Photo of the Week

A beautiful post-sunset glow lights up the clouds above Covehead Harbor Lighthouse and the rising full moon in Canada’s Prince Edward Island National Park. If there was ever a contest to determine the world’s “cutest” lighthouse, my nomination would be for this one. Prints Available.

Photo of the Week

“Ya know, I really thought that we’d see a fox on this trip,” I said to Amanda as we cruised the oceanfront parkway in Prince Edward Island National Park. After nearly two weeks on the island, we had yet to get a glimpse of the island’s official – and cutest – animal. We weren’t necessarily complaining, though, since we had already seen countless bald eagles, ospreys, and great blue heron.
Then, when we were on our way back to our cottage rental, it happened. To my left, I saw a fuzzy red head poke above the vibrant spring grass. “Fox!! Pull over!” I screamed out loud. Once we were safely off the road, we watched and waited to see what the fox would do. At first, it was tucked in among the grass and we couldn’t get a clear view. A few minutes later, though, it casually sauntered across the street right in front of our car and began to hunt and frolic in the vegetation that bordered the road. Still seated in the car, all we had to do was roll the window down and happily snap away photo after photo, hearts racing and palms sweaty from excitement, awe, and gratitude. Prints Available.

1839 Awards

I’m happy to announce that several of my photos have been recognized in the 1839 Awards 2025 Color Photography Contest. To see all category winners click here.

Shooting stars streak across the night sky during the height of the Perseid meteor shower. The otherworldly bentonite clay formations of Nevada’s Cathedral Gorge State Park were the perfect complement to the shooting stars and the colorful nebulae of the Milky Way galaxy.

A fresh dusting of snow graces the jagged spires of the Rockwall as the larch trees below Numa Pass turn a beautiful golden color and perfectly complement the dark mountains and sky on a moody morning in British Columbia’s Kootenay National Park.

Bubbles trapped in the frozen surface of a pond displayed incredible aqua and magenta iridescence when viewed at just the right angle.

Photo of the Week

Warm evening light illuminates magnificent sandstone fins in Utah’s Arches National Park, while a long exposure renders the passing clouds as streaks of white. Although the sandstone formations pictured in this photo may seem permanent and unbreakable, with the passage of time, they will be ground down to dust. In the process, though, the forces of erosion and time will continue to sculpt masterpieces of stone like those pictured here. Prints Available.

Photo of the Week

On the final evening of an unforgettable week exploring Arches National Park and the greater Moab area, my dad and I took one last ride into the park for sunset. Having driven every inch of the park road several times over in the previous days, I was beginning to think that I had already learned all the secrets that Arches had to reveal. As we nonchalantly cruised through the park with the breeze in our hair and sun on our skin, I was more focused on enjoying a final joyride in the Mustang convertible that had been our trusty steed all week than finding something new to photograph. I was quickly reminded, though, that in places as magical as Arches, there’s always more to discover, and that 100 lifetimes would never be enough to truly see and appreciate all that Arches has to offer. As we motored down the road, a line of vibrant, freshly bloomed cottonwood trees that I somehow hadn’t noticed before caught my eye, and I decided to pull over to check things out. Once I stepped out of the car and surveyed the scene, though, it wasn’t the cottonwoods that grabbed my attention. It was the clutch of yellow wildflowers – the first such flowers we had seen all week – just off the road that held my gaze. I was so giddy about the flowers that at first, I didn’t even notice that right in front of the flowers was a group of prickly pear cactus. Wildflowers, cacti, lush spring cottonwoods, sandstone towers, and a gorgeous sunset? Talk about saving the best for last! As my dad and I savored the moment while my camera clicked away, we talked about how serendipitous this parting gift from Arches was. As we chatted and savored a final sunset in our new favorite place, I began to wonder – what other yet to be discovered treasures are out there tucked between the arches and buttes? We’ll just have to go back to find out. Prints Available.

Altered Mind State

This article along with others can be found at Pure Adirondacks.

Photography Equipment: Canon 6D, Canon EF 16-35mm f/4L IS USM Lens, Gitzo mountaineer tripod, Really Right Stuff ballhead, remote shutter release, B+W 6-stop neutral density filter, B+W circular polarizer

Exposure Data:

Exposure 1 (waterfall and foreground): 15 sec. at f/11, ISO 100, 21 mm

Exposure 2 (background): 0.3 sec. at f/11, ISO 100, 21 mm

Anyone that’s ever trekked along the Lake Road from the Ausable Club near Keene Valley knows that this gateway to the High Peaks is equal parts a blessing and a curse. While it can be a quick and easy way to cover ground en route to popular peaks such as Gothics or Indian Head, in the heat of summer it can also be a dusty, sweltering, and altogether boring jaunt, as it was for me on the day that this photo was taken. I was thrilled to finally reach the Gill Brook Trail and trade the noise and dust clouds of the Ausable Club buses for the solitude and calm of the forest. My original destination on this June day had been sunset at Indian Head, but I got so distracted by the beauty and multitude of cascades along Gill Brook that I ran out of time. Alas, sometimes the journey becomes the destination.

After photographing some cascades close to the start of the trail, I clambered along towards Indian Head until a small cascade just off of the trail caught my eye. The low-angled evening sun was casting a warm, subtle glow on the fresh spring trees, and the pretty little cascade spilled over a rock ledge into a pool filled with bubbles. The photography alarms went off in my head, as I’m always seeking out foam and bubbles while photographing waterfalls. While to the naked eye there doesn’t seem to be anything special about foam floating on the water’s surface, the subtle motion created by a current can yield whimsical results when using a long exposure. Those ordinary foam bubbles can be rendered as swirls and streaks that make perfect foregrounds if the conditions and technique are just right.

My favorite waterfall photos are often taken while standing right in the water, and this one was no exception. This helps to get the viewer closer to the action and make them feel as if they’re about to get wet themselves. Once in the shallow water at the edge of the pool, I positioned my tripod just above the surface to further emphasize the plunge pool and the swirls that I hoped would come from a long exposure.

After taking a couple of test shots, it was clear that in order to achieve the multi-second exposure that would be necessary to get the “swirl” effect that I desired, I’d need to use a neutral density (ND) filter. These filters are essentially sunglasses for a lens and serve to limit the amount of light that reaches the sensor by anywhere from 1 stop to 10+ stops. The optimal filter to use for a given photo all depends on the desired effect and the amount of light in the scene. Since it was still day time and the scene was well lit, I tried out a 6-stop ND filter. Coupled with the circular polarizer that I already had on my lens (to reduce glare and saturate the foliage, the two filters combined reduced the amount of light that the camera was able to see by ~7 stops. This allowed a 15-second exposure to capture the subtle motion of the foam as a swirl without overexposing the photo and blowing out the highlights. After getting the camera settings dialed in, I took 10-20 shots of the scene, since subtle differences in water movement can yield drastically different photographs, and it’s nice to have a variety to choose from.

While a 15-second exposure worked great to give the swirl effect, it also rendered the trees in the background as blurry blobs due to the trees swaying from a slight breeze. I wanted the trees in the background to be sharp and in focus, so after taking multi-second exposures for the water I removed the ND filter and left just the circular polarizer on, which allowed a much shorter exposure to freeze the trees, which was combined with the longer exposure foreground shot in post-processing.

After manually combining the two shots in post, the processing of this image was relatively simple and straightforward. The main work that was done in Photoshop was some selective dodging and burning to accentuate the cascade and swirls in the foreground, as well as the vibrant green foliage in the background. After an hour or two of editing, “Altered Mind State” was a final product. I’ve found that moving water, whether a waterfall or crashing waves along the coast, is one of the most fun wilderness photography subjects, especially when using long exposures. This technique can reveal the subtlest of motions and portray moving water in a whole new light, and make you and the viewer feel as if you’ve entered an altered mind state.

Bubbles

Perhaps because I spent countless hours during my college years poring over various books on cell biology, this bizarre scene of frozen bubbles and a sheet of ice on the surface of a pond seemed to resemble a textbook diagram of a mitochondrion releasing cytochrome c.

And with that, the Frozen Bubbles series is complete. I hope you’ve enjoyed it, and I plan to release images in a series style like this more frequently moving forward.

I also have some bigger plans in the works for the images that I’ve made at the local pond that the photos in the Frozen Bubbles series were captured, so stayed tuned!