2025 In Ten Photos

Filtering a year's worth of photos down to ten pictures is an interesting exercise - every year I start with several hundred photos that I had marked as favorites close to the time I took them, and at the end of the year I pick about twenty of them that stand the test of time. Some of the original favorites have lost some of their sparkle as the emotions of that specific moment wane, while others have retained their quality when seen with some distance.

Whittling down the twenty to ten is like deciding which pet to let go of. Impossible choices. So after quite some internal monologue about why certain photos MUST stay and why that is no way to go about making a selection, here are the final ten... Ten photos that are maybe not all the best, but some of the best that I took this year.

Here is my 2025...

Clouds Over Minoo. There is a pond nearby where I often stop to catch a glimpse of the hills north of Minoo. Depending on the kind of weather that is moving into the Kyoto area from the Sea of Japan, there are often beautiful cloudscapes over the hills. This day was no exception.

The Wooden Ring of the Osaka Expo 2025. We visited they expo on its opening day, and while the crush at the entrance was considerable, the expo was actually still not as busy as much later during its run. After the sun had set, the stunning wooden ring was nearly deserted.

While I enjoy macro photography of insects quite a lot, I only rarely have the time and opportunity - this was a chance encounter with a gorgeous dragonfly in the garden of the Simose Art Museum near Hiroshima.

Art Cubes. Another shot from the ambitious Simose Art Museum, this time of their interconnected group of floating buildings that house temporary exhibitions.

Tower Of The Sun. A shot of the less-photographed backside of the Tower of the Sun in Osaka's Expo 1970 Park.

Innoshima Bridge. The bike path under the roadway of the bridge connecting Innoshima Island with Mukaishima Island near Onomichi.

Dusk Over Osaka University. The Minoo campus of Osaka University has a rather impressive modern brutalist facade, which really comes into its own when the light of the day is fading.

Keeping It Tidy. A Osaka policeman taking care of his ride while on a break at the Osaka Itami airport.

The soaring span of the Torikai Ohashi Bridge across Yodogawa River in Osaka. The city has a multitude of interesting bridges across its many waterways, many of them combining train and vehicle traffic.

Null2. The Null2 pavilion was only one of many unusual architectural statements at the Osaka Expo 2025 and many of them - but specifically this one - were tricky to photograph.