Behind the Image: Cover of the 2026 Images of Wilderness Wall calendar.

Welcome back, for those of you who have been to my blog in the past! Welcome to you for the first time, if not! I cannot even begin to estimate the number of times I have wanted to sit down and write a blog entry this past year only to be confounded by other obligations and near weekly road trips to the Atlantic coast. It’s a good problem to have, but the now frozen mulch pile in my driveway serves as a testament to the harried schedule that was 2025.

I can still get it done before New Year’s Day! ;-)

Awkward opening aside, as I assembled this year’s edition of my Images of Wilderness Wall calendar and desk calendar I thought it might be interesting to discuss the backstory behind each of the thirteen images that were selected for 2026. I would otherwise be largely silent about them unless asked, so why not? They’re meaningful to me above all the others that I imaged this year, so let’s take them one at a time a chat about them.

I rarely discuss camera settings, but I included them here to add further information about the work behind each. I will, however, avoid identifying specific locations in line with my philosophy to try to reduce my overall impact and to encourage individual exploration.

If you have any questions about any of the material here or any of the images, drop a comment below and let’s chat!

For the cover of this year’s calendar I strived to avoid redundancy with previous years and to use an image that has wide appeal and a nice pop of color. The cover is not displayed long by customers since the calendar images themselves start with January, so I have liberty to use something possibly catchy or maybe not as in line with other monthly images contained within the calendar itself.

This is the ninth year of printing these annual calendars and all previous eight editions have all been printed at 11x14 inches in a vertical format. I wanted to do something different this year and so decided to go horizontally and utilize the new option for double-sided printing with my printing partner.

That’s my way of saying I rotated it this year and so now when you open it you have a full 14x11 space for the image and text and a full 14x11 space for the calendar dates themselves. This gives the user plenty of space to write, but also a larger space for the image. All of the images were cropped to the 2:3 ratio to fit this space which includes a buffer around the images. It opens to a wall space that’s now twice as large as all previous calendars without using any additional paper!

Other finer-detail modifications: I went with art grade matte paper for ease of viewing and writing and also included all major US holidays for the first time.

“Daybreak on the Adirondacks.”
The cover image was the result of a good bit of luck! I was out in this area to get some top-down and high-angle of incidence images of wetlands for a project I am still envisioning. The Mavic 3 drone I have recently begun using was critical for these perspectives. To get them and to fit the shoot into my hectic schedule I arrived on the scene well before sunrise. Coffee in hand, I scouted the area and kept a close eye on cloud cover. I always take what comes my way with photography, but I did kind of need some clouds for what I was hoping to photograph.

As the sky began to lighten and the landscape features became more obvious, I began to record my images from approximately 350 feet up. All was going perfectly fine and I managed to get some images that may eventually work for this nascent project. As I was starting to conclude my work I noticed that the clouds to my East were beginning to light up. In particular, a cloud that for simplicity sake resembled an eyebrow over the hill next to me. I moved the drone into position to isolate the hill in case things improved in terms of lighting. That helped to eliminate a nearby road and a small cabin from the scene, leaving the appearance of uninterrupted forest.

By the time I framed up the sky seemed to explode with amazing light. There was all sorts of warm / cool contrast going on in the sky. It was very bright over the Southern edge of the hill and the foreground was in deep shadow, so a five exposure bracketed image was hopefully going to be of help. Closed down the aperture and dropped the ISO a bit for finer detail and recorded a series of images. The cover image (“Daybreak on the Adirondacks”) is one of these.

Once I got the images I had envisioned a few moments earlier and a couple for peace of mind, I asked myself what else do I see? Well, given the left to right range of this scene and the width of these hills I figured a stitched panoramic image of the scene could be helpful. So I started to the Northeast and rotated the drone on its pivot, recording a five bracketed exposure for each adjustment. Essentially moving the drone about 1/3 of the scene for each frame. Five frames all together were needed to record this panoramic image, so a blend of 5x5=25 bracketed exposures to create one HDR panoramic image. I was not certain it would work since I was not thoroughly caffeinated and was a bit overtired, but the results came out quite nicely.

The panoramic version of the cover image is shown below. The detail on magnification is impressive, I’m looking forward to the possibility of including it in my Adioronack print offerings if it holds up under close scrutiny.

So, the cover was a good bit of right place at the right time but also a very strong reminder to always being open minded in the field to alternatives. Those alternatives, if you let your imagination and preconceived ideas about your objective, can often yield some strong images. Be flexible, you may find you come home with more compelling and meaningful images for your own collections.

What can I speak to in more detail? Questions? Comments? Would love to chat about it all. Drop a comment below! See you in a day or two to chat about the January 2026 image!

“Daybreak on the Eastern Adirondacks Panorama.”

f8 @ 1/40s x 5 bracketed exposures
ISO 100
Five bracketed frames from left to right blended and processed in Adobe Lightroom.
Native resolution = 6955x3835 pixels.

“Daybreak on the Adirondacks.”

Image Info:
Exposure date: October 25, 2025
Location: Eastern Adirondacks
Camera: Hasselblad aboard DJI Mavic 3 Classic
Exposure: 1/4 s (Multiple exposure blend of five bracketed frames due to high dynamic range.)
Aperture: f8
Filter: None
Processing: HDR blend in Adobe Lightroom

Bigger and bolder for the new year! 2026 (left) vs. 2025 (right).

The official 2026 cover!