"And then, some morning in the second week, the mind wakes, comes to life again. Not in a city sense--no--but beach-wise. It begins to drift, to play, to turn over in gentle careless rolls like those lazy waves on the beach. One never knows what chance treasures...
When I was a boy--aside from the obvious ball sports like basketball and football--I spent my time with a bunch of matchbox cars that I liked to line up and organize every day. I'm not sure what I got out of that. I also had a bunch of marbles and crayons. I've...
As a kid, my family always went to the Outer Banks in the heat of summer. I came to love the Outer Banks during summer. First, it was simply spending all day long in the waves. Not coming out until my eyes were bloodshot and my skin sunburned. Then, it was...
The Scotch Bonnet is considered, by many, to be the holy grail of beachcombing finds in North Carolina. This little three-inch long, plaid checkered sea snail shell is quite a difficult find. Oddly enough, the Scotch Bonnet was deemed the official state shell of...
Did you know that sea pottery, or sea china, was a thing? I didn't! Sea pottery is shards of broken earthenware that has undergone the same process as sea glass: broken, tumbled, smoothed and spit back into the shell hash with the tides. When I first started...
I've always loved the potential of this shot. Sidelight at sunrise. Reflective when calm. A balance of urban environment and natural world. I think there is a spectacular frame just waiting at this location. What I don't like is everything about getting there and...
New home for sale: priced to move. Bargain. May have dings, dents, and considerable blemish to the finish. Spacious interior. Unconditioned space. Single occupancy preferred. Best offers only. Shark-Eye Moon Snail Shell found along Cape Hatteras National...
February means the end of winter for me: it signals the start of the great spring bloom. I don't much care for the daffodils that decorate suburban lawns and manicured gardens. I do, however, get very excited about the return of natives like trillium and bluebells....
Happy #stackersaturday! It always gives me a kick thinking about what is considered acceptable, honorable uses of ones time, energy and effort. And, on the flip side, what is considered wasteful, unproductive, and ultimately unacceptable. I've spent twelve hour days...
This was one of those poor-planning-lazy-wakeup-didn't-quite-get-to-my-location-on-time type of photographs! By the time we cruised around the circle in front of the historic Bodie Island Lighthouse, the sky was already doing its thing. I just pulled the car onto...
When I'm in Northern Virginia my go-to location is always Great Falls Park on the Potomac River. From the cascading waterfall to the cliff walls of Mather Gorge, there is always something interesting to find and photograph. On this particular winter morning, I found...
When I'm home during the slower winter months, my mother and I like to head over to Meadowlark Botanical Gardens in Vienna, Virginia. The gardens have a particularly vibrant display of annual Witch Hazel blooms. Witch Hazel is a deciduous flowering shrub that shows...
Pure seascapes are something I love to shoot. Nothing but the ocean and the sky. The interface between land and water; marine and terrestrial. Moving water is mesmerizing to me and so fun to shoot behind the lens. Add some good light and all the ingredients are...
Happy Valentine's Day, folks! When I lived in Upstate South Carolina I drove NC-107 frequently to access the Chattooga River and to get up to the Blue Ridge Escarpment. Silver Run Falls, a small waterfall near Cashiers, North Carolina, was just off the roadside. The...
After several successful winters, I was baited into extending my typical one-month stay into a two-month adventure including February. It didn't go well. January was a bust. Weather was cold and wet. My productivity was minimal. February was much the same. There...
I saw a photograph by Susannah (@lulannah) on Instagram of lichen on an American Holly tree within Nags Head Woods Preserve. The lichen was bright red and spread in patches of varying intensity over the light gray bark of the tree. It was amazing! I was instantly...
Day two of showing Kristi Parsons around the Outer Banks began with lots of potential. The calm conditions from the night before held on over night; the forecast called for reflective sunrise conditions. Skies were crowded with clouds. Everything was lining up...
In 2019 I teamed up with Kristi Parsons to put together a 2020 Spirit of the Southern Appalachian Mountains calendar. Kristi's efforts to sell the calendar were so successful that we decided to use the profits to spend a week in the Outer Banks, a place Kristi had...
In 2013 I lived in an apartment in Upstate South Carolina. Whenever the forecast showed snow for the mountains of Western North Carolina, Whiteside Mountain is where I would rush off to. It was a straight shot up the sinuous NC-107. Whiteside Mountain is the...
The Outer Banks are part of a lichen biodiversity hotspot. I had no idea! I'm familiar with lichens from my work in the Southern Appalachians, often considered the crown jewel of lichen biodiversity in this country. But, the Outer Banks? It turns out that the...
When I started landscape photography I was pretty damn naive (perhaps I still am). I wanted to catch every sunrise and every sunset without fail. I figured, I'll simply outwork everyone else. I'll be up early and out late; I'll walk further on the trail, or I'll...
The dominant landscape of my hometown region is not natural but urban. Northern Virginia is right on the border with the capital city of Washington D.C. When I'm not packing a tent and overnighting in the Southern Appalachians or along the Carolina coasts, the...
Walking the beach is like treasure hunting, at least for me. Every single night the entire physical landscape is washed and stripped. Changed. New tides bring forth new treasures. The ocean redistributes this wealth in accordance with weather, winds, tides etc....
February 2021 was exceptionally wet in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. It rained. And it rained again. All that water needs to go somewhere and there's nowhere really for it to go on a sandbar with a high water table. No sewers and streams and rivers to carry...
I want to be better at photographing intimate scenes. Like many, I chased grand landscapes when I began my career as a full time photographer. The grand landscape was the quickest and straightest route. In many respects, the grand landscape was a trail I felt I had...
It's said that purple holds both the energy and intensity of red, as well as the calm and authority of blue. In fact, purple has the shortest wavelength of all colors making it more powerful and intense than any other color, even red. In the natural world purple is...
I grew up in Northern Virginia, a classic bedroom suburb of Washington D.C. Here, the dominant landscape feature is the Potomac River. Just fifteen miles upstream of the Nation's Capital, the Potomac River approaches the fall line: an abrupt geologic transition...