Interesting juxtaposition of the new replacing (accompanying?) the old…
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Stunning post-processing 
I love it!
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Here are my favorites of the year. Picking just 4 was hard, but I guess that’s a good problem to have.
What? Sunrise at Escalate, Utah in May 2023
Why? Utah has some wild alien looking landscapes. This was my first road trip through Utah on my way to NighScaper Photography conference. Early in the trip I tried to capture sunrises along the way. I’m by no means a morning person and barely got to this location. This is a 3 exposure bracket.
What? Milky Way at Zion National Park, Utah in May 2023
Why? This is my favorite astro image of the year. The detail from a tighter focal length (40mm) of the Milky Way and the foreground are great. I wish I had done an extra vertical row creating more a vertical panorama at 40mm. I was attending the conference and I wanted to apply some techniques to create depth. I think I isolated the rock well creating that depth. This one prints well and has a nice 3D effect. I think later this year I’ll print it large on acrylic.
What? Winter Milky Way at Twin Lakes, Colorado in March 2023
Why? A cold (20F) but fun evening with a friend. This was early evening around 8-9pm. We later got back up around 4 am for the Milky Way. This is one of my most involved Winter Milky Way shots yet. Yes, I used a tracker and astro-modded camera. The sky was 3 sets of exposures one with a red filter, without a filter and diffusion filter.
What Annular Partial Solar Eclipse (80%) in Eastern Plains of Colorado in October 2023
Why? Why not? It’s an event that doesn’t happen super often. Plus, I needed to get out. This was the first outing since my knee injury in late July (knee sprain turned out to actually be a tibial plateau fracture
). I was happy with the result overall since I hadn’t taken an eclipse sequence before.
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Wow – Those are spectacular!
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Beautiful pictures!
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Jaw-dropping astrophotography… 
Thank you for sharing.
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I don’t thin I can have 1 favorite.
What: Empire state building at night
Why The upper platform on the rock was closed due to wind. I had only space enough to push the lens between the cracks of the window (with hood removed). Also I was lucky enough to manage to go to the window - there were so many people. My camera is a bit older and the lens is not that sharp. I was very pleasantly surprised that most of the noise was gone and the colors were pleasing to my eyes.
What New York down town
Why This is a hand held panoramic shot from a moving ferry. I don’t know how hugin managed to stitch it - but it did. I was that close to trash the images before even trying to stitch them and process them. At the end - surely I am glad I did not trash them.
What Brooklyn Bridge
Why First attempt with ND10 filter. There is something very strange and interesting when using these.
What Downtown New York
Why There are so many things that were screaming “wrong”. Cold, windy, attempting to do a long exposure and panoramic shot. Also - quite exhausted from a day of going back and forth around the city and longing to go to the hotel. And yes - hungry and questioning myself did I make the right choice. At the end - I am glad I listened to my wife and we went to Brooklyn (second time in a day) - just to take pictures. And why is it so important - she is not a photographer but she knew that if we did not go I would blame myself for the missed opportunity. Not only I got a good memory and a keeper but I always remember my wife urging me to go and not give up. So - big thanks is also to her.
What Statue of Liberty
Why I shot this from the moving Staten Island Ferry. Through the window (because it was one of the ferries that does not have an open platform). ISO 5000 on Canon 70D with 18-135 mm kit lens. To top it up - the Metro decided to not open the door for me (and yes - it does lock your unlimited rides card for 20 min. or so). As a result my wife and I had to hunt for a different ride, different station, missing the golden hour. Given all together - I did not expect to have a keeper. But I had. At the end - good memories and good pictures.
What The charging bull New York.
Why Because it is funny (even if many would blame me for not being politically correct). At the end - so many people were trying to grab the bull. Some by the horns - some - by whatever parts they can grab. And yes - there were line ups both on the front and on the back.
What Vancouver Art Gallery
Why When we just enjoy taking the picture - we take the time and press the button, then we take the time to process it - something good can emerge - that we can see with our mind - without even comprehend it in the beginning.
What Shadow on reflections
Why I like going to the beach and taking pictures of the sunset. For some reason this time - I turned around - just looking at the passers by - looking in the viewfinder. And then - all of a sudden - everything is in place and I just have to press the button.
What The moon
Why Because I never had to see it that close with a camera. Each previous attempt was so bad that all my pictures ended up in the trash. I kept this one - and I still enjoy looking at it every now and then.
What The iconic Christmas car at Willowbrook shopping center.
Why I never knew who created it. But it comes on display every winter at Christmas. I chose this picture because it is the end of the story and Christmas is behind. And also - because of the unique perspective of the wide angle lens. I did photograph the car a few times but it is like - every year something in my photos was lacking. This year for a change - I truly enjoyed them.
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Very glad you did, too. That blue-hour long-exposure panorama is exquisite.
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Ok, here are four of my favourites from 2023 so far. I’ve not processed all my 2023 pictures yet, and maybe there will end up being some that I prefer, but I’ll never get around to posting anything if I wait any longer…
All processed with Darktable
What: A view of the Coast mountains in British Columbia from an airplane window.
Why: Whenever I go on holiday, I almost always take a photo from the plane. It’s just a bit of a tradition. Sometimes they are terrible, but this one came out really nicely I think. The mist over the peaks and layers is really aesthetically pleasing. I’m still wondering whether to process it further with more contrast, but I like the ethereal quality as is.
What: A fishing boat in the Annapolis Basin, Nova Scotia, Canada
Why: A minimalist landscape shot that needed very little processing. I love how it perfectly captures the morning I went out to watch the fog rolling in from the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia.
What: Red cliffs on the Bay of Fundy, New Brunswick
Why: Quite simply because it looks like a wave! The sea was calm that day so I couldn’t unfortunately get the cliff wave mirroring a sea wave, but maybe one day if I ever return…
What: 3 of our 4 pets doing what they do best.
Why: This is not a great photo by any means, but I like it because it shows why having any camera on you is better than having a great camera in another room. This is a phone snapshot and I just happened to snap them in a really nice pose.
Overall, I think 2023 was less productive than 2022 for me. It was more about refining techniques than making big leaps with my photography. But I also think I’m more critical of my work now. When I used Lighttable to show only 3-star images, I had less than 10 out of over 2000 images. I think I would have had more in previous years because I’m becoming increasingly picky about what makes 3 stars and up. I’m still searching for the elusive 5-star image…
I’m hoping 2024 will show some more big leaps because I’m intending to try some new genres including more urban photography, and I’m also experimenting more with manual lenses.
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I think so, too 
I take photos whilst flying fairly regularly. Some are definitely in the terrible category, but every now and then the weather and the route combine to give a special capture. Thanks for sharing.
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And sometimes the window is all scratched or has condensation, making it a real challenge!
By the way, I went back to see which my earliest plane window photo was. I found this one, which is from 1990. I was a teenager at the time and had a very basic point and shoot film camera, probably using a free roll of 200 ISO film provided by the cheap postal-based photo lab I used at the time (Truprint). And this is a scan of the resulting print, scanned with a very cheap scanner about 20 years ago with no additional processing! So, the quality is about as bad as you can get. But I still really like the photo for some reason. Some of it is just nostalgia, but I also like its simplicity and the fact that I captured this many decades before drones became a thing.
Somewhere over Australia, 1990:
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Seeing the photos from @europlatus (especially the two serene, low-saturation images) after the colourful, contrasty shots from @jdneumeyer and @vbs was quite the experience. Thanks to all involved!
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Scrolling through my best from 2023, I had a few more candidates for the top 4, but these made the final cut:
What: The skyscrapers in the City of London, taken from a sightseeing boat on the river.
Why: I was there with my ex wife, celebrating our son’s graduation at the AA School of Architecture. So a bit of architectural photography was a natural thing to do. The fun thing is, I later found an old picture taken from the river bank of almost exactly the same scene around 20 years ago. This skyline was completely different back then.
This image got accepted in the Norwegian championship of photography.
What: A young Silver Birch in autumn colours, composite of around 14 images.
Why: I had wanted to try this Pep Ventosa-technique for a while, but it took a while to find the right subject. When I found this tree I had to try it. The layers are blended in Gimp with different blend modes. This image got accepted in a local juried art exhibition.
What: The Oslo Opera House in thick fog.
Why: I love photographing the Opera House under different conditions. One day just before Christmas, we had some really thick fog and I left work quite early and went down there to see what I could get.
What: Snow. Just snow.
Why: We were at our cabin in the Norwegian mountains for Christmas, and there was a lot of snow. I often look for intimate minimalistic scenes, and it doesn’t get more minimalistic than this.
All images processed in darktable, the Birch is composited in Gimp. The London image also had a cleanup in Gimp.
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Beautiful images!
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Excellent images, appreciate that minimalistic snow image a lot.
Could you please tell how many exposures was used for the birch image?
Four very different images, but all great! Congratulations!
Thank you very much 
Thank you very much
I took 15 images originally, and I ended up using 10 of them.
This was just a chair in a small museum I was visiting, I liked the colors of the scene.
This one felt like a nice single-color photo, I’m happy with the focus on the building and its striking color
A lucky phone picture, this just happened to be the view where I was sitting at an outdoor restaurant. I noticed the nice color contrast of the wall and door
And lastly, I liked the layering/depth that these leaves created
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