My Travels

Near Newport, Oregon, is a place called Yaquina Head, once upon a time known as Cape Foulweather. Jutting out into the ocean is a point of land weathered by the waves, carved into a point, where in 1871, a lighthouse was constructed. To this day, it is the tallest lighthouse in Oregon, and was even featured in the 2002 film "The Ring". To date, I don't believe I have ever visited a more forlorn place...nor have I visited a place with so many flies. The odd, unexpected thing about this place is the sheer mind-boggling amount of kelp flies buzzing about, the benign bugs zipping about in such numbers that I honestly had difficulty keeping my footing for this HDR shot, since the flies would land on my legs and tickle them. Still, the trip to Yaquina Head was completely worth it!

This is another, different take on the inside of Bodie Island Lighthouse; one similar to the shot I'd taken while in its sister lighthouse, Currituck. This one is looking up toward the first window encountered during the ascent to the top...and I love how the light caught just right in my lens to create a glistening effect toward the bottom left of the photo. The white walls of Bodie Island's lighthouse contrast beautifully with the jet black wrought iron stairs, creating a mesmerizing sight reminiscent of the inside of a seashell, and making for a deliciously contrasty piece.

I will not lie, I had spent way too long trying to find some kind of profound quote to attach to this photograph, but that seems a little pretentious, doesn't it? The truth of the matter is, I love trying new things, artistically. I want to better myself, push myself outward and learn new techniques I can use to blend the abstract with reality. Thanks to the magic of YouTube, I was able to find a tutorial on how to create 'angular images' similar to the visual aesthetic of a certain big budget movie about a trek through the world of dreams. I used that tutorial as a launch pad to put together this piece, a surrealist bending of the natural into something quite unnatural and dreamlike. I'd definitely like to try more of this in the future!

It's almost over...or has it almost begun? This was a photo taken during the Great American Eclipse of 2017, as seen from the swampy-hot Sesquicentennial State Park, outside of Columbia, SC. This was easily the most magical, memorable day of my entire life, and even here a year after the fact, I am still finding bits and pieces from my camera roll that offer new insight into just how much of an information overload an eclipse can actually be for a guy like me. I remember as the camera shutter clicked and I saw this through my lens, I was absolutely elated...and terrified. See those clouds there? They threatened to derail an entire year's worth of careful work and planning targeted directly at getting the most I possibly could out of the scant two minutes of time I had where the sun went dark. I don't remember ever being so terrified and excited at the same time, and I certainly wasn't alone; the gathered crowd screamed at the clouds and shouted at them to go away...and by some miracle, they did. Still, even when the clouds eked in and gently obscured the event, it resulted in beautiful scenery just like what you see here.

This HDR photo is another of those beautiful, empty roads out in Ohio's Amish Country, outside of New Philadelphia OH. This was taken in late October, 2011. After a long day spent exploring the countryside, taking in the beauty, the sun had started to set, and the rain clouds had begun to move in. I was sad to have to leave this place, but at least through the windshield of my friend's car, I got this shot, as the sun went down. Take a visit to Amish Country sometime, people; it's truly one of the most peaceful places you can go!

Pennsylvania has some of the most gorgeous countryside in America. From its many farms to its plentiful covered bridges and winding roads, a trip through Pennsylvania's countryside is utterly refreshing. We saw plenty of beautiful things during our trip out to Pottsville, but it was this particular road, out in the middle of Pennsylvanian nowhere (or Pennsyltucky as we call it here), that simply captivated me. Perhaps it's the road leading into the unknown, or the dimming sunlight that set the environment into a blaze of colors...I'm not sure, but I knew I had to take a photograph and share it with the world.

There's an old saying that the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step...but in this instance, it's a journey of 162 feet into the air, and 220 steps of wrought iron. This is the very beginning of the ascent to the top of the Currituck Lighthouse in Corolla, NC. I would have loved to climb to the top, and it isn't for a lack of trying; it's simply that these buildings are without a doubt the most vertigo-inducing structures I've ever been inside of. Absolutely awe-inspiring...and yet terrifying on a primal level for me. Still, there was a remarkable amount to take in even from the bottom of the lighthouse, one of those views I present to you here. So, can you ascend to the top?

On our trek around the beautiful state of Oregon, one of the very first stops we had made was to this small, gorgeous town; Astoria. I'd never seen such enormous ships before, just floating out on the Columbia River, with the mountainous Washington State in the background on the other side of the water. This town was at the razor's edge of Oregon, at the very northwestern tip of the state, and serves as a great, beautiful introduction to the rest of the state. All at once a quaint, sleepy fishing town and fading vacation destination, I found a lot to love about Astoria, even though my time there was short. I would most certainly love to return someday, if only to take more pictures!

This is another image from the sleepy, beautiful town of Depoe Bay, Oregon. In this image I pulled the lens back so that you can see more of the surrounding area; the large wall that held up the town's main road (Highway 101), and how the shores of this small fishing town quickly fell into a beautiful, craggy shoreline made entirely of volcanic basalt. The whole town felt dreamy and placid, despite the roaring of the Pacific Ocean's waters down below, and the constant squawk-chirping of young seagulls, many of which lived beneath the city's large single-arch stone bridge.

On the outskirts of Amish Country during my trip to New Philadelphia in 2011, the sun was finally beginning to go down. It was time to head home. On our way out of the area, we came across this graveyard, just on the very edge where one could begin to see power lines again, but where the view was no less stunning. It was cold and bitter outside, the weather giving the sunset a bit of a steely and arctic feel, but none of that diminished the beauty of the landscape. Graveyards can be amazing places to take photos, even if they have that air of eternal silence about them!

Totality is such a fleeting experience; so much happens in such a short amount of time that it can be absolutely dizzying; as a photographer, that translates to a laundry list of things to be certain of in a very short span of time. Did I take the solar filter off of the lens? Is my lens stabilized? Do I have the ISO and the settings correct? Most importantly...will the weather hold up? The weather was my very biggest concern when shooting the eclipse...and in a stroke of absolutely cosmic luck, we got to see the eclipse surrounded by a halo of clouds. Had we been even a mile or two in any other direction, we wouldn't have seen it...and yet, there it was. Just as the eclipse started to end, the moon moving away from the solar disc, the clouds began to roll in...and as the clouds started to obscure the sun, the brilliant and aptly named "diamond ring" effect (where the sun's light forms a brilliant 'gem' at the apex of the lunar disc) took shape. It took me weeks after the fact to realize I'd even captured the effect, as I pored through all the hundreds and hundreds of eclipse photographs I took, all in the pursuit of that one perfect, shining image. I couldn't be happier that I managed to capture it.

Blue skies ruled the day on our trip out to the Outer Banks' very own Bodie Island Lighthouse, a gorgeous structure built in 1872, measuring in at 156 feet tall. It's difficult to describe the sensation of being in the presence of one of these huge structures; it feels so out of the ordinary for what most of us are used to seeing in a building, and there simply isn't anything nearby, trees included, that is as tall as these behemoths are. We were extremely fortunate to catch the lighthouse during such a particularly beautiful time of day as well, as perhaps an hour after this photo was taken, that's when the storms rolled in to put the kibosh on any more shooting for the day.

Sometimes, I like to revisit my old photographs and try to see the what more I can eke out of a given memory...and sometimes, I actually find something truly worth emphasizing. Case in point, this image of our sun, Sol. Here you can see the sun caught in the middle of 2017's Total Solar Eclipse, but this is a part of the sun that we almost never get to truly see...the actual surface. The sun is magnetism gone wild; its enormous jets of flame arc off the surface in patterns that flow along with the star's twisted magnetic field in what are called prominences. These prominences sometimes are big enough that they could swallow the entirety of Earth and then some...and I actually managed to capture some of them, hidden within the bright glare of our sun's corona.

So, it was a beautiful day in central Ohio, and I was out visiting family. We were having fun, everyone running around the park or sat around the benches so that they might escape the bright, sweltering sun...and yet there I was, hunkered down on my stomach, camera pointed at this one tree for what felt like a solid half hour. Every shot, it felt, was a mistake. Was this one good? No, the aperture was too wide and the sky was washed out. Was this one good? Nope, too dark. How about this one? Gah, it's blurry! Photography is a test of patience, I swear. There was something about this singular tree though, as unassuming as it was on the surface...it just attracted me to it. I kept trying, kept shooting...and by the time I got home, I very quickly figured out what I wanted to do. What you see is the result!

This is a view looking up through the concentric circles formed by Currituck Lighthouse's spiral staircase. There's something about the pattern formed by these stairs that I just can't get enough of, and I must have stood at the bottom of that lighthouse for well over half an hour simply trying to find the best angles...and I think I managed to find quite a few good ones! Still, it is a shame I was unable to actually climb the lighthouse myself and find what else might have been at the top, visually-speaking; these places seem tailor-made to induce vertigo! This is the COLOR version of this photograph!

I've been a lot of places by now, and I've seen a lot of things while in pursuit of a great photograph. I'm always learning, always honing and sharpening my skills. Some scenes you really have to work with, get the angle on, and eke out the beauty using uncommon perspective to find the real potential of a place...but other scenes, like this one taken on the shores of Presque Isle, are just obvious. You come upon it, inhale the fresh air, and just *know* that you've found something special. Well, I found it. Presque Isle is absolutely loaded with these kinds of scenes; beauty around every literal corner, and I can't wait to go back.