Randy Robbins Photography

08/15/2026

The fall colors combined with fresh snowfall combined with the icebergs coming off of the terminal moraine of the gray glacier in Torres Del Paine National Park was a bit of a sensory overload situation. It was a "face melting guitar solo" of a landscape. First of all, that blue color should not exist in nature... that was enough all by itself 🤯. The rest of it... just ridiculous.

Tickets are still available for my upcoming "Stories From Patagonia" event at the Susanville Performing Arts Center on September 11th! I'll link my FB Event where you can get all the details.

08/14/2026

I'm well into preparations for my upcoming "Stories from Patagonia" presentation at the Susanville Performing Arts Center. I'm still editing shots from the trip, and this is one that I just finished. I posted an iPhone shot of this shipwreck while I was still on the trip, but this is the first one I've edited from the "real" camera. This is along the Strait of Magellan very near Punta Arenas.

I'm looking forward to sharing stories about the planning and ex*****on of this trip south! The event is on Friday, Sept 11. Tickets are still available ($15, kids under 16 are free). I'll link the FB event where you can find all the info.

08/14/2026

I didn't go shoot the perseid meteor shower this year. I was on the fence anyway, and the smoke/haze from the fires near Reno kept me from putting in the effort this year.

This shot is from 2024... I was camping at Lake Almanor, so I set the camera up on interval mode shooting to the north, and went to bed. I was surprised to find out in the morning that we had had an appearance of the northern lights overnight, and when I checked the camera, there they were in several of the exposures. This is a stack of 711 exposures (13 second exposures).
"Star trails" images like this show the apparent motion of the stars in the sky as the earth rotates. There are a couple meteors in here, but the big lines you see are satellites. The bright lights on the other side of the lake are from Chester, and Mt. Lassen is visible on the horizon.

08/13/2026

Drones are in the news lately, and are getting lumped into the "Flock Camera" conversation by the majority of people. As a camera guy and a huge fan of drones, I have some fairly strong opinions here. I'll throw them out there, and then you can call me stupid for having them in the comments, since that's what the internet is for:

1. I don't think 99% of you are important enough for anybody to be spying on. 🙃 Sorry to disappoint, but no one cares what you are doing. One of my favorite quotes: "you probably wouldn't worry about what people think of you, if you could know how seldom they do."

2. 99% of the arguments I've heard against flock cameras are basically saying that we want to be able to do illegal stuff without getting caught. Things like insurance fraud driving a vehicle that you claimed was damaged, getting away with workers comp fraud, etc. Maybe consider not doing illegal stuff 🤷‍♂️.

3. I'm no fan of the government spying on us. Two thoughts here: first, they're not doing it with a consumer drone your neighbor bought at Best Buy 😆(that's just your neighbor. Have you considered meeting him?). Second, they're not doing it with flock cameras because of what I said in point #1. Do I like flock cameras? No, it's certainly an invasion of privacy. Watch triggered people still call me out in the comments for defending them though 🙄.

4. Most people live somewhere along a scale of paranoia that is perpetuated, fed, and nourished by mainstream media. Some folks are in so deep it's beyond their ability to recognize. It's comical to me to watch people try to justify why something like a hobbyist drone makes them nervous. Watch my point get made by folks turning this into a republican/democrat argument in the comments 🤪.

5. Anyone actually following it knows that the current "foreign drone ban" stuff being presented by the FCC does not have anything to do with anyone spying on anybody. It's 100% an attempt to encourage and stimulate domestic production of products like DJI and others produce in China. Removal of competition in the US market opens the door for US production. The problem is that we're many years away from being able to produce something like the average DJI drone... ours are lame, theirs are good. I believe this is a horrible strategy, since competition is what should drive the market. I won't even mention the (deep) government connections with current US drone companies here, just to let the real issue have the front seat. This ban will be easy to push through (with public support!) because of what I said in #4.

There's the truth. Feel free to call it fiction in the comments! It's the internet! 😃

08/13/2026

Spent a few minutes observing a coyote doing coyote stuff with the drone this morning. They are cool critters. It's interesting to watch them cruising like this... they move with intention. It's like he dropped something the last time he was in the neighborhood and is trying to find it 😜.

It did notice the drone at first, and stared at it for a few moments... but quickly ignored it and went about the business you see here.

08/13/2026

You should probably read this 🙃

What started as a ban on foreign drones is rapidly spreading to routers, robot vacuums, and portable power stations—and consumers are going to pay the price.

🌐 I'm a Certified Drone Pilot. The FCC's Expanding Ban Should Scare Us All

👇 Link below 👇

08/13/2026

Pine martens are known to use prominent rocks, logs, or high spots to deposit urine and "glandular secretions" for territorial communication 🤓. I seem to have stumbled upon one of these sites. They are known to cover pretty large areas, so it's unlikely that this is all the same marten. I have previous footage of a pair of them in this same spot also. This footage is all from the past month or so. This spot is at 8500' in Lassen Volcanic National Park. I have cameras in the area (under permit) targeting Sierra Nevada Red Fox. All this pine marten activity is a fun distraction from a very quiet summer with the foxes.

08/12/2026

One of my trail cams at 8500' in Lassen Volcanic National Park got quite a bit of video of the annual migration of the California Tortoiseshell Butterflies... these butterflies swarm Lassen Peak each year for a week or so. It's a treat to be on the mountain when they are passing through.
(I have cameras in the park under permit targeting Sierra Nevada Red Fox).

08/12/2026

First still photo from my DJI Mini 5 Pro. Figuring out the ins and outs of this little camera... I'm pretty impressed! My "old" drone has the Hasselblad 4/3 camera onboard, and when you really get to peeking at pixels, that one is definitely a bit sharper (as it should be... that's a $2k drone). This one makes up quite a bit of that difference in image size though. At 50mp, images come out at 8192x6144 pixels in size... that's pretty big! It'll certainly generate "print worthy" results, even for someone picky like me (especially with modern editing software).
This drone is on the new list of super scary "national security risk" drones that the FCC wants to ban from the US, so I think I'll title most of the images it produces "National Security Risk." This image, therefore, will be known as "National Security Risk #1". Maybe someday I'll print and display the whole series in a museum somewhere as a sort of nonviolent civil disobedience artistic protest of some sort 😜.

(Imagine for a moment the horrors that could unfold if China got a hold of this flight data or was able to view this image).

08/12/2026

Tonight's sunset from the flying camera 🤓.
Familiarizing myself with the focus tracking and related features on my new-to-me DJI Mini 5 Pro. This is precisely the kind of activity currently being deemed a "National Security Threat" by the FCC. No, seriously 🙄. You see, this drone is equipped with LiDAR, which everyone knows means threat security China data mapping spy intelligence tactical scary word salad. I hope nobody tells the FCC that your robot vacuum also uses LiDAR. Imagine the data that China could access using THOSE Things 😆

At any rate, when seeking a "point of interest" to latch onto, I naturally gravitated to my favorite oak tree. The sunset was a nice bonus! I'm sure FB will compress the heck out of this glorious 4k/60 footage, but it looks pretty sweet on the big desktop screen.