This time of year it seems that every photographer is obligated to review and select her or his best photo of the year. It is also nice to do to see if you spent your year well or wasted a bunch of time going out and taking lousy photos. My main gage of which photos are best is based on what I think and what my Flickr results were. My opinion is not only based on how much I like the photo but also on how much I enjoyed taking the photo. Flickr is the main social media place that I share photos and the results I get there tend to be based on whether or not my photo was added to Flickr Explore, a daily highlighting of photographs that may or may not have been curated in some way (I don’t really know).
Anyway, first what I think. I think that a photo that I took at sunrise in Shenandoah National Park is my best of this year. I really like the photo and intend to have it printed and I really enjoyed being there and getting excited as the new day’s light poured across the landscape. Much to my disappointment, this image was not added to Flickr Explore, but I have gotten 76 likes for it (which is a large number for me).
My runners up photos. More photos that I really like AND I really enjoyed taking. After looking through all of photos and selecting these, I thought that perhaps I didn’t have such a terrible year taking photos after all. And I had a lot of fun going to the places where these photos were taken.
What does Flickr say was my best photo of the year?
You can find me on Flickr as Jason Frels, or click on the flickr picture below.
First, I’ll start by saying that I only have about 253 followers on Flickr and I generally only add a few of my photos to Flickr that are landscape (but not always), and I generally put each photo into 20 – 30 groups in which they appear in the feed of group members.
Second, when a photo is added to Flickr Explore it gets many times more views and likes, and the number of views and likes it gets partly depends upon how high up in the Explore page it is placed. So, this may not be the best measure of how good an image is but it is what I have to go on. I also have no idea how pictures are selected for Explore, there seems to be good photos there from a wide sampling of genres, so I assume it is human curated, but I also see some oddball stuff get in so who knows.
Thirdly, I had six images added to Flickr Explore this year, which is a good number for me. The six images are in the gallery below.
So, after being added to Flickr Explore and being viewed 8485 times and receiving 323 faves, this photo of a Shenandoah waterfall was my best performing photo on Flickr this year:
I think it is a fine photo, but I never considered it to be one of my best. But it was added to Explore and did better than the others. My best performing photo that was NOT added to Flickr Explore was the Sunrise Above the Clouds at Shenandoah that I have at the top of the blog.
So with all of this, I consider the Sunrise Above the Clouds at Shenandoah to be my best photo of the year. It was nice to do this because I don’t feel like I have taken many good photos in the last month or so, aside from perhaps the Burnet County Courthouse, and this cheered me up a bit.
What do you think?
Jason Frels 
I’m torn between the Shenandoah picture and the milky way shot at night. I absolutely enjoy the waterfall one as my second vote. Great pictures!
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The waterfall is great , but I really like the boat picture .
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Thanks, I enjoyed that kayaking trip and I’ll have to do it again soon.
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How do you choose? They’re all so good. I love the Shenandoah sunrise pic. But, just reflecting my own personal tastes, I prefer the Badlands-Storm photo the most.
This was an enjoyable post, because it brought back memories of seeing all these photos over the past year.
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Thanks. Regardless of how good the photos are, I had fun taking them. I didn’t feel confident enough to make a calendar this year, but maybe next
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I had the audacity to make a calendar for 2022, with my mediocre photos. And it was damned expensive. I decided to skip that exercise for 2023.
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I made a photo colander instead. You do have to strain to see the picture though.
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That’s okay. Your photos are so good, I don’t mind poring over them.
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🙄
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You can keep your photo colander. I actually didn’t have to get my own calendar, Brad got it for me. A beautiful waterfall one. 🙂
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It figures that you both decided not to do calanders this year. Had to get my own! ! And after I gave you both laganiappes, ( I do like that new word ).
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But you keep misspelling it. There are only two a’s in lagniappe. Maybe next year I’ll get you a Spelling calendar.
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Its a new word, I obviously need to use it more so I can learn to spell it right. No spelling calendar needed!
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You’re in luck. There’s no such thing as a spelling calendar.
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The first letters of the months July thru November spell JASON so that works well.
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Oh gosh! 😶🤚!
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Interesting. I’ll bet those are your favorite months of the year.
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I knew that but I also know not to underestimate you and the things you can come up with!
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Actually, JASON proved me wrong.
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Yes, the crazy stooge did, guess you don’t know what you thought you did. 😛.
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Why would you have to guess that? Either you know I didn’t know what I thought I did, or you didn’t, and I did did.
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😶🤚!
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Learning these new words you are becoming quite the blatherskite.
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Pftttt you doolally PUNderhead! Guess I need a new name for 2023.
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Although I always enjoy photos of the night sky, your beautiful Shenandoah sunrise photo is my favorite.
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Thanks. I appreciate the nice comments
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Glad to know that you have a good memory to go along with your Sunrise above the clouds photo. That one is my favorite among the photos you posted, but there are very close seconds!
The canoe in the lake
The Shenadoah waterfall and
The buffalo at the water all come in second.
Thanks for all the wonderful photos to view over this year. Looking forward to more!
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I took a bunch of photos of some geese today. I don’t think I have to worry about them making the list
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LOL! I liked the one.
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