It’s time to sum up the year with my 10 Best Photos of 2025.
This year pushed me to explore new landscapes, revisit familiar places in Buenos Aires with a fresh perspective, and keep refining my visual language as a photographer.
Travel, light, weather, and human encounters all played their part in shaping the images I created throughout the year.
Selecting just ten photographs from thousands of moments was not easy, but these images best represent what 2025 meant to me—both personally and creatively.
The Puna of Atacama (Argentina): Aerial Perspectives
Five of my Top 10 images come from the Puna landscape of Argentina, one of the most extraordinary destinations I visited in 2025.
Flying over this high-altitude region revealed a world that feels almost unreal: vast salt flats, volcanic textures, winding roads, and abstract color patterns shaped by minerals, wind, and time.
From the air, the Atacama’s Puna transforms into a painting, where the land tells its story through lines, contrasts, and geometry.
The first photo on the top left column represents the Devil’s Desert near Tolar Grande (Salta). The bottom left, and right shows two colorful lagoons in the Antofalla Salt Flat (Catamarca).
At the top right is the Arita Cone at sunrise, Arizaro Salt Flat (Salta). And the stone tongues in the middle of the right column are a detail of the Pumice Stone Field in Catamarca.
Portraits and Human Stories in Argentina
Three of the selected images are portraits, and they play an essential role in balancing the landscapes and aerial views.
Two of them were taken in the Argentine Northwest: one in the small town of San Francisco de Alfarcito (Jujuy), where the connection between people and their environment is deeply rooted in everyday life, and another at the Salinas Grandes Salt Flats, whit a white salty background.
The third portrait captures a gaucho at sunset, alongside his horse, at the Parque Criollo of San Antonio de Areco—a quiet, timeless scene that reflects tradition, identity, and the enduring bond between humans, animals, and the land.
Documentary Photography in Argentina (Susques)
Another image in this selection was taken in Susques, a small town in the Argentine Northwest, and stands out as one of my strongest documentary photographs of the year.
The scene shows two women chatting beside the bell tower of the town’s antique church, a simple yet powerful moment of everyday life.
The composition brings together history, architecture, and human presence, capturing an unposed interaction that feels intimate.
Surfing in Búzios, Brazil
The last image in this selection takes us to Búzios, Brazil, and captures a young surfer in action at sunset.
The light was at its best—warm, soft, and directional—wrapping the scene in a golden glow while the cliffs in the background added depth and a strong sense of place.
This photograph contrasts beautifully with the stillness of the Puna and the quiet documentary moments from the Northwest. It’s an image full of movement and freedom, where timing, light, and landscape come together to freeze a fleeting moment of energy at the end of the day.
Best Photos of 2025 Final Notes - Nicholas Tinelli Photography
Looking back at these ten photographs, I see more than just beautiful places or technically successful shots.
I see beautiful memories, and a deeper connection with the people and environments I photographed.
2025 reminded me why I fell in love with photography in the first place: the ability to explore, to observe, and to translate emotion and experience into a single frame.
One flight, one journey, and one photograph at a time.
