My Gallery of Survivors

So by now most of you know my embarrassing little habit: I spend hours - yes, hours - taking photos, looking at photos, judging photos, and then deleting photos with the cold efficiency of an unhinged digital minimalist.

The Elimination Round

Once a batch gets posted, the real carnage begins.

Another elimination round, where maybe four or five photos limp their way to survival.

On a really generous day? Maybe ten.

The rest?

Erased.

Deleted.

Vanished into the digital abyss.

And before you gasp, “But don’t you ever regret deleting them?” - of course I do. I’m not a savage.

I’ve had plenty of "damn I wish I still had that" moments.

And yes, yes, I know: external hard drive, cloud backup, blah blah blah.

But honestly, obsessive decluttering is my personality, so here we are.

What Makes Me Proud

What does make me proud, though, is when people use my photos.

Every time - whether they politely ask, silently snatch, crop out the watermark like a little gremlin, or actually give credit - I’m irrationally flattered.

Someone liked my photo enough to put it on their marketing?

Honestly? That’s a compliment.

And since I delete everything anyway, it’s not like I have proof they were mine to begin with - so shine bright, unauthorized reposters.

Do your thing.

Anyway—yes, I swear this ramble has a point.

Effort vs. Attention

Now that I’m almost a year into taking my hiking photos as seriously as my hikes (which is saying a lot), I decided to sift through whatever survived my mass deletions and pick my Top 20 Favourites of 2025.

It is pure suffering.

Can we talk about effort versus attention for a second?

Sometimes I take a photo I am convinced is a once-in-a-lifetime, creatively superior, museum-worthy masterpiece… and it gets absolutely no love.

Crickets.

Silence.

Meanwhile, the random “oh look, a trail again” filler photo casually becomes a fan favourite.

Make it make sense.

Which ones stand out?

Which ones only a mother would pretend to like?

Anyway, what was supposed to be a neat little “Top 20” somehow spiraled into a Top 100 Favourite Photos of 2025… because apparently asking me to choose is like asking me to pick a favourite child..