Circling the West Book Release

The time has come and I have finally published my first “real” book! I have printed books before, but they were really just collections of photos and didn’t include any text. My new book takes the reader on a tour of the Western United States and Canada across 112 pages with over 200 color photographs, stories from the road, travel and photo tips, and camera settings for those who are interested in such things. As one friend phrased it “It felt like you were inviting the reader in to your house to hang out as you talked about the places you have been”.

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2024 Favorites

Looking back at my favorite photos from this past year, it is clear that I spent quite a bit of time standing around in the dark. Six of my ten favorites were taken at night and four of those included at least some amount of aurora. The photographic highlight of my year was my trip to the Lofoten Islands in Norway in February. This year’s collection also includes images from my usual haunts in Yosemite, Glacier and the Mendocino coast. Here are my favorite photos from 2024, presented in the order they were captured.

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Sierra Autumn 2024

I spent the last weekend of October in Yosemite and nearby parts of the Eastern Sierra in search of fall color. My usual goal at this time of year is to photograph autumn in the valley, but I was a week or two too early for that this year. Fortunately there are still plenty of photographic opportunities including reflections in the calm Merced River, night skies, and colorful aspens just east of the park.

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Waterton Lakes

Waterton Lakes National Park is the sister park to Glacier National Park, just across the border in Alberta, Canada. The park shares many similarities with Glacier, including impressive mountains, lakes, waterfalls and wildlife. It also has a nice town on the shore of the lake the provides many more choices for lodging and places to eat than you will find in most national parks in the U.S.

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Lofoten Islands Part Two: Leknes and Svolvær

This post covers the second half of my February trip to the Lofoten Islands in Norway. My previous post (here) featured photos from the first part of the trip, when I was based in the western end of Lofoten and many of the photographic subjects were the small islands and fishing cottages common in that area. From there I moved east, staying in Leknes and then Svolvær, which provide closer access to some of Lofoten’s beautiful beaches. I also had some better luck with the northern lights…

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Lofoten Islands Part One: Hamnøy

The Lofoten Islands in Northern Norway have become a popular location for hiking, boating and exploring in the summer and for viewing (or attempting to view) the northern lights in the winter. Even though there are some challenges traveling above the Arctic Circle in the winter, the reward is a beautiful array of islands, mountains, fjords, villages and beaches that provide a multitude of photographic opportunities. I spent about 10 days in Lofoten, splitting the time between Hamnøy for the first part of the trip and Leknes/Svolvær for the second. This post focuses on the first part of the trip and includes views around Hamnøy, Sakrisøy, and Reine as well as some nearby areas.

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2023 Favorites

I look forward to this retrospective each year – both as a chance to look back at how I spent the year and as a chance to review some of my favorite images, often leading me to reprocess them or select different favorites from the same shoot. I won’t make any claims that these are the best images I created in 2023. I don’t believe that there is an objective “best” photograph. Selecting favorites allows me to tie them to my memories in a way that is more personal. This was a tough year for this exercise, as I have alternates for many of these photos that I like just as much. On another day I could easily have selected several different favorites. I’ll refer to some of those in my comments below.

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Dark Skies in the Eastern Sierra

I made a trip to the Eastern Sierra in late October (Halloween to be exact) with the primary goal of capturing the Milky Way over the Mobius Arch and Mount Whitney. This is a popular spot for sunrise photos, as the rising sun creates a glow on the mountains and I have been there to see this at sunrise several times. I wanted to get a similar effect at moonrise: I wanted a glow on the mountains while having the sky dark enough to clearly see the stars. Few people do Milky Way photography with a nearly full moon, but I guess I am one of the few. I used an app called PhotoPills to find the best date where the stars would be behind the arch at moonrise, with the sky already fully dark after sunset. October 31 was that day.

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Autumn in Montana

Sandee and I made a short trip to our home in Western Montana in October to visit family and help get the house ready for the winter. As it happened, we arrived the day before the Going-to-the-Sun road in Glacier National Park would close for the season. That left me no choice but to go for a drive! I spent a day in Glacier and then the next day Sandee and I drove to Holland Lake for a hike (with some lunch along the way). The larches were bright yellow throughout the area and I enjoyed photographing Montana’s fall colors.

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Logging Lake Backpacking

Grace Lake – Glacier National Park, Montana

I spent 4 days backpacking in Glacier National Park in early August, along with 2 high school classmates and one of their sons. This was my first backpacking trip in Glacier and I thought I’d share some of what I experienced along with (as usual) a few photographs. Our planned route totaled about 26 miles over 4 days, visiting 3 campsites along Logging Lake and Grace Lake in the North Fork area of the park. Logging Lake is one of the least crowded areas in the park and also one of the easier hikes with no extended climbing. Both were good reasons to choose this itinerary!

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