(EDIT: I have since gone through my files and found two more images that I feel are worth sharing.)

Meandering for miles down the western slopes of the Olympic Mountains and towards the Pacific Ocean, the mighty Hoh River and its turquoise waters are a beautiful spectacle of nature on their own. However, along the banks of the river there lies a lush and verdant natural treasure equally as astounding as the craggy, glaciated peaks that tower above it, the Hoh Rainforest.

With an astounding average of 140-170 inches of precipitation a year, the aptly named Hoh Rainforest is just that–a rainforest. Her massive old growth Western Hemlock and Sitka Spruce trees have been be found to grow over 300 feet tall, and interlaced in these stands of massive old growth, one can find almost inconceivably verdant groves of Epiphyte-covered Bigleaf and Vine Maples. In this temperate rainforest, there is not a single direction that one can focus their eyes and not be gazing directly upon flora of some kind.

From the sound of it, one might assume a place like this to be a nature photographer’s dream, which it very well may be, but not in a conventional sense. The temperate rainforest is so chaotic and messy that despite everything being lush and green, it is truly a compositional nightmare! It takes a great deal of patience, persistence, and concentration to identify just how to compose an image in this kind of place, and I recently learned that the hard way.

I just returned yesterday from a brief three day trip to a few of the temperate rainforests of Washington’s Olympic National Park, focusing my camera mainly upon the Hoh. For the entirety of my visit I was lucky to have bright overcast skies and light, misty drizzles, which bring out all of the best qualities these mossy green jungles have to offer. I hiked, scouted, and photographed all day for three consecutive days yet I came away with such few photographs that I am truly happy with.

One day of this trip was spent with fellow photographer and recent PNW transplant Floris van Breugel, We enjoyed a full day of hiking in the Hoh Rainforest, slowly meandering and photographing about nine miles up and down the river.

This is my take on the Bigleaf maple we took a lunch break next to. A light mist was moving in and out of the grove, and I was briefly able to make some order out of the chaos. I look forward to returning and photographing more!

[Edit:Reprocessed and re-posted on 2/11/11.]

I’ve made my way down out of the mountains, and over to the desert for the remainder of my trip. Before leaving the San Juan Mountains, I did a few fun overnight backpacks by myself, including Wetterhorn Basin, Ice Lakes Basin, and Highland Mary Lakes. After that, I proceeded to get rained on and slide around in the mud for two consecutive days in New Mexico’s Bisti Badlands, and I’m currently in Page, Arizona.

Anyhow, I’d like to share a photo I took on a ~9 mile out-and-back overnight trip to Wetterhorn Basin, in Colorado’s Uncompahgre National Forest. I hiked up the steep, but manageable West Fork Pass with my 40 pounds of camping gear, food, water, and photo equipment, and moseyed along towards the upper reaches of the Wetterhorn Basin, where I found an extensive and beautiful field of Sneezeweed and Rosy Paintbrush flowers. I set up my camp nearby, and hunkered down in my tent for two hours of torrential monsoon downpours and lightning strikes that were quite honestly WAY too close for comfort. Throughout all of this, however, a small patch of clear sky remained on the western horizon, and I knew what that meant: if it stays there, I’ll have fantastic sunset/alpenglow light against the stormy skies. Luckily enough, the clear spot remained, and I was treated to this extraordinary light. I definitely didn’t think about the chance of there being a rainbow up there!

It was an absolute treat photographing this raptor and many others last winter with my friend Greg Schneider. Rough-legged Hawks are usually quite shy of humans, and we were quite lucky to find this individual along a rural road in Ontario’s Amish country!

This article is featured here on Naturescapes.net. This past summer, I traveled and photographed for two weeks in Northern Arizona, chasing after the dramatic skies that so enthusiastically present themselves in tandem with the monsoon thunderstorms and intense 100+ degree heat. Simply put, the monsoon is a daily series of extremely powerful and isolated low-pressure systems that begin to build around midday, caused by the extreme heat of the land disagreeing with the cool, moist air coming off the oceans. While some may think that it’s absolutely preposterous to head out to the desert in ridiculous summer heat, the truth is that thanks to the monsoon, there are incredible photographic opportunities and dramatic cloud formations that are not readily available in any other season. To many photographers’ delight, these monsoon storms tend to dissolve immediately before sunset, often creating beautifully colorful and interesting skies.

On one particularly eventful afternoon and evening in Arizona’s Vermillion Cliffs NM this past August, the monsoon put on perhaps it’s finest show that I have yet to witness. As I waited for hours in the locale referred to as “White Pocket,” under the continuous rumble of thunder, deep, dark skies, and multiple torrential downpours, I seriously doubted things would clear up by sunset – this series of storms was just too strong, I thought. I relaxed in my tent and read a book.

An hour or so before sunset, after being teased by the skies brightening and darkening three or four times and not thinking much of it, the storm broke in what seemed to have been a split second. As the storm receded, it left behind an intricate patchwork of mammatus to accompany it’s tall, dark clouds. Seizing the opportunity, I composed a few black-and-white images.

As the sun became lower and lower in the sky, it lit up the entire cumulonimbus formation all the way until it’s very last rays of the day. Having scouted many locations in the area with this in mind, I climbed up onto my favorite section of brain-rock, waited until the light was just right, and fired away.

Feeling greedy after such fantastic light, I stuck around and photographed in the idyllic “desert glow,” twenty or so minutes after sundown. As the storm clouds further dissipated, I was able to pull one additional “keeper” from the gorgeous conditions nature presented to me. What a day!

Here’s the second image I kept from this outing. To achieve this effect in the sky, I stacked five 30-second exposures during sunset’s brightest colors. Sorry for the brief post!

I’m currently out shooting along the coast, hoping to make the best of the conditions: low tides at sunset, dramatic cloud formations from an incoming fall storm, and fairly non-hazy skies. So far, I have nothing, but I’ll have another chance tonight before I have to head back to Olympia for class Friday.

Here’s one of two I’ll be sharing from my adventures this past summer. This spot is located on the Navajo Indian Reservation, and I had to get a special hiking permit to legally access it.

Happy Halloween, everybody! I have more waterfalls and autumn foliage coming next week. Until then, here’s one from my southwestern travels this past summer. It was 104 degrees this day, which surprisingly, didn’t feel as bad as I had feared it might have. Anyway, Spooky Gulch is an incredible slot, and while the sandstone may not have the same vibrant colors as a few of the more popular canyons on Navajo land, it makes up for that in other ways. Below is a photo from one of my favorite passages of the slot.

It has definitely been a while since my last post here! Hopefully some people are still checking this blog, haha… I plan to update it regularly from this point. I have been keeping quite busy lately… I moved to Olympia, WA in September to attend classes at the Evergreen State College, and have been preoccupied with moving in, getting unpacked, and adapting to my new schedule.

I just recently got out to shoot for the first time in a loooooong while, and I’m very happy I did so! It was the first of many trips I’ll be taking to Oregon’s rugged coast and Columbia River Gorge. The fall foliage is just getting good down around the streams and waterfalls of the gorge, and I’ll be going back as much as possible in the next week or two. Below is an image from the popular 289-foot Elowah Falls.

Hey everybody,

The auto problems are all taken care of for now! Unfortunately, my friend Chris had to go home and go back to work. I’m back in the San Juan mountains, shooting for a bit longer before I return home. I hiked up above Boullion King Lake to Porphyry Basin on Friday evening for a sunset shoot. There were a few patches of profuse flowers, and the light was quite nice. Stay tuned– I’ll be doing quite a bit over the next few days and will have quite a bit to share with you all. For now, I’m headed up to the Uncompahgre National Forest for some solo backpacking and photography. Below is one the images from Friday night that I’ve quickly processed on my laptop to share.

So, my vehicle is repaired, and we’re on the road again! Chris and I are headed back into the Colorado Rockies for some wildflower action. For now, we’re trying to make the most out of the high pressure weather and clear skies, but the monsoon should start kickin’ again soon.

Anyway, we had an absolutely great time exploring the washes, slickrock, and slot canyons in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument! It was a whopping 104 degrees fahrenheit out in the open, but it felt quite pleasant in the shaded slots and under canyon walls. Our day included a nice sunrise shoot, hiking three beautiful slots, an hour-long nap in the shade, a delicious “Subway Fresh” meal, an attempted visit to Calf Creek Falls (The area was “closed…” Go figure!) and finally, I entered a sleepy, Wolves in the Throne Room-induced trance, and commenced a late night, high speed drive back to Moab! It was an insanely tiring day, but it was one of our best days of the trip so far.

Here’s a photograph I like from Spooky Gulch. The reflected light down there, both blue from the sky, and orange from the sun/sandstone, is just unbelievable. You can’t really see it too well with the naked eye, but in a minute-long exposure at ISO 100, the colors really sing.