Today, we honor the CAL FIRE personnel who made the ultimate sacrifice in the line of duty in the month of October. Each person had a story, a crew, a community, and a reason for serving. We remember the people behind the names and the lives they touched through their service.

What more needs to be said about enjoying the colorful display of a Hawai’ian sunset.

Okay, there's a ship in this picture, but without it, I wouldn't have been in this spectacular location. As fate would have it, a couple of bad decisions lead to the loss of this drone about six hours later. Smartly, I download work footage off the drone after each flight.

Not many national parks have runways but Death Valley has three! This is the only paved strip in the park and there are only about six national parks around the US that have an airport or landing strip at all.

Thanks to a local’s suggestion, I took the high road from Hawi to Waimea on the Big Island. Seemed like it would take longer to get back to my hotel that way but he said the views were worth it. He didn’t mention the total lushness of the hillsides. Granted, this is cattle country so this is all for grazing, but without the cows it makes a pastoral scene I turned around to take in.

This is why I love a window seat. Those one off fleeting occurrences

I first saw this quote posted somewhere online, without attribution, a long, long time ago… and while letting Lightroom dig through a bunch of folders, I stumbled upon the screenshot I had made back…

Way out in the desert, along a bumpy and rutted dirt road on your way to the Racetrack in Death Valley National Park, is Teakettle Junction. No one really knows how the spot got its name or when but with the posting of the sign people started leaving actual teakettles with all kinds of decorations. As time goes on the park rangers will remove them so this spot is something of a changing art piece.

In one of the older buildings near the Augereberry mining claim in Death Valley is an old, old stove.

Just another golden sunset on the California Coast

From 6300' up on Aguereberry Point in Death Valley is a pretty great view looking South down the length of the park. Badwater Basin and more spreads far, far away.

Long empty hallways are another repeating theme in my life. When I am out filming for work I often pick hotels that have free breakfast and that usually leads to hotels that look like this: functional, mostly safe, a bit drab, but good enough for a night’s sleep.

Ever take pictures of things you don’t know and then forget to look them up? Sure you do! Agree with me to make me feel better! This is the Pagoda Buckwheat, native to California and the Mojave Desert. Spotted in Death Valley National Park on the rim of the Ubehebe Crater.

I had a chance to go birding with the LA Birders today up in the San Gabriel Mountains, a location on the back side by Big Pines. It's not a location I would normally be drawn to, partially because it was 1.75 hours away. But getting up to 7000'+ made the temperatures on the moderate sized and the habitat meant a chance for different birds.

Not sure what you’re looking at here, huh? It took me a minute to remember what it was as well! And I was there. This is the Sundial Bridge in Redding, California. Sabrina and I stopped by on a West Coast Roadtrip because they had good birding in the area. Sure, we forgot binoculars, but Merlin helped us find quite a few birds. I also liked this angle of it. Or this.

120 years ago the Peter Iredale ran aground and amazingly enough, you can still see parts of it today. Even more amazing, there is no (obvious) tagging or graffiti! You can find the wreck on the Northern Oregon Coast.

Long time viewers of this blog, now in its 21st year, know I love layers. Okay, maybe not even the long time readers know this, but I do, I really like layers. I keep a folder in Lightroom for any I come across and today is a chance to flush that folder, or part of it, because there are over 100 favorites in there.

Sandpipers are for me a difficult lot to identify. I rely on Merlin a lot. Both for the photos identification capabilities and for the audio identification. If not for Merlin, this would likely just be 'sandpipers' to me. Taken on the Oregon Coast near Astoria.

Spotted up in Alaska this May while on assignment with Uncruise Adventures (so happy to have worked with them for 14 years!). After the sun went down, around 9:45pm, while most people went to sleep I stayed up chatting with the second mate while she was piloting our vessel toward Glacier Bay National Park. Off in the distance, coming our way were maybe a half dozen tails popping out of the water before ducking down again.

The amount of images you can bring home from White Sands National Park changes daily with the shifting winds and sands.

ignore this

A "Big Year" in birding terminology is trying to observe tons of different species of birds in a calendar year. It's a personal challenge some birders do and I decided to attempt a Big Year this year in order to dive deeper into birding. This lead me to walk around a man-made lake in Los Angeles in 96°F heat in the middle of the day to see a bird listed as "Provisional", meaning it was introduced and is currently not completely "Naturalized" and living on its own, breeding and surviving.

There here in LA for some breeding, meet the Black-chinned Hummingbird! #234 on my 2026 list and mission to observe 500 this year. I need to step it up a bit!

Not all the rock in Zion National Park is red sandstone.

From the campground in Zion National Park. Pretty easy to enjoy this park without having to hike a hundred miles.

The sun was shinning, the wind was blowing (not evident in the photo) and the sky was almost cloud free. A great day on the lake in Chicago.

I imaging this Bald Eagle somehow rode all the way to the beach on their surf log. I might have been out in the sun too long today.

I didn’t come to Oregon to find Snow Plovers, but once I was near them and knew they existed, I had to find them and add to my 2026 goal of finding 500 species. It’s not exactly ‘Snowy Plover Season’ in Astoria, Oregon, but the area where the Columbia River meets the Pacific Ocean is a breeding ground for these cute critters from March to October and eBird noted they had been seen recently.

Sometimes the factual names of birds leaves something to be desired. Sure, now I know what this bird eats and what it looks like from the front, but it's so much more than that! I see six colors on this bird and a tail just about as big as the body. It can surely have a cooler name.

It's a bummer panoramas can't be properly appreciated on most of our screen, especially if you are reading this on a phone. But I still love taking them and working with them in the computer. Something about getting more out of the camera than its original format allows. I remember having a mask for my old Minolta film camera that would simulate a panorama.

Tracking back up in the fjords around Pia Glacier, I can't even remember which peak this is. The concerning thing for me is the hanging glacier or ice pack that looks like it is about to thunder down a mountain.

I don't know why it is fun to walk behind a waterfall, but I sure enjoy it especially when there is no one around. At Silver Falls State Park in Oregon there is a trail that leads you to ten waterfalls, including two you can walk behind.

Fresh from Alaska, where the cold winds blow and the icebergs flow.