Photo Blog

  • Steptoe Butte and the Palouse

    When I moved to the Palouse, I didn’t realize just how photogenic the landscape was. Then I saw ads for the Palouse in Popular Photography. It turns out, people will pay good money to come and photograph the region, and here I am living there not taking advantage of my home turf. I’ve only been on Steptoe Butte once before, and it was in the winter with not much snow on the ground. So I was quite glad when Simon came back to visit and suggested we go out and shoot the Palouse. We hit Steptoe Butte at the right time…

  • Palouse Photography: Waiting for the right light

    This post will demonstrate just how fast light can change, especially during sunrise and sunset. These three images, taken in the same location on the same day within a half-hour window, demonstrate just how quickly light can change. Therefore, it is often necessary to scout out locations before setting up your desired image so that you can be ready to capture the scene when the light is perfect. Of course, perfect light is a subjective quality. All three of these images are wonderful, which means all three lighting scenarios are desirable. I spent as much time as I could at…

  • 2013: A Year in Photographs

    This year, I have fallen behind in my photography pursuits. It’s in part due to the events in February, and part due to not having the funds or time to get out as much as I’d have liked. I’ve been looking through some stats tracking the number of photos I’ve taken over the past few years, though a better metric is to look at the number of “good” photos that have made it onto my flickr page. Here’s a short breakdown: Year Number of photos 2006 335 2007 310 2008 396 2009 629 2010 341 2011 421 2012 314 2013…

  • Aurora

    Once again, the skies lit up with the dancing inferno of the northern lights. The sun has been fairly active the past two months, but this is the first I’ve both been aware of and had a clear sky to see. All of the aurora events I’ve photographed have been special, and each one is different. This one happened to be the strongest storm when the K-index reached 7. It was so bright, I could make out the red band with the naked eye once my vision adjusted to the darkness. The storm peaked here a little after 11:30 pm…

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    Chickadees

    For Christmas, I bought Erin a new bird feeder to replace one that had been broken earlier in the summer. A few weeks ago, we finally got some seed and put it outside, but this was in the middle of a cold snap where daytime highs remained in the low 20’s, and the nighttime lows, well, we just won’t go there. For about a week, the feeder hung with no activity. Then, as the cold began to lift, there was a single chickadee in the lilac tree. It must have spread the news because a few days later, the feeder…

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    A walk in the snow

    Well, now that Winter has finally arrived, we thought it might be fun to tromp through the snow and get some exercise. I dusted off the snowshoes (literally) and we set off for a little hike out of our back yard. As we began our trek, I noticed an awesome mist hovering over the snow, and since we hadn’t left the yard yet, we turned back to get my camera. We were walking in snow that had not been disturbed, so it was quite soft and difficult, even with snowshoes. In fact, in the hour that we were out, we…

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    Aurora

      This story begins Friday night when I learned that a large coronal mass ejection (CME) sent a burst of solar radiation from the sun headed toward Earth. It was predicted to intercept our atmosphere on the evening of the 8th, producing auroral activity in the high latitudes. Given the size of this solar storm, as described by spaceweather.com, I was a bit suspicious that the auroras migh be big enough to see all the way down here in northern Idaho. So, I kept a watch looking for evidence of such activity. On the evening of the 8th, I checked…

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    Aurora, part II

    Well, I made my last post a bit too soon. After spending the evening on Freezeout Ridge (story and photos to come soon), Erin reminded us that the aurora might still be occuring and that we could possibly see it tonight. Clarkia isn’t the best place to test this hypothesis because its surrounded by tall mountains in all directions, so as we passed through Bovill, I noticed a glow on the northern horizon. At this point, it was only 10:00, still early enough that the glow could be residual light from the sun. I pulled the car over and set…

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    Aurora

    We got alerts that a solar flare could cause an aurora that would be visible into the middle states. So, last night, I checked the sky and luckily it was clear to the north. I saw a faint glow on the horizon and set up the camera. Sure enough, there was an aurora. The excitement didn’t last too long. I wanted to view this one from Steptoe Butte, one of the best places around for viewing auroral activity. So, we got in the car and started driving west. Unfortunately, the sky was overcast over much of the Palouse, and by…

  • Interestingness

    Since I started using Flickr to show of my photography to the world, I’ve neglected my own self-hosted galleries here at Mineral2.com. I’m considering doing away with the Gallery software altogether and maybe swapping it out for a simpler interface for displaying a portfolio. At any rate, Flickr has been a much better interface for me because in addition to being a photo hosting site, it’s also a social network and that allows me to get greater exposure into the world. One of the things Flickr does is rate your photos according to “interestingness.” I’m not exactly sure what that…