Some years my photography seems to grow and others if feels like it regresses. I would expect nothing less with a creative endeavor, but it doesn’t make it any easier when you look back at a year’s worth of work and realize all the time and energy you put in ended up in shit photographs (no worries, I do appreciate the effort and act of taking the photographs regardless).

Fortunately, I won’t have to experience that sort of dread this year as it was a banner year for David Mullin in the photography department (IMHO). Since this is my first full year on Substack, I thought I’d go through each photo and comment on whatever comes to mind. Not all these photos may be the “best” ones I took over the past year, but they are my personal ten favorites. There’s a confidence in my work that I haven’t had in a while, and it’s due in no small part due to the interactions I’ve had with the community on this platform.

Shadow and Bloom

I wrote about my penchant for macro flower photography earlier in the year, so I won’t retread that here. What I will say is my macro photography took quite a leap this year. Amongst all the colorful flowers, however, came this sharp-to-soft photograph in black and white. It was love at first sight. It was my favorite photo of the year until my trip to the Southwest, but even now, it’s up there for me.

A Moment in Color

I don’t talk about my love for baseball much for whatever reason. I guess because this space is reserved for all things photography (but some life stuff too). Anyways, one of the first trips my wife and I took after I purchased the Leica M11-P was down to San Francisco to see our first Giants game of the year. After only having a monochrome M camera, I was excited to take pictures in color. We stayed at a hotel close to MOMA. In the back of the museum in an alley near the parking lot was this alley full of colorful walls. I took several shots, both in landscape and portrait modes. Something felt like it was missing, however, so I asked my wife to sit down at the bench and look like she was doing something. This was the first picture to stand out using my new camera.

Walking into Sunset

San Diego is one of my favorite places. In mid-May we drove down to spend a few days at an Airbnb on Mission Beach. There’s a local bar that we like to hang out in whenever we’re down there and we were coming back from it when I spied this woman walking her dog. I quickly retrieved my camera from its bag and snapped a few pictures before she and her canine companion were gone. On a previous day, I had spotted the potential of this scene with the fantastic fading light, but it lacked a subject, so I was ecstatic when it all came together. This one is up there for my favorite of the year.

Golden Tower

For my birthday this year, we spent the day in San Francisco. The first thing I wanted to do upon waking up was walk across the Golden Gate Bridge. Ironically, I grew up less than ten miles from it but never walked across it until a couple of years ago. Now I take every opportunity whenever possible. The photographs from the first part of the walk are all blown out because I forgot to check my settings from the night before. Thankfully, I discovered my error before ruining the entire event (shooting for over 25 years? Really?). By that time the fog had started rolling in, so I took advantage as best I could. I’m proud of this photograph because I’ve had a few people tell me they have never seen a photo of the Golden Gate Bridge like it before. That’s pretty impressive since it’s probably the most photographed bridge in the world.

Tower Theater

2025 marks the end of my photography teaching career. I’ve had fun over the years teaching others the joy of photography. I will admit to not missing talking about the exposure triangle ever again, though. But on one warm evening in early summer, I was teaching a student how to take long exposure photography. I took him to downtown Roseville to get some streaks from passing headlights. While in between sets of cars, I noticed the lights of the tower theater came on, so I took my camera off its tripod and grabbed this shot. I’d taken pictures of the outside of the theater many times before, but when I got home I realized I had gotten something special.

Lake View

In mid-August, one of my daughter’s friends, who’d she known since they were in grammar school, was getting married up near Eureka. On the drive up we passed through Clear Lake and I spotted this bench overlooking the water. Since we were in a time crunch, I made a mental note to stop and take a picture on our way back. So when we drove back through I asked the family if it was okay to stop so I could take a picture. I’m proud of this photograph because usually I just compose and fire away making adjustments on the fly. But I knew I wanted a Portra type of look so I set the exposure compensation to plus one and took several different compositions. I LOVE minimalist photographs and this was one of my favorites I’d ever taken.

Solar Powered

If it’s not apparent by now, we love to travel and hang out on the California coast. I grew up closer to it than we live now, so it’s sort of a little homecoming every time we visit the ocean. Aptos is a small beach town a hundred or so miles south of San Francisco. If I had to toss a coin between living in San Diego or Aptos, I would be excited no matter which side came up. We arrived at our condo around sunset and while looking out at the view, I noticed this lamp next to the window. I thought it might be cool to wait for the sun to set behind the unlit bulb so it would look like the sun was the light source. I’ve shown this photo on a couple of recent posts because it’s also a contender for my favorite photograph of the year.

Across the River

This is one of the photographs that means more because of how it was taken rather than the subject matter. My wife and I were on the train from Durango to Silverton in Colorado in an open railcar. I set my camera to 1/1000 of a second in order to stop any sort of motion blur from the from a moving train. As we came around a bend on the tracks I saw this bridge coming up so I made sure to lean over the side a bit in order to get a clean shot. From the 800+ shots I took over the course of the trip, this one stood out the most to me.

Delicate Arch

It’s hard to know if the 1.5 miles hike (that felt more like 5) to Delicate Arch contributed to my current knee issues, but by the time we reached the top and this wonderful view, I could almost have cared less. Fortunately, it was a partly cloudy day and I knew it would contribute to a more dramatic photograph. I used Photoshop to remove the smattering of people that were around the arch itself. As of this writing, this one is being printed on acrylic to hang on the wall in our family room.

The General Store

Saved the best for last. After we left Arches National Park and made our way through Nevada on The Loneliest Highway, I was done with photography. It had been a fun and full ten days, but I hit the wall photography-wise. My wife pointed out a few subjects along the way but I simply had zero interest. After spending the night in Ely, we continued our way across the emptiness that is the state of Nevada. As we descended into the tiny town of Eureka, I noticed this old brick store and knew that I had to suck it up and stop. I’m glad I didn’t blow this one off as I think this is my favorite picture of the year.

That’s it for my favorite ten pictures of 2025. Going back over this post the one glaring thing that sticks out is how “clean” they all are. Now, that’s an aesthetic I like but I think it’s even better in part, rather than in totality. So for 2026, I’m going to break out the film cameras and get some grittier photographs to compliment this cleaner look.

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My Favorite Ten Photographs of 2025