripods to the end of 2025!

In the last email, I asked what you wanted to read more about next, and one answer rose clearly to the top: why stick season is such a valuable time to be out as a nature and landscape photographer. So I’m sharing my thoughts on stick season and how to observe what the landscape reveals when the noise falls away.

This issue also focuses on how we prepare. I’m sharing a thoughtful new photography app along with a few Trail Finds.

As the holiday rush winds down, I hope this newsletter offers a small moment to reflect, slow your pace, and step into the year ahead with a little more clarity and calm.

Here's to seeing what others miss,

THE OBSERVANT LENS
Reflections to deepen our craft and sharpen our vision

Why Stick Season Deserves a Second Look

It’s the season many people discount. The leaves are gone, the forest looks muted, and everything feels a little bare. Around here in Appalachia, we call it stick season, that quiet window between autumn color and snow. Your version might look different: the dry season, the dormant period, or winter’s quieter months. Whatever you call it, the principle holds. This is when the landscape reveals its structure.

Without foliage blocking your view, you can see things that are invisible the rest of the year: the curves of the land, how water moves through terrain, where wildlife travels. This is when I train my eye and build the compositional instincts that carry into every other season.

If you’ve been wondering what to photograph right now, or why winter hikes are worth the effort, this reflection offers a different way to see the quietest months.

Read the Full Reflection

2025 BEST GIFTS FOR NATURE PHOTOGRAPHERS
Gifts We Actually Want

Speaking of the quieter months, if you're looking for ways to stay engaged with photography through winter, or know someone who is, I’m resharing the best gift list here.

It’s a curated mix of educational resources, creative inspiration, and practical tools that proved genuinely useful throughout the year. If you’re still gathering ideas, or want a thoughtful list to save for later, this one’s worth bookmarking.

See the Best Gift List

FIELD NOTES ON PHOTOPACK PRO
Tools and Practices That Support Time Outdoors

A sanity check for packing that actually makes sense for photographers. My friend and peer Michael Rung just released PhotoPack Pro, a thoughtfully designed packing and prep phone app built specifically for photographers.

What I appreciate most is how complete and practical it feels. From reminders to charge batteries, to safety and field essentials that are easy to overlook, it walks you through everything worth thinking about before a photography outing. The starter checklist is solid, and the real power is being able to customize lists for different destinations and landscapes so you’re not reinventing the wheel every time.

It’s a one-time purchase, no subscription, privacy-first, and works offline. There’s an introductory price through the end of December, and an Android version is in the works.

Explore PhotoPack Pro

FOCUS POINTS
To utter, repeat, and shape our mindset

“To see things as they are, we must abandon our plans.”
— Aldo Leopold

TRAIL FINDS
Curated resources, news, and inspiration for your journey

1.) Photo Planning Made Easy Webinar by Michael Frye
Michael Frye is hosting a live webinar on Feb. 21, 2026, at 1:00 PM Eastern, focused on using PhotoPills and The Photographer’s Ephemeris to plan light, celestial events, and landscape alignment.

2.) Sarah Marino on Winter Small Scenes in Yosemite
Sarah Marino shares a winter photo journal from Yosemite National Park, reflecting on finding intimate landscapes, creative freedom, and inspiration in a place with a deep photographic history.

3.) Mark Denney Explains Lightroom’s New Point Color Variance Tool
Mark Denney dives into Lightroom’s Point Color Variance control and shows how it fixes uneven saturation and color inconsistencies in landscape images.

4.) TIME’s Top 100 Photos of 2025
TIME’s annual selection emphasizes meaning over polish, using photography to reflect the defining moments of the year.

5.) Christian Möhrle on Cleaning Up Mask Edges in Lightroom
Christian Möhrle shows how to reduce haloing and white edges in Lightroom by refining range masks and building cleaner masking transitions.

6.) Kah Wai Lin’s Clothing Guide for Winter Photography Trips
Kah Wai Lin shares a field-tested guide to winter clothing for photographers, shaped by expeditions in extreme cold.

7.) Franka Gabler’s Landscape Book Series
Franka Gabler releases a trio of spiral-bound landscape books featuring intimate and iconic scenes from Yosemite Valley, the High Sierra, the Eastern Sierra slopes, and Death Valley.

8.) NANPA Showcase 2026 Winners Announced
NANPA announces the 2026 Showcase winners, featuring 250 awarded images from nearly 3,000 entries worldwide, with Michelle Valberg’s Wind & Stone earning Best in Show..

9.) Shanda Akin’s Photography Project Gallery
Shanda Akin releases a deeply personal photography project, Resiliency, Finding a Path Forward, using winter trees as a metaphor for grief, healing, and resilience.

10.) Ron Coscorrosa’s Spring in New Zealand Gallery
Ron Coscorrosa shares a photographic recap of a recent trip across New Zealand’s South Island, featuring challenging weather, dramatic landscapes, and wildlife encounters.