Humboldt County, California It hadn’t snowed this much in Eureka since 1989, thirty-four years before. It was the kind of event that sends photographers out in droves to capture unique images. Fortunately, I was first to go to the historic Carson ...
“All Happy Now” Beneath the Milky Way
Humboldt County, California The “All Happy Now” earth sculpture by Peter Santino was completed in 2008, but I became aware of it only last semester when one of my students shared a photograph of it in class after an afternoon hike in the Humboldt ...
Milky Way Season Is Coming
Humboldt County, California I remember while camping with my folks as a kid how the Milky Way stretched so prominently across the night sky. It was a special feature of the night that I never saw from the bright lights of home, but it was always ...
The One that Got Away
Humboldt County, California Less than a week ago I read about a giant fireball, visible up and down the west coast from the Bay Area north to Washington as it streaked across the sky. My photo heart ached to have missed that one; I was probably ...
Stargazing Season: Milky Way & Perseid Meteors
Humboldt County, California. Stargazing season is upon us, when the spectacular Milky Way is visible immediately after dark, soaring from horizon to horizon, and the Perseid meteor shower peak is approaching. Of course, one can watch the stars on ...
Counter Culture to Canna Culture
Humboldt County, California. It’s the season for outdoor cannabis growing, and given that it’s also the season for the Milky Way, and I'm in Humboldt County, California, how could I not go out for some nighttime images of the new plants growing ...
Happy Endings at Vista Point
Humboldt County, California. After paying a second nighttime visit to this Vista Point in two years, I can safely say that a dull nocturnal moment rarely passes at this viewpoint looking up the Eel River valley. I had come to the spot precisely ...
Late one Night at Cooks Valley Bridge
Humboldt County Line, California I had never met Lula when she approached me about making some photos of her in my nighttime style of photography. But I was game; placing a figure in an image inspires stories in the mind’s eye of the viewer, and ...
Snow Moon over Carson Mansion
Eureka, Humboldt County, California As one of the most photographed Victorian buildings in California, if not the United States, the Carson Mansion has crept beyond Humboldt’s borders to seep into our popular culture. Certainly it has added its ...
Shadow of Himslef, the Mysterious Stranger
Humboldt County, California File it under tall tales if you must; I would not be offended. You know that not everything you believe can be true, and not everything that’s true can be believed. And whether or not something written is true may well ...
Eureka’s Art Utility Boxes – Harry the Honorable Hound Dog
Eureka, Humboldt County, California Growing up, I didn’t think of Eureka, California as beautiful. Never mind that I was a kid, and what would I know about that? Maybe I simply wasn’t tapped in to the art scene, I don’t know, but I don’t recall ...
Ramparts on the Coast
Patrick's Point State Park, Humboldt County, California. ...With the Stars in Motion and Thoughts on Geotagging A photograph can be worth many more than a thousand words. It’s an old expression, though, and maybe the number “one thousand” ...
South Fork Bridge
Northwest Pacific Railroad Humboldt County, California Built in 1910, this old railroad bridge crosses the Main Fork of the Eel River just upstream of the confluence with the South Fork Eel River. I’m not absolutely certain what to call the ...
Close Encounters on the Avenue
Humboldt County, California The Avenue of the Giants is as beautiful a drive as you will find. The groves along its 36-mile course line the Avenue with some of the grandest examples of the tallest trees on Earth, the California coast ...
Milky Way over Kneeland Snow
Humboldt County, California. I set my alarm and hit the sack. Images of the next morning’s mission to capture the rare image of a Humboldt County snowy landscape beneath the Milky Way moved through my thoughts. As they slid by I got out of their ...
Musings at the Moonstone Cave
Humboldt County, California We stood in the mouth of the cavern, looking out through a great broken crack in the blackness into the night as if through a window into another world. It fired our imaginations, conjuring mysteries in the night. ...
Dawn Chases the Milky Way
Humboldt County, California I pulled into the turnout and shut off the engine and lights. The stars jumped out and I joined them. Above the horizon the core of our galaxy glowed in the last darkness of the night. I smiled. Hello, Darkness, my ...
1964 Flood: High Water Marker on the Avenue of the Giants
Humboldt County, California In 1964 a perfect storm of snow melt and heavy rains caused a historic flood in Humboldt County and the greater Pacific Northwest. Along the Eel River watershed, the raging flood waters wiped out roads, bridges, and ...
Milky Way over South Fork Eel River
Humboldt Redwoods State Park, Humboldt County, California. Though some of my images are made from multiple exposures, this one is a single exposure, painted with light. The word “photography” literally means “light painting,” and there is ...
A Bit of Whimsy
Humboldt County, California It’s not for everyone to take the world seriously all of the time, though some people probably need to, at least a little bit. But I don’t think I’m one of them. I surmise folks like that need people like me to keep ...
Beneath the Vortex
Humboldt County, California It was a clear, still night at Moonstone Beach. The tide was out, and my brother and I could hear the surf roaring in the distance. An occasional rogue wave would send a low sheet of water sliding across the sands to ...
Reflections from Trinidad
Humboldt County, California David Wilson I opened the camera’s shutter and waited. It was already high tide, and I didn’t expect any waves to reach me. When I had arrived half an hour earlier I’d set up where the small waves coming in across ...
Milky Way over South Fork Eel River
Humboldt County, California The word “photography” literally means “light painting,” and there is something about taking that idea and actually adding my own strokes of light that appeals to me. Nighttime gives me the opportunity to make images ...
Houda Beach Cave
Humboldt County, California It was a low tide, a low moon, the cave, and the Milky Way... long had I waited for this combination to come together, and when it did, somehow I was there. All summer I’d watched the tides, waiting for a tide low ...
