The Tree and the Dune
In order to get to this spot, I joined an overnight expedition for White Pocket (part of the Vermillion Cliffs National Monument in Arizona) because driving around this area can be pretty difficult terrain - very sandy and a lot of areas where a personal vehicle would probably get stuck. There are several theories of how these formations came to be: they were probably sand dunes during the Jurassic period, and then perhaps became fossilized underwater or at some point hardened into rock.
No matter how they came to be, it’s a super unique sight. We had storm-level winds that were blasting us with sand for hours leading up to this shot, but luckily those winds calmed down in time for this milky way shot around 4am. We got up at 2am to hike out to this spot from our camp, stayed up all the way through sunrise (for more shots which you’ll see soon!) and all the next day for exploring.
Crisp Autumn Shuksan
This was a grueling (but beautiful) backpacking trip in the fall of 2020 - I was carrying 35lbs of camera gear, my bag was not ideal for a long hike, and I was out of shape because this was deep into the pandemic. The hike was about 8 miles round trip with 2500 ft of elevation, and we stayed overnight. Despite the challenges, a sunset in the fall always results in a worthwhile photo with beautiful autumnal hues. This area is only about 3 hours north of Seattle, but feels super remote.
Goat and Shuksan
The night leading up to this sunrise photograph was quite the battle between us and nature. I took this photo the morning after I took a star trail shot, so I had been up the entire night. It was ridiculously windy that night with storm-level winds, my skin and hair and gear were all covered in dirt, and our tent almost got blown off the mountain. But witnessing and getting to photograph a sunrise like this one makes that all worth it. As I’ve mentioned before - I never overedit or superimpose the sky in my photography.
Larrabee Moonrise
This photo was a race against the clock. I was at Winchester Mountain Lookout in the Mt Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, and this is my classic “look the other direction from a popular viewpoint” strategy. I was racing against moonrise because I knew that as soon as the moon came up, it would be too bright to capture the stars. You can see the light from the moon starting to rise at the bottom of the horizon.
Pumarin
This photo is one of those times where it is super rewarding to be a photographer, because anybody who isn’t a photographer probably wouldn’t have searched out this view and would have never seen this.
I knew I wanted to capture this beach from above at sunrise, but I had no idea how to get to a view of it or if there even was a viewpoint – but after driving through a tiny village in the dark and taking a dirt road between two farms, we found this hidden trail that took us down to the coastline and the trees opened up to this view.
Something that still strikes me about this is that a country like Spain, a country of almost 50 million people, has uninhabited wild coastlines like this that feel like they are hundreds of miles from civilization. I hope you can feel how incredible this whole experience was through this photograph.
Road to the Glaciers
These mountains are iconic to the Patagonia region (and are also the literal icon of the Patagonia clothing brand). Patagonia is split between the two countries of Chile and Argentina, and this is on the Argentina side. There’s a super small town at the base of these mountains that I was staying in, and I biked about 4 miles outside of that town and away from the mountains to get this view. There was very little traffic coming and going, so I was able to stand in the middle of the road and bike all around as I searched for the best composition for a photo. I never replace the sky in my photos, I always aim to capture the real beauty that I’m seeing as I stand there. This was actually the second night that I biked out to this spot because the first night the colors in the sky weren’t quite as vibrant.
Fitz Roy y Las Vueltas
I was staying in a small village called El Chalten at the base of Los Glaciares National Park on the Argentinian side of Patagonia. As I was biking around outside the town (there were no rental cars in this town so we biked everywhere), I found a little trail that led off to this river.
Unforgettable Cuernos
I hope you never tire of looking back on my Patagonia trip because I sure don’t! Just a 30 second walk outside of the cutest hotel I stayed at in Patagonia, Hosteria Pehoe, was this incredible view. The lake is always perfectly clear because it’s inside the national park of Torres del Paine so no boats are allowed. I got up around 6 am to catch this sunrise shot. Nature really did all the work for me in this photo, the only difficulty was getting the flowers in the foreground in focus because they were moving in the wind.
Ear Noms
I spotted these two adorable foxes as we were driving the back roads toward Torres del Paine National Park in the Chile part of Patagonia. Once we had parked a little ways up the road from them, I ran back with my tripod as quietly as I could and used a long lens to get this shot. I always stay super far away from wildlife so that I don’t disturb them. This is a mom and her pup, and you can see the cave in the rock that they live in in the background of this photo. I watched these two for over half an hour, and took countless photos of them. I got really lucky with capturing wild animals in Patagonia, partially because there are just so many wild animals there. Awesome experience.
Get Off
I spotted these two adorable foxes as we were driving the back roads toward Torres del Paine National Park in the Chile part of Patagonia. Once we had parked a little ways up the road from them, I ran back with my tripod as quietly as I could and used a long lens to get this shot. I always stay super far away from wildlife so that I don’t disturb them. This is a mom and her pup, and you can see the cave in the rock that they live in in the background of this photo. I watched these two for over half an hour, and took countless photos of them. I got really lucky with capturing wild animals in Patagonia, partially because there are just so many wild animals there. Awesome experience.
Challenger Approaches
A herd of these guacanos came walking across the trail we were on during a morning hike in Torres del Paine in Patagonia. This was such an incredibly lucky photo, and a complete surprise because I wasn’t even expecting to get a shot like this that morning. You tend to get lucky with wildlife encounters really often in Patagonia just because there is so much wildlife there. We waited about 15 minutes, just watching and taking hundreds of photos of all the guacanos as they crossed our path… and then this guy walked across this ridge all by himself and the shot just lined up so perfectly with nothing behind him but these epic mountains.
Moody Cuernos
I almost walked away from this hike without taking any shots at all - I didn’t have high hopes on how this photo would turn out due to the lack of colors in this sunrise. But I realized that I may never come back to Patagonia, so I was determined to just take as many photos as possible. I just tried to capture the information at the scene as much as I could, and worried about whether it would be a good enough photo when I got home. I ended up really loving the subtle sunrise here because it perfectly captured the moody feeling that was there that morning.
These mountains are on the Chile side of Patagonia, and I was standing on a nearby peak to get this shot. The peak I was standing on is known for its wind, and so I had to take slow-motion shots in order to counteract the wind.