On my return drive up the coast from California, I stopped at Bandon, Oregon, to photograph the seastacks.  Bandon is one of the classic locations on the Oregon coast, and, indeed, I’ve photographed there many, many times.  I don’t think I’ve ever gone past Bandon without stopping, if for no other reason than just to walk the flat, packed sand beach.  On this location I was lucky…I arrived just in time for a great sunset.

Beach and seastacks; Bandon, Oregon. Nikon D800E, 45mm T/S lens.

Beach and seastacks; Bandon, Oregon. Nikon D800E, 16-35mm lens.

I’ve been traveling a lot this year. Over the next few weeks I’ll be posting some images from several locations. Several months ago I made a very quick “get out of the office” trip down the coast from my home in Oregon to Bowling Ball Beach, just south of Mendocino, California. I entered the redwoods in thick fog, with periods of intense rain. The only image I took was this, shot with my Nikon D800E at ISO 1600 with the 80-400mm lens.

The redwoods coast, in fog and rain.

Better weather awaited me at the beach. Here are three images, taken the same afternoon about 2½ hours apart, all three done with the 45mm T/S lens on my D800E. FYI, the “bowling balls” are concretions eroded out of the steeply tilted mudstone cliffs.

Bowling Ball Beach, California.

Bowling Ball Beach, California.

Bowling Ball Beach, California.

If you even plan on photographing here, try to time your visit for a low tide around sunset, wear rubber boots as you’ll be wading, and bring a heavy ND filter to soften the waves.

I really enjoy photographing autumn color.  In the mixed hardwoods of the eastern US, the beech/maple/oak forest, the trees present a wash of color, even a painterly effect.  Not so on the high plains and prairies.  Here the autumn color is that of the cottonwood trees, which line every local water source.  In contrast to the mixed reds and oranges of the eastern autumn, cottonwoods show only one color: yellow gold.  But be out photographing when the trees hit peak color, and the intensity is overwhelming.  Here are a couple of shots from two weeks ago in central Montana.  No, I wasn’t intentionally there to photograph the cottonwoods, in fact I was just passing through the region headed elsewhere, but who could resist?

As some of you may know, the trip mentioned in my last blog post was to Botswana.  I’ll say right here, Botswana is a great wildlife photography destination (the very first subject I photographed was a leopard, not a bad way to start!).  Toward the end of the trip I had the opportunity to spend one afternoon in a “bunker blind” at an elephant waterhole.

For Earth Day, 2013.

Permafrost, exposed and melting. Near Longyearbyen, Spitsbergen.

Shortly after the Tucson workshop, I traveled to Fairbanks, Alaska, to photograph the aurora borealis, the northern lights.  The last time I shot the aurora I was using film…digital cameras were still in there infancy.  And what a difference digital makes!  On this trip I used both my Nikon D4 and D800E, at shutter speeds between 6 and 20 seconds with the 14-24mm and 24-70mm lenses wide open at f/2.8, and ISOs of 1600, 2200, and 3200.

The northern lights, the aurora borialis.

The northern lights, the aurora borealis.