I hesitate to call these my best images of the year. My preferences change over time. I also try to produce work that’s more emotional than documentary and it feels wrong for different emotions to have compete with each other. But these 15 images do a marvelous job of summing up my year.
I’m always a little amazed at how bright it is at night — not just in cities, but even out in the wilderness. Even on a moonless night, even out in the middle of nowhere, it’s not completely black.
In the darkest skies, you can probably see about 2,000 stars. They produce enough starlight for me to be able to walk around. But recently on the Washington coast there was a second source of natural light and it came from the ground.
The American West is home to about a dozen majestic volcanoes. Most of the time we appreciate their towering summits. But what’s underground can be every bit as spectacular.
The volcanoes don’t erupt that often. Only one — Mount St. Helens — has erupted during my lifetime. But occasionally they erupt in such a way that produces dramatic caves, called lava tubes. One of my projects this year was to explore more of them.
It has been said that every picture has already been taken. More than a billion pictures are taken each day. And some are largely recreations of images that someone else has taken before.
With such a glut of photography is there anything left to do? It’s a question that was in the back of my mind this past month — a month I mostly spent photographing fall color, something I’ve done every October for more than 20 years now.
About 100 million images will be posted on Instagram today, so it may not seem like one image can make a difference. But last week 100 images did.
What turns a bird picture into a work of art? A magazine recently asked me and other photographers who had been honored by Audubon that question. I’m certain we gave them enough material to fill a how-to book. But they were looking only for a short article, so little of it ended up in print. Here’s what would have gone into my chapter.
There’s a lot about nature photography that’s difficult. Fighting uncooperative equipment. Braving intense weather. Conquering tough trails. But one of the most difficult aspects is standing around, doing nothing, as nature does what nature does.
If you watch many nature documentaries, you may be under the impression that photographers get excited the moment they see animals struggle for their lives. Struggle seems to be a necessary part of life and it can result in dramatic images. While documenting that struggle can be a necessary part of my job, it is a part that, frankly, sucks.
Let me tell you about an afternoon I spent observing the nest of a pied-billed grebe.
There’s a saying that it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission. While that may apply to acts of charity or taking initiative on a project at work, it does not apply to using someone else’s artwork.
My series of images of a bald eagle, young fox and rabbit in midair made the rounds of the internet again a few weeks ago. But this time, nobody asked for permission to post the images. Worse, nobody even acknowledged that I was the photographer.
For the past month my grilling tent has been a nursery. A pair of songbirds, dark-eyed juncos, decided to try to raise a family in it.
I don’t have any great pictures to show you. Given that I am a nature photographer, that may seem odd, but their little lives are far more valuable than any pictures I might make.
Whenever I give a nature talk, one question usually comes up. And it’s almost always phrased as a statement. “You must spend a lot of time standing around waiting for something to happen.”
I do spend a lot of time waiting — but probably not anywhere near the amount people asking the question suspect.
As soon as the eggs are laid, most female ducks are on their own. They are left to raise the young by themselves. And for good reason: the male ducks, called drakes, command attention.
A lot of environmental activism focuses on what others need to do. Switching to clean energy. Stopping pollution. Conserving large swaths of land. And so on. But individuals play a role, too. We can’t afford to act as if taking care of the planet is always someone else’s problem.
(This is part of The Hidden Life of the Hideous Tree, a nine-part series about discovering nature in my front yard. View previous installments here. The entire project is also available with additional images as an e-book.)
For all the times I talked to the sapsucker, it never talked back, so I’ll never know if it was mad at me for pruning the tree. If it was mad, however, it was mad for only a month. I was on my way out to the car when I was nearly blinded by the glowing light reflecting from its vibrant head. “I’m glad you’re back,” I told it and I went inside to fetch my camera.
(This is part of The Hidden Life of the Hideous Tree, a nine-part series about discovering nature in my front yard. View previous installments here. The entire project is also available with additional images as an e-book.)
It took a couple of weeks for me to get another chance with the sapsucker, but it did come back — right as I was pouring glass into the recycling bin. I chuckled as it positioned itself on the trunk of the elm, just above my eye-level. But then why would a noisy bird be bothered by my racket?
(This is part of The Hidden Life of the Hideous Tree, a nine-part series about discovering nature in my front yard. View previous installments here. The entire project is also available with additional images as an e-book.)
It’s now June. The flowering currant stopped flowering a month and a half ago, but I still see the hummingbird occasionally feeding on the flowers of some overgrown blackberries that I need to clear. As the lockdown orders drag on, photography work is giving way to yard work.
(This is part of The Hidden Life of the Hideous Tree, a nine-part series about discovering nature in my front yard. View previous installments here. The entire project is also available with additional images as an e-book.)
Those who freak out about the rows and rows of sap wells forget that people are like sapsuckers. We drill into maple trees just so we have something to pour over pancakes. Maple trees survive us; most trees survive sapsuckers.
Sapsuckers are not murderers. They are farmers. And their harvest feeds the neighborhood.
(This is part of The Hidden Life of the Hideous Tree, a nine-part series about discovering nature in my front yard. View previous installments here. The entire project is also available with additional images as an e-book.)
Judging from the results of a Google search, most of the people who discover they’re living with a sapsucker do the same thing: Try to find ways to get rid of it. It’s an understandable reaction. As I was now seeing firsthand, the birds do extensive damage.
(This is part of The Hidden Life of the Hideous Tree, a nine-part series about discovering nature in my front yard. View previous installments here. The entire project is also available with additional images as an e-book.)
I didn’t see the woodpecker that day — I couldn’t see anything through the mess of branches — but I saw the evidence it left behind. From its handiwork, I could even identify it. It was a medium-sized woodpecker known as a red-breasted sapsucker.
(This is part of The Hidden Life of the Hideous Tree, a nine-part series about discovering nature in my front yard. View previous installments here. The entire project is also available with additional images as an e-book.)
I first noticed the tapping when I was concentrating on a hummingbird flitting around our flowering currants. They are plants that I brought to the property. They have a history in my family.
(This is part of The Hidden Life of the Hideous Tree, a nine-part series about discovering nature in my front yard. View previous installments here. The entire project is also available with additional images as an e-book.)
I’m a nature photographer. In a normal year, exotic travel is a critical part of the job, or so I tell myself. I’ve crawled inside the magma chamber of an extinct Icelandic volcano. I’ve sat on a beach in New Zealand at sunset as some of the world’s rarest penguins marched by. I’ve stood in the footsteps of the Impressionists to capture a modern take on the white cliffs that plunge into the English Channel.
(This is the first installment of The Hidden Life of the Hideous Tree, a nine-part series about discovering nature in my front yard. Subsequent parts are available on the blog here, and the entire project with additional images is available as an e-book.)
It’s a tree only a bird could love. It wasn’t always this way.
The man who originally owned my house must have spent hundreds — if not thousands — of hours carefully sculpting the Wych elm he imported from Europe. He allowed a single column to grow to a height of about 10 feet, pruning any stray growth below the crown. Branches fanned out from the top, but he forced those to point back down to the ground.
I’ve been thinking about how over the past year it seems we’ve gone back in time. Like really far back.
I spent most of my time within just a few miles of my home. And there are many days I don’t leave at all. But what really struck me was how I now notice the passing of time.
We often talk about what we can see, but sometimes it’s enjoyable seeing what you can hear. With songbirds returning for spring in the northern hemisphere, spend five minutes listening to them sing.
(This is part of the 5 Minutes in Nature project, a series of activities that are designed to help you recharge by spending five minutes concentrating on nature. Learn more about the project here, and see past activities here.)
When I was working on my bald eagle book 10 years ago, the bird often drew attention. Many times when I was photographing one, people would stop and talk about how cool it was to see it.
Fast forward to this past week. I was in a field with several other photographers when a pair of bald eagles circled over us. Nobody else looked up. Short-eared owls were deemed more interesting.
This isn’t a case of something being wrong. Rather, it’s a case of something being right.
When I launched the 5 Minutes in Nature project, I purposely avoided talking about specific plants or animals. This project is about finding your own connections to the natural world. I also didn’t want to suggest something that you would never see in your own area.
But today, I’m going to introduce you to the chickadee. It’s a fascinating bird. And you can find it almost everywhere. You can likely even find it now before other birds arrive for the spring.
Have you ever taken the time to observe how many different types of birds use your yard? In this 5 Minutes in Nature activity, we’ll venture out to appreciate the variety of birds and see how they get along.
This post is part of the 5 Minutes in Nature project, a series of quick activities designed to help you relax and build a deeper relationship with nature — a few minutes at a time.
I don’t remember exactly when I met Bill Anderson, but I remember where: the Edmonds marsh. That’s where most people met Bill.
Some 150 years ago, the marsh was a thriving saltwater estuary — a valuable habitat for hundreds of different species as well as a corridor for salmon to return to their spawning grounds. It’s on its way back to that point now, one of the few such environments in the greater Seattle area.
This photograph looks like dusk at a saltwater marsh, but that’s not what it’s really about. It is my first image of 2021 and it has a lot to say.
I suspect for most people, ducks are the first wild creatures they remember encountering. Ducks are everywhere and some species, like the mallard, don’t show much fear toward people — probably because we have a reputation for tossing bread at them.
We now know we shouldn’t give them bread. It’s like junk food for them, making them feel full without giving them the nutrients they need. But it’s still fun to watch them feed. Take five minutes to study them.
