Sunday, February 27, 2022

The coyote and the river otters

Standoff Between Coyote and River Otters on Yellowstone River Ice, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

Yellowstone National Park is home to nearly 400 species of animals. If you’re a wildlife photographer, the hope is that you will get to capture species interacting with each other.

A bald eagle swooping down to catch a fish is a somewhat common sight. Spend enough time there and you’re also likely to see a fox leap to pounce on a vole. The big hope, of course, is to see one of the park’s famous wolf packs hunt a bison or an elk, but that activity usually occurs miles out of sight.

On my latest trip to Yellowstone, however, I got to see a wildlife encounter that at first glance seemed downright strange: a standoff between a coyote and river otters. And it took place on ice covering the Yellowstone River.

Monday, January 31, 2022

Variations on a sunset

Fiery Sunset Over Saratoga Passage, Camano Island, Washington

Look at a sky watcher’s chart and you will see sunset listed as a precise moment of time. I, however, prefer to think of it as an event — an event that can last hours.

There’s more to a sunset than the instant when the sun slips below the horizon. Sometimes an hour before, the western sky can begin to turn golden. Puffy cumulus clouds that are low in the sky can go from being pure white to intense yellow.

Thursday, December 30, 2021

Best of 2021

Golden Sunset, Fir Island, Washington

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.

Tuesday, December 7, 2021

Behind the scenes: Night Lights, Ruby Beach

Foxfire, Ruby Beach, Olympic National Park, Washington

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.

Tuesday, November 30, 2021

Lava tubes of the American West

Two Tubes, Ape Cave, Washington

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.

Sunday, October 31, 2021

Variations on fall color

Autumn Light, Japanese Maple, Seattle, Washington

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.

Thursday, October 14, 2021

Pictures can make a monumental difference

Sandstone Window, Coyote Gulch, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Utah

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.