Tag: photography

Storms Worth Chasing

Sometimes it’s worth going without sleep to have a chance to see nature at its finest and the opportunity to view a potentially high-level solar storm was too hard to pass up. As darkness fell the night of May 11, 2024, the aurora came in like a grizzly protecting a cub earning it the extreme G5 label.

I’ve featured this pond in other posts. It’s one of our favorite spots and home to beaver, moose, bear, and elk. The roadway to it had just reopened so it seemed like an excellent place to wait out the arrival of strong, overhead auroras. I’ve caught a glimpse of the northern lights here before but only low green glows toward the mountainous horizon.

Mild temperatures and little wind made the evening feel almost summerlike as my always-up-for-an-adventure husband and I spent hours gazing upward as swirling lights of green, pink, and red rained down upon us—color visible to the naked eye.

Some nights are perfection. This, was one of them.

Happy Mother’s Day to those celebrating the holiday. I’m lucky to have a mother who instilled a sense of adventure in me. She’s in her eighties and still loves to explore. I can only hope to emulate her in the years to come.

Springtime in the Rockies

I think it’s safe to say that winter has passed—after all, isn’t crazy weather the hallmark of spring? The week brought massive dust storms, wet snow, and rain. I’m hoping the late season moisture and additional volume of snowpack on the mountains will bring a bit of a reprieve to the drought-like conditions. The bright green leaves of spring have appeared on the trees, but they won’t on the ones in the image above. Those trees bare the scars of a massive wildfire that struck the area in 2017. Below them lies a carpet of new growth and soon spring flowers. Happy Sunday, everyone!

They say it’s spring…

My garlic is up. There are buds on the trees. A single day can have sunshine, rain, snow, graupel, and hoarfrost. It must be spring. The hoarfrost pictured above was particularly lovely—its uniform crystalline spikes sprouting from every surface. The landscape glittered beneath the bright blue sky.

I’ll miss the tranquility of winter’s palette. The indigo blue of the mountains peeking through their snowy white blanket and providing the perfect backdrop for yellow fields of stubble. Green is waiting in the wings for soon everything dormant spring will spring to life. For now, I’ll enjoy winter’s final offerings of crystalline formations.

Snow Rollers

Spring is the perfect time to spot snow rollers. They’re a meteorological event that can happen when conditions are just right—strong wind and a particular texture of light, not too sticky, snow. This trio of rollers had the added advantage of slope to get them on their way.

In the background is a partial 22 degree halo. The bright spot at the top of it is a faint upper tangent arc.

Last week, I thought spring had arrived—garlic is up, along with alliums and tulips and bird wars over prime nesting spots have begun—but she was just kidding. Have a wonderful adventure-filled week. I’m off to shovel the evening’s dump of snow.

Ground Control to Major Tom…

Lenticulars are a visible sign of mountain waves in the air. This particular cloud is a classic example of an orographic wave cloud—for scale, notice the truck in the bottom right corner—what you don’t see in this image are the mountains to the left.

A good visualization of how these form is to picture ripples created by water flowing over an obstruction in a stream.

I first photographed one of these clouds in Idaho. It looked for all the world like a massive wedge tornado…but, no rotation, and it was a storm-free afternoon. Years later, Gavin Pretor-Pinney of the Cloud Appreciation Society https://cloudappreciationsociety.org/ identified it for me as lenticular.

I can’t see these clouds without David Bowie’s 1969 song, Space Oddity, running through my head.

This cloud hovered for perhaps ten minutes then vanished. And the truck? It disappeared too…

Heterogeneous Nucleation

As well my husband knows, I could look at rocks for hours. And if nature should glaze them in a layer of ice, he knows he might as well pull up a stump!

The pinks, greens, reds, and beiges of these rocks are stunning on a calm summer day submerged in the cold waters of Waterton, a mountainous park in Alberta, Canada. But on this winter morning when ice formed around nucleation sites, perhaps in this case, grains of dust or surface irregularities, the rocks were swathed in intricate lace patterns. Confirming, once again

In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.

John Muir

Nature’s artwork…

Nature creates the most intricate artwork, and the only way to capture and preserve it is with photography. For me, it’s (almost always) about the water, and winter, by far, creates some of the most breath-taking sculptures using that element. They’re fleeting and transient—with the slightest breeze or temperature fluctuation capable of obliterating them.

The image above is one of soft rime. Earlier that morning, shining a flashlight ahead of me, I watched with interest as freezing fog streamed through the beam of light. Droplets like this, under the right conditions, can freeze upon contact with surfaces at subzero temperatures creating opaque structures of brittle, interlocking ice crystals.

On any other morning, this was a clump of horsehair snagged in a barbed wire fence. But on this particular day, it became an ornate, delicate thing of beauty.

show the intricacy of soft rime ice

Happy New Year

Tearing the last page off a calendar is such a great time for reflecting. This year we had an abundance of things to be grateful for proving once again, it’s not things that make a year good or bad, it’s who you go through those things with that makes the difference.

Sunrise won’t arrive for a few hours yet, but as I sit writing, my husband has made coffee and dropped a steaming cup off to me (accompanied by a chocolate-covered coffee bean). The day is very special to me. The man who brought me coffee proposed to me on New Year’s Day after reciting by memory, one of my favorite poems, ee cummings, i carry your heart with me (i carry it in). Outside, a light snow is falling over our desperately dry land and the air has a winter feel to it.

Our dog is snoring, not yet recovered from a day-long hike. We’ve had many great hikes this year and right now, in the garage drying, is a casting we made of a cougar track, spotted on our latest adventure. It joins track castings of a black bear and a grizzly.

This year I captured a couple from my bucket list of shots—light pillars and a lunar halo/aurora combination. We discovered a new favorite place that all three of us enjoy. Don’t ask…I can’t tell you! Thanks to another friend, I made a connection with a horse who needed a little extra companionship. It’s been a highlight of my year.

And here we are in 2024. I am grateful for the love and friendship of my husband, family, and friends (new and old). I wish you all the best in the new year, we could not have done it without you!

And for those who have asked, yes, this was the year that an albatross house went by the wayside thanks to the dedication of one tenacious woman. I’d name her but I suspect she wants to forget the entire experience, and I wouldn’t blame her. I wish her an especially Happy New Year!

Ramblings from a winter morning…

Photographing ice in sub-zero temperatures isn’t for the faint of heart, but in a winter that’s been warmer than usual there haven’t been many opportunities and I’m curious. Will it freeze over this year? It’s a large lake with a fantastic assortment of birds, everchanging with the seasons. Some nights, while photographing the Northern Lights here, we could hardly speak and be heard over the vocalizing of the flocks of geese—numbering in the hundreds, possibly thousands.

As winter settles icy fingers on the landscape, paddleboards are replaced by ice-fishing huts. But not this year, not yet. Taking a break from shooting, I look around and spot a solitary observer. Sometimes I hear the eagles before I see them, but this one sat very quietly on a branch far above my head, conserving energy.

Always a good day when you’re out in nature.

One for the collection…

Nine years in—my how time flies! My first published post was in December of 2014, and a lot has changed since then. One thing that hasn’t though is my love of optics.

Something woke me up at 2:30 AM on December 1st, and I went outside to check the night sky. I wasn’t disappointed. Ringing the moon was a bright, clear 22 degree halo and a quick check of the aurora data showed that the much-hyped solar storm might be materializing. Bundling up for the brisk twelve-degree Fahrenheit temperatures, we set off to see if I could capture a bucket list shot—lunar halo and aurora.

It was a bit of a battle. The clouds were persistent but the aurora even more so, and when it hit a peak of G3, I got my opportunity at 5:30 AM. (If you’re squeamish, skip the next part and scroll down to the pretty pictures.)

I moved my tripod into position, fumbling with ice-cold fingers, and in the process tore a piece of flesh from one finger, but the aurora waits for no one. With blood streaming down my hand, I waited for the red aurora to reach my frame.

The December 1, 2023, event hung around until the following evening and out we ventured again—finger securely bandaged. The clouds were not as thick, and we were treated to a show heavy on reds and with pillars shooting higher than my wide-angle lens could capture.

A first for me, two chases in one day and a shot that I’ve dreamed of since I first was introduced to halos by the famed optics expert, Les Cowley. You can read more about lunar halos on his site by following this link. https://atoptics.co.uk/blog/lunar-halo/