Yak Caravan In Nepal Trekking in Nepal is always made easier with yaks or dzokyos (cross breed cow/yak) carrying your gear. And someone to handle them.

Winding Through Bhutan There aren't many straight roads in Bhutan. It is a very mountainous country often times with room for only one point five cars on a road. Recent improvements for the main artery across the country have vastly improved travel times, though.

A Light On The Hills They finally have that new stretch of pavement down and the construction speed signs are gone along Highway 395 in Owens Valley. And from that stretch you can see clear across Owens Lake to new patches of snow, this one advantageously lit.

Desert High Cloud Sunset I really love trips where I can combine multiple subjects or hobbies or whatnot and my last quick overnight to the desert was no exception. The day started with capturing a number of drone images of the signs of Lone Pine, a post that is coming up soon. Then I did some…

Weird Shapes In The Alabama Hills A quick note that if you decide to fly a drone in the Alabama Hills, you need to get a permit from the Bureau of Land Management in Bishop. The good news is they are nice people. And it's the only way you can get pictures of certain funky rocks like this.

Upside Down Shimmer

A Second After The Mergansers Dove Down It's not always about getting the birds in frame. Sometime, like this time, I was more captured with the abstract reflections on the lake but decided to keep in the trails the birds left before ducking down.

Alabama Hills And The Eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains It turns out you need a permit to fly a drone in the Alabama Hills so I went through the process last year. The permit is only good for a year so while I was in the area of Lone Pine taking photos for another personal project, I popped over to…

Just Another Beautiful California Sunset The view from the bluff above Santa Monica Beach offers each chances for great sunsets.

Teton Peaks Above The Clouds A break from the birds, Enjoy!

The Pestering Parasitic Jaeger Here's a great example of a Parasitic Jaeger living up to its name. It was pestering the tern on the left until the tern dropped its fish in order to get away. In the very next frame, you can see the fish being caught and subsequently gulped down by the jaeger. Some…

Surreal LAX And Downtown Los Angeles I was out on a pelagic birding trip today, where you hop on a boat and look for birds that don't usually come ashore, when I took this surreal, or maybe impressionistic? photo. That's the main control town for LAX on the right with an oil tanker in the…

It’s LA28 Olympic & Paralympic Ticket Time! No, you can't buy tickets for the 2028 Summer Olympics and Paralympic Games in Los Angeles today, but you can register for a random drawing when tickets are available in April. And if you're a resident of certain counties close to LA or Oklahoma City…

Adventures In Failure It's been said the difference between a professional and an amateur in most fields like photography is the professional doesn't admit their mistakes. At this point in my career I'm not making the majority of my income from photography so let me be an amateur for a moment.…

The Kite Without A String Not all kites need strings. This is a White-tailed Kite found by Ballona Creek in Los Angeles. They hover while searching for prey and very much resemble the typical four point kite flown at a beach. It's my second time spotting one in this general area and I was tipped…

Great Egret Hunting For Brunch One lesson on birding that pops into my head every time I go out is, "You're not done till you're back at the car". So many times I've spotted either more birds or nice compositions like this Great Egret by Ballona Creek in LA, on my way back or even just about at my…

What Are You Looking At?

The Line Down The Glacier When two parts of a glacier come together from different directions, their sides that were turned dark from rubbing rocks off the sides of mountains make a single track. This line was photographed in Patagonia but since the Canon R5 doesn't have a GPS on it, I'd be…

Cold And Blur And Gray Cruising through Chile's fjords and looking up at the myriad glaciers and cliffs.

The Vegas Strip, Harry Reid Airport And Most Of Las Vegas This was one of those chance encounters with good enough weather, a port side seat and just the right angle to capture most of Las Vegas in one frame. At least the Vegasy part of Las Vegas. Downtown is just creeping out of frame.

Super Moody It's the kind of light photographers drool over. Sun breaking through a mixed layer of clouds with a passing storm in the background. This scene is just outside of Manzanar National Historic Site (a place all Americans should visit in California).

Happiness In The Sierra This location has become one of my favorite spots to camp with just one trip. It's not so easy to get to (11,000' pass) and requires a permit that has limited availability. But Kearsarge Lakes in Kings Canyon National Park is well worth the effort. I haven't planned my trip…

Mountain Pride If you looked at yesterday's panorama of Columbine Lake, it may have looked like a desolate landscape, barren of all life except the backpackers. At nearly 11,000', not a lot grows there, for sure. But this little plant called Mountain Pride (Penstemon newberryi)clings to the rocks…

Columbine Lake and Sawtooth Peak One of the best four day hikes I've ever done, last summer saw me and two friends hike a 27 mile (or so, we all had different stats) loop in the Mineral King area of Sequoia & kings Canyon National Parks. Before we got close to the parking lot on the last day we…

Pia Glacier Panorama Glaciers like Pia Glacier fascinate me. Located down in Patagonia with very few visitors each year, the glacier continues to calve off chunks of ice, filling and emptying the bay in front of it. It can be found on a map here.

Stone Patterns, Patagonia Amongst the 'freshly' scrapped rocks as a glacier in Chile's Patagonia region, the patters of lichen mix with the rock below.

Ever Get That Feeling You’re Being Stared At? The birds, they are watching you.

Zion Hillside To be honest, I'm only 86% sure this is actually in Zion National Park. There is a little section of the road that actually pops out of he park before popping back in and I might have taken the photo in that area (Canon: please add GPS to the R5 line!).

Favorite Photos From 2025 It's time to scroll through the highlights from 2025 and pick favorites. I gave up on the Top 10 list a while ago because life's short, more photos. This year was a bit of a struggle artistically. And it wasn't. It wasn't because I ended up going to beautiful and…

American Kestrel On A Streetlight Kestrels are compact little suckers with beautiful plumage. The blue and orange combo makes them fairly distinct.

Pied-billed Grebe I saw a few of these guys tonight while birding the Ballona Marsh Wetlandshere in LA. While not this particular bird, they are easy to tell from a distance with their beak length and shape and head size.

Imperial Cormorants On A Nest The blue on these South American birds, known as Imperial Cormorants (Leucocarbo atriceps), and the blue in their eyes makes them a beauty to behold.

The Joy Of The Freedom To Fail Last night I went to a spot overlooking the Santa Monica Pier to film a timelapse and it didn't go as planned. The overall lesson that I was reminded of was this: Creating Art requires failure and there is not greater freedom in Art than the freedom to fail. Over and…

Evening Cloud Break In Torres Del Paine National Park One of the best parts of being in Patagonia in Torres del Paine National Park is just sitting and watching the weather go by.

The Drama Above And Below Flying West toward Los Angeles, I was lucky enough to catch the light before a storm came in this past Fall. I think this might have been the storm that dumped a record amount of rainfall in the city for November. It sure looks like it could have been. If this had been…

Three Views Of Lake Michigan, Four Hours Apart Those times at the beginning or end of a change in the weather are ripe for photos. The shifting winds and clouds and light make for vastly different views while sitting in one spot. These three images were taken recently in Chicago looking out into…

Just Before Angel’s Landing

How To Help Your Local (Or Any) Public Broadcasting Service

Exploring Zion’s Empty Western Road As mentioned in yesterday's post, the road along the west side of Zion National Park doesn't get nearly the same traffic as the valley. Some same it is just 10% of the main attractions. I love a good, empty road and this one has vistas to spare. Truth be known,…

Last Light On Zion National Park’s Less Visited Highlands One day of stellar light in Zion fills my soul for a week. I was lucky enough to spend two nights up there recently and while the weather was a mixed bag, one of the evenings produced some splendid fall light. Like many people visitors, the…

Southern Crested Caracara Such a lovely bird and spotted right next door to downtown Buenos Aires in Argentina. Caracaras can be found in many areas around the world, including North America. Guess what the talons are for?

Capitol Reef National Park Aerial I love exploring the Southwest from a plane. The colors and patterns offer a way different view than from on land. It took me a while to realize exactly where this was. I knew my flight path and that is was likely Capitol Reef National Park but it is a long park,…

Emerging From The Winds

All The Blues In Chile Exploring fjords and glaciers in Chile was (possibly) a once in a lifetime trip for my wife and I. Patagonia has a number of ecosystems and the icy blue in and out of the water has a severe calming effect.

Ushuaia Sunset Timelapse Ushuaia is also known as the End of the World. While this can't be literal when we live on a ball, it's fun to think it's the last reasonably modern location before jumping off to Antarctica. It's also wayyyyy do there and takes effort to arrive. If you don't see the video…

Andean Condor Soaring We are fresh back from a trip to Patagonia that has been on my mind for decades. Back then I wasn't as into birding as I am these days, but I can tell you; you don't have to be into birds to appreciate the Andean Condor. Be on the lookout for more Patagonia content as I get…

Stairwell – LAX Parking Continuing with the stairwell series, because for some odd reason I keep seeing something in them I'm compelled to photograph, here's a random stairwell at LAX Airport in the parking structures.

Unique Brutalist Spaceship Known as the Gisele Library, this architectural wonder sits on the campus of the University of California Sand Diego

Curbside Desoto A classic cat like this deserves black and white treatment.

Black Windows Freak Me Out, Still Growing up in Washington, black widow spiders were something exotic from far away lands. Then I moved to California and started finding them in place I did not want. I can still remember seeing my first one when we lived in Orange. It got my heart racing with an…