Seeing the Sourlands: Favorite Photos of 2025

By Jim Amon

As regular readers of these essays know, I have stopped writing new pieces about the flora and fauna of the Sourlands. But I haven't stopped walking there, nor have I stopped photographing. For me, it is more than a fascinating and endlessly beautiful place for a walk — it is an escape, an anchor to sanity in a world that I find to be full of sadness and turmoil.

Here are ten of the photos I took this year on walks in the Sourlands.

One day last January, it rained, then freezing temperatures moved in, and the next day the sun shone brilliantly, turning every limb and twig into a sparkling jewel.

I have often wondered how ducks can stand on ice without getting their feet freezing cold. They don't have feathers or other forms of insulation on their feet. Usually, I shrug off such questions, but this time I didn't. After a little research, I learned that the veins and arteries in their feet are very close together. The warm blood in their arteries, coming from their hearts, warms the chilled blood that their veins picked up from the ice.  

I recently visited the Asian wing at the NY Metropolitan Museum of Art. That may have influenced this photo.

There was a slight wind to ruffle the surface of the water and the sun was shining brightly to add sparkle to each ruffle that was reflecting this tree.

The veins in a leaf serve the same purpose as the veins and arteries in a human circulatory system. They transport nutrients and water to the rest of the leaf and photosynthesis-made sugars from the leaf to the rest of the tree. Leaves, no matter how much rain falls on them, do not take in water; it comes from the roots.

I never look at a landscape without including the clouds as part of the composition before me. That was reinforced when I became member number 49,348 in the international Cloud Appreciation Society. Really. Check it out.

On a foggy morning the Delaware River conceals many mysteries. We should not see the river as a dividing element in the landscape: It is a force that unites what is on its sides. The geology in Pennsylvania across from New Jersey's Sourlands is a continuation of the same elements.

There is an unwritten rule in art photography circles that pictures like this should not be admired. Maybe you should not take them. The same rule applies to sunsets. These subjects do not require any photographic skills because they are sort of automatically beautiful. I take them all the time and I admire them. I just usually don't display them.

Not all of the light that falls on an object next to water is reflected, so the reflection is always a little darker than the object.

What a beautiful bird!