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The first Milky Way Arch picture I ever completed. Here we have the Summer Milky Way Arching over Mt Lassen and Lassen ...
09/03/2026

The first Milky Way Arch picture I ever completed. Here we have the Summer Milky Way Arching over Mt Lassen and Lassen Volcanic National Park.
I took this picture after hiking to the top of Brokeoff Mountain which is the highest remaining spot of an ancient eroded volcano and that has exceptional views of Lassen Peak and the rest of the national park and really everywhere within about a hundred miles. I'd decided to hike to the top of it and stay the night to take pictures because I wanted to catch Andromeda galaxy rising over Lassen. After watching that I realized I should be able to get the shots to make a full 360 degree panorama including the beautiful night sky. This is a stereographic reprojection of that image that lets you see a really wide angle view allowing it to look like the Milky Way is a gorgeous arch. I really love how on this night not only was the Milky Way so beautiful and clear but that there was an intense banded airglow causing the image to be full of brilliant green and red colors in the sky. The reason for airglow is much the same as aurora or a neon light. Excited atoms emitting light of very specific wavelengths. The only difference is the reason for the energy. For a neon light, it's an electrical current you pass through it. For the aurora it's high energy particles from the sun channeled down through the atmosphere near the poles by Earth's magnetic field. For airglow it's natural chemical processes occurring in the atmosphere and it is much dimmer...but on a really great night...it looks fantastic in a long exposure picture and can even be seen as a faint haze by eye if you know what you're looking for.

I love mountain lakes, ponds, and tarns. The size doesn't matter much. They are almost all beautiful. Here's three be...
09/02/2026

I love mountain lakes, ponds, and tarns. The size doesn't matter much. They are almost all beautiful. Here's three beautiful lakes in the Scott Mountains of Northern California. I love the contrasting colors of the warm reds of the soil and rock and yellows of these lupines with the cool blues of the sky and lakes and the greens of the grasses. I wish there would have been clouds this day...but it's still hard to complain much.
I once talked to a hiker for a while at a beautiful mountain lake and he told me his philosophy of measuring his hiking season not by the number of hikes or the number of miles he hiked, but by the number of lakes he had visited. His number for that season by July was already at 70 I think. I'm not sure I'd ever get that many in a year but I've made it to 50 or so in a couple of my best hiking years. I don't think I like the idea of making it so much of a competition...but the idea of counting experiences by what I enjoy about them instead of measures that make it seem like it's work has really stuck with me. This wasn't just one hike. I saw 5 lakes, and a waterfall, beautiful wildflowers etc. The idea also helps me during time periods when I can't get out and do everything I want. If I manage to make it out to do even a few fun things, thinking of those things as worthwhile and counting all of the little positives that make it up all of a sudden makes me realize that things are good.
Hope you enjoy the picture! 🙂

Milky Way over Whiskeytown lake. This is one of the best views right next to me. It's only probably about 10 miles from ...
09/01/2026

Milky Way over Whiskeytown lake. This is one of the best views right next to me. It's only probably about 10 miles from my house. On this night I decided to see if I could get a good Milky Way image and it didn't disappoint. Unfortunately not long after this picture was taken the wind picked up to about 40 mph gusts and that was making the trees and even the tripod move so I packed everything up. I'll always regret not going back to take some more images of it though since the majority of the area burned in a fire that went through a year later. Hopefully in a few years I can get some more good ones after a bit more recovery has occurred.

The view of Mt. Shasta from the lookout tower. I arrived just in time to see the amazing sight of the last of the sunset...
08/31/2026

The view of Mt. Shasta from the lookout tower. I arrived just in time to see the amazing sight of the last of the sunset light on the horizon blending into the band of the fainter part of the Milky Way appearing to be released by the large volcano. I always thought the pinkish hue in the pictures was from the last of the sunset light. Didn't realized I had captured the Northern Lights until several years later when someone pointed out that this is looking directly North and was most likely aurora in the distance. Sure enough I found out that they should have been faintly visible from this spot on the night this was taken.The city lights and the Interstate freeway look pretty bright in this long exposure but to the naked eye they just looked like small faint distant lights. On the left you see the smaller volcanic cone of Black Butte. It looks so small compared to Mt. Shasta but it still rises 2000 feet above the valley floor. I really like how from this view you can see both Mt. Shasta and Black Butte are actually made up from more than one overlapping cone and the look fairly similar in that sense.

I knew the view from here would likely be really good but I was still greatly impressed. Unfortunately I could only admire it for a few minutes and take a few pictures because my goal was to take pictures facing the other direction where the much more bright section of the Milky Way would be over the Castle Crags. Hope you enjoy the view! 🙂

This old fire lookout sure looks like an outpost on an alien planet in this shot! :) A little less than an hour after ...
08/30/2026

This old fire lookout sure looks like an outpost on an alien planet in this shot! :) A little less than an hour after the sunset picture I posted yesterday, I finally made it to the top of the mountain where I was going to set up and take pictures of the Milky Way over the Castle Crags. But before setting up I wandered around and seeing the lookout tower I decided to see what I could do with it in a picture. I ended up with this very surreal shot of it with the fainter side of the Milky Way galaxy rising up through it and Andromeda galaxy nicely visible on the left. There was still quite a bit of sunset glow in the sky. I did manipulate the door. The lookout was built in the 1930s and had recently been fixed up a bit by the forest service which is why the whole thing looks so pristine. I guess the door wasn't repaired and the opening had been covered by an large ugly piece of fiberboard. I found a picture from a few years previous on the internet where it had the old door and put it back on my image and then gave it a bit of a light virtual paint job to match. I'll post a couple of old pictures of the lookout in the comments including the one I used to do this. Hope you enjoy! :)

Sunset colors over Black Butte and the valleys that surround it. I don't normally share pictures with half a mountain in...
08/29/2026

Sunset colors over Black Butte and the valleys that surround it. I don't normally share pictures with half a mountain in them but there's something about this that grabs my attention. I took this picture on a hike to an old lookout tower that had a fantastic view of both Mt. Shasta and the Castle Crags. It was a great day and night...though I wish the trail would have been a little more used. I remember several times squeezing my way through the narrowest path while surrounded by brush quite a bit taller than I am. But there were also spots like this with clear far reaching views. Hope you enjoy the shot...and I'll probably share a starry view next picture. 🙂

This is where I live. My house would be just a bit to the right of the little strip of the Sacramento River you can see...
08/28/2026

This is where I live. My house would be just a bit to the right of the little strip of the Sacramento River you can see winding it's way through my hometown of Redding California. It's amazing how in this image you can't really tell that there's a city there...it blends in pretty well with the surroundings. You can see that I live on the North end of the Central Valley of California which extends about 400 miles in the North/South direction. In the distance you can see the main line of Southern Cascade mountains with Lassen on the right and the Thousand Lakes Volcano just a bit left of center. And of course, Whiskeytown Lake and the section of the Klamath Mountain range that it's part of are on the bottom. This picture was taken from near the Top of Shasta Bally in Whiskeytown National Recreation area a couple of years before the Carr Fire that burned through much of the Park and surrounding area. The picture might look a little less green in the bottom part of the image if it were taken now...although it's been 8 years and a lot of vegetation has returned.
Hope you enjoy the view!

08/28/2026

Clouds got in the way of my view of the lunar eclipse tonight unfortunately. But I figured it could be fun to share this unfinished video project from 2014 showing a view tracking the stars during a total lunar eclipse. This is about 3 hours condensed into 30 seconds and so you can really get a feel for the motions involved. While I never took the time to blend all of my hdr brackets it's still pretty to watch in my opinion too. Notice you can see the moon moving relative to the stars and into Earth's shadow. It's actually possible to measure the time of the moon's orbit around the Earth from this. If you look closely you can also watch the Earth's shadow move just a bit relative to the stars as well. It's possible to measure the time for the Earth's orbit around the sun from this. I think it's really neat that in a single video you can see both. Hope you enjoy.

I love this time of year where the sun rises over one of my favorite mountains in the area. It's about 40 miles from my ...
08/27/2026

I love this time of year where the sun rises over one of my favorite mountains in the area. It's about 40 miles from my house but it looks beautiful on the horizon especially when it has a rising sun or rising moon right over it. This picture is from this day 11 years ago when there were some fun clouds but position was really close today. That's one of the cool things about photography involving many astronomical objects. If you don't get a good shot now...you can often get another chance at it later when a similar event occurs. Speaking of astronomical events, remember there is a lunar eclipse today for the Americas as well as Europe and Africa. Look up the local time and think about getting out there and checking it out.

Comet NEOWISE over Whiskeytown lake. Not as dramatic as my shot of it over Mt. Shasta but still a picture I'm quite pro...
08/26/2026

Comet NEOWISE over Whiskeytown lake. Not as dramatic as my shot of it over Mt. Shasta but still a picture I'm quite proud of. There were many difficulties during 2020 but July of that month was pretty special with such a prominent comet.

The pictures to make this image were shot on the second night I was able to finally escape and go take pictures of the comet. I'd known since I found out the path of the comet exactly where I wanted to take a picture of it rising which was over Mt. Shasta from beautiful little Heart Lake, but I could never quite find a spot that spectacular to watch it set. I suspected that I should be able to get a good one from Whiskeytown Lake but it took hours of playing with angles in google Earth to finally find what I think was the perfect spot to take the shot over the lake. Of course I had and still have never seen this spot in the day time so I did take off this evening with quite a bit of uncertainty about whether or not it would look good and whether there was a good opening in the trees to take the pictures, and about how hard it was to actually get here. Yay for adventures!! 🙂

So as I'm going down the road around Whiskeytown I realize how many people are planning on watching this and am glad that I picked a spot that would have some solitude and that I wouldn't have to fight for a location to set my tripod. I get to the turnoff to the closest parking lot and see the sign on the gate that says that it's only open sunrise to sunset and of course the sun set about 45 minutes ago. I know I should park the car outside the gate...but of course I think I'm a bit late...and so I continue driving. I make it to the parking lot and there's a few cars so I think I'm probably Ok. I figure out how to get to my spot and I set up and start lining everything up and dialing all the settings in and waiting for the comet to become truly visible. In a few minutes I set my camera up to take pictures every 15 seconds so that I have enough data to make this image and have a time lapse sequence. About 10 minutes later and an hour before the comet set will be over, I get a text. It's from an old friend. A friend who works as law enforcement at the park! Ooooops! Dang it!! I read the text and of course I'm told I better move the car or it's going to be locked behind the gate. He'd been texted by one of his fellow officers that must have recognized my name when he ran a license plate and fortunately went above and beyond the call of duty by texting my friend and hoping he could get in quick contact with me. I'm able to leave the camera running and run back and move the car and run the long way back to the camera. I'm very happy that I don't have to sheepishly call my Wife and get her to wake up the kids and put them in a car to pick me up because I ignored a rule. Also I really should make a big metal print of this and give it to have it put up at the park someplace as a thank you to the awesome people that work there.

Note: This is a composite but all pictures were taken from the same camera with the same lens pointed in exactly the same direction. And every one of them has the comet very visible in the image. By combining lots of images I'm able to reduce the noise in the dark portions of the image, bring out the details in the water and in the sky of the last of the sunset light and show just how gigantic those comet tails were.

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