The Whidbey Geodome, opened the Earth Portal show during the Earth Day 50th anniversary at the Seattle Center. I headed down there with Clifton on Earth Day to do some networking and photography, and we took some time out to watch an Earth Portal show. It’s an interesting theater; they basically put an inflatable dome inspired by the Buckminster Full Geodoem inside the building, and have a planetarium projector inside it.

The show itself is a brief, visually intense tour of the universe. The visuals and the music are worth the price of admission. They’ll be there throughout the summer, and I definitely recommend a visit.

Last week saw the launch of Showcase Seattle, a new Seattle-based artists’ community, seeking to help local artists market their work to a global audience. I’m one of their member artists. Stop by and visit Showcase Seattle, and have a look at what we’re up to.

In related news, please visit my new web store, which is also part of the Showcase Seattle marketplace.

A couple of weekends ago, I went with two friends to Reflection Lake at Mount Rainier. It was one of the few weekends we’ve had recently with clear weather, so our timing was excellent. It’s a short hike from the Narada Falls trailhead to Reflection Lake, which also made this a good opportunity to test out our winter gear.

There weren’t very many people out there, and since there aren’t very many restrictions on where to camp during the winter, we were able to find a pretty private camp site in the trees, that kept the wind down. Out in the open, the wind was pretty harsh, so having the trees for a windbreak was a big improvement.

Next weekend, I am offering a workshop in collaboration with Art on the Ridge. We’ll be touring some of the places that snow geese like to visit, looking for wildlife as well as landscape photographs. During the trip I’ll be offering advice and suggestions on composition and exposure for stills as well as video. How much help I’ll provide will depend on how experienced the participants are, as well as how much help the participants ask for.

To sign up, please visit the signup page at Art on the Ridge.

For anyone who’s curious, some of what I have planned for 2012 include:
Climbing Mount Rainier with Climb for Clean Air
Releasing a book and an e-book about my Africa trip
Visit to Lake Minchumina, Alaska (near Fairbanks) and doing some photography in Denali National Park
Visit to Inyakuk Lodge, Alaska and doing some photography in Gate of the Arctic National Park
Co-lead a backpacking trip in the Glacier Peak Wilderness with Sierra Club National. There are only two spots left for signups, so if you’re interested, don’t wait too long!

On the martial arts side of things, I’m teaching a seminar on applications of kata Seunchin next Saturday at Northwest Martial Arts, and we’ll also be hosting a seminar that my sensei Kimo Wall will be teaching on March 31st and April 1st. Signups for that seminar will open up soon, hopefully next week.

Where is 2012 taking you?

My year began in the Skagit Valley chasing snow geese. It took a while for us to find them; our first couple of destinations turned up very few geese, though I think that we did find a spot with a great view of their night time resting spot, on an island that’s accessible by foot when the tide’s low. Persistence paid off, though; after dragging ourselves out of our campsite at 4am, we tried another spot, where we had the good fortune of a beautiful sunrise pictured below, and after heading out from there we saw a flock of snow geese.

It wasn’t a huge flock by any means, but a friendly farmer let us film from on his property so we were able to get pretty close, until a hunter took a shot at one and scared them off.

So far on the docket I have a photography workshop in the Skagit in the works, the details of which should be available soon. I have managed to get a team together to start work on a documentary, of which I will be writing here quite a bit in the near future. I am also going to be working with Frank Dux on some training videos; in some of them, I might be the instructor. Either way, there is a lot going on, and this promises to be an interesting year.

What’s going on in your year? Let’s not speak of resolutions, but rather of dreams and goals, things that we will actually stick to, rather than things that we’ll resolve to do until our resolve runs out.

I photographed this scene at dawn on Christmas day in 2006. It was a cloudy morning, so there was nearly no color in the dawn. Since it was a calm morning, the water on the C&O canal was mirror smooth. Leafless for the winter, the trees and ridges made a tapestry of shapes and textures reflected in the water. It felt to me tranquil, peaceful, and I sought to capture that feeling of tranquility in this image.

I’ve been following Bruce Percy’s blog for a long time now, because his images helped to inspire my own landscape photography. So naturally when he announced his book “The Art of Adventure: 40 Photographic Examples” I ordered a copy.

The edition I purchased is a hardcover with a dust jacket showcasing one of Bruce’s photographs. It’s pretty hefty, for its thickness; it’s printed on high-end glossy paper that showcases the images quite nicely.

The layout is very simple, following the example of Ansel Adams’ comparable book; on the left side of each spread is a photograph, and on the right is an essay about that photograph, sometimes with an inset image showing an alternative version of the main image.

The images consist of a mix of portraits and landscapes from Bruce’s travels. The essays are light on technical info, instead emphasizing the reason that he chose to frame the image the way he did, and in several instances also expressing his self-doubts about images, especially when they involved portraits.

The images and the essays together offer some insight not only into how a masterful photographer like Bruce Percy makes such compelling images, but also into what he was thinking about when he made them, and why he made some of the choices that he made.

Without the essays, this would be a great coffee table book, but the essays make it a great read for anyone passionate about photography.

I’ve made trips out to the Skagit Valley nearly every year since moving out west to seek opportunities to get some nice shots of vast flocks of snow geese. So far I haven’t succeeded with snow geese, at least not really, but I have gotten some beautiful photographs as a result of these attempts, including these.

The top image is a shot of Mount Baker towering over a farm on Fir Island. The lower one is a group of swans flying in a nice elegant formation. I tripped the shutter several times while panning with them to get this shot, and picked out the one where the geese had the most pleasing formation, and where the wingbeats were almost exactly in sync. This isn’t a black and white conversion, it was an overcast day so the sky was grey, and the swans are mostly black and white.

I pulled these images out of my archives partly because I like them, and partly because I’m planning on trying again this season; this time I have the advantage of having explored the area a bit more, and found places where snow geese like to spend their days.

The challenge of course is that, being birds, they get around quite a bit. They like to find themselves quiet places in the water to rest overnight, where they’re relatively safe from predators, and head out to feed during the day. There are several wildlife sanctuaries in the Skagit Valley that are set aside for snow geese in particular, and more that are more generally protected. The ones set aside for snow geese have farmers contracted to seed the fields with goose food, which has helped restore the population of the Wrangel Island geese that winter here in Washington.

I’m going to be working with Art on the Ridge to lead a workshop/safari in February to chase snow geese, so it will be an opportunity to come along for the ride and get a tour if you’re so inclined. If you’re interested, subscribe to my blog or my newsletter, or to the Art on the Ridge newsletter. Or some combination of those three.

I organized a 7-day backpacking trip in the Glacier Peak Wilderness this September. We followed the Spider Gap to Buck Creek Pass route, and took the mandatory side trip to Image Lake in the process. The hike to Image Lake is itself incredible, with the alternating stands of trees and areas of flower-filled open meadows, with Glacier Peak standing tall directly across the valley below.

It was worth the side trip. Image lake is an idyllic location; the lake itself is in a deep cirque and ringed with wildflower-laden meadows. When we were there, because the snowpack persisted so much later than usual, the wildflowers, lupines in particular, were in full bloom, and there are several places with wonderful views of Glacier Peak. One of those places happens to be the backcountry toilet at the group camp site, but another is the view from above Image Lake, where you can, if the weather cooperates, catch the reflection of Glacier Peak in the lake.

I was fortunate on this trip; the breeze died down just as I arrived at Image Lake shortly before sunrise, since it was to be our only night there on this trip, which means that a 2nd try would have to wait a year.

Still classic images sometimes take several years to create; during a workshop with Danny Burke in the Great Smoky Mountains, he found an opportunity to get a shot he’d been after for four years, because he hadn’t had the right light to get the shot he wanted in his previous visits.

But return I will; I am going to be co-leading this trip for the Sierra Club in August.
Click here for more info.

There were still some fall colors showing along the Sauk River not far from Darrington just a couple of weeks ago.

You can find beautiful images in surprising places. It’s a good reason to have a camera with you at all times, and to always keep your eyes open… and see, rather than merely looking around.