2018 Ruby Beach, Olympic Coast, WA
Cascadia rain forest extends all the way to the coast where it is battered by wind and tide. Massive trunks of fir trees fallen along the forest/shore boundary become the repository of beach stones that relentlessly modify them, revealing the wooden bone and sinew that no longer hold the tree to the ground. The trees are often many tens of feet away from the surf, their stoney cargo embedded high into the wood, a testament to the powerful tidal energy unleashed by the Earth-Moon tug of war.
The rising sun casts shadows for me to see; delicate tracks, trails and tunnels of those that passed before unseen. The rising wind casts dust; moving ripples that slowly erase the shadows of those unseen until the sun sets.
Sunset view of the rim of the volcanic caldera that forms the peaks of Mt. Murphy. An usually still night in the Amundsen sea embayment near Pine Island glacier.
Alluvial pebbles trapped along the stratified mudstones exposed along the Strait of Magellan, looking southwest to Tierra del Fuego
A small tree-dwelling species of lizard native to the southeastern U.S., the green anole changes its color to match its substrate, typically in shades from brown to green. Cuban Anoles have put pressure on this native lizard, forcing them to live higher above the ground.
A near X-ray view through the thorax and abdomen of this female mantis camouflaged among asparagus stems.
The low angle of the morning sun is dispersed by the silken strands of this tangle web set just a couple inches above the leaf litter. I had to get down on my belly to capture this frame. The spider was too small to identify.
This is one of the first frames I captured with my new Canon 5D MarkIV and 100-400mm telephoto lens. Star field is more visible in a higher resolution image.
This total lunar eclipse was the first for 2022 (the second was November 7th), after the second partial solar eclipse that occurred in April.
Eclipses come in pairs; a solar eclipse always occurs about two weeks before or after a lunar eclipse.
The next solar eclipse will be total, on 20 April 2023, followed by a penumbral lunar eclipse on May 5th.
The image is a composite of stacked frames over nearly four hours. The number of mosquito bites far exceeded the the number of frames captured.
As a kid I fell in love with film called ‘Powers of 10’- the 1977 version narrated by Philip Morrison. It definitely has had an impact on my life which explores our world from cosmic scales to micro scales. Now so does my photography.
The Geminids are an annual meteor shower resulting from the Earth’s transit through the debris field of a “rock comet” called 3200 Phaethon. The Geminid shower has only been known since the 1820’s, yet the display has been growing steadily stronger since its discovery. The 2020 event, peaking 13-14 December, coincided with a new moon, provided (weather permitting) one the best opportunities in a century to view more than a hundred meteors per hour originating from the constellation of Gemini.
These composite images (more than 1000) were captured over a six hour period from a ranch in Uvalde, TX. The average number of meteors per hour were about 15. Many more were observed, but were too dim or outside the range of the lens field of view.
Canon EOS 5D Mark IV
EF16-35mm f/2.8L USM
Aperture: 2.8
Focal length 17 mm
Exposure for all frames- 20 seconds
ISO 2000
This composite image (101 frames- 13 meteors in FOV) is centered on the two stars in the constellation Gemini from which the meteors appear to originate. The image stack was compiled between 11:53 p.m. -12:27 a.m. which was above the light pollution caused by a house just on the other side of ours. In the end I preferred to zoom out to include the foreground, although stacking with just the stars creates a clearer image.
This second view (420 frames- 30 meteors in FOV) was compiled from 12:33 to 2:53 a.m. I cropped the image slightly because the stacked image was significantly more distorted at the edges than I had hoped. I intend to go back and re-compose this view with a single base layer and only the meteors. What looks like a dashed line from the center to the bottom is a satellite.
This final view (75 Frames- 13 meteors in FOV) was captured from 3:00 a.m. to 3:25 a.m. The radiant (point in the sky from which the meteors seem to originate from) is now almost straight overhead. For this I used a single base frame which showed the least amount of movement blur in the trees.
In August of 2021, a photographer and friend, Greg Allikas of Brevard, NC took me on a hike to forage for mushrooms. I’ve been hooked ever since. Most of the mushrooms shown are from the Texas Gulf Coast.
Sulfur Bolete
Yellow Field Cap
Schizophyllum commune (common split-gill)
Dehydrated Yellow Field Cap
Blewit mushrooms? They appeared the spring after our big freeze. In daylight they appear more lavender, but the LED lighting made them appear more rose colored.
Green Spored Parasol (Amanitas species- poisonous!)
