North Light

I've been thinking about Block Island a lot lately. Beyond the fact that I've spent a good deal of time practicing my photography there, it's just a beautiful place. It has this magical way of giving you permission to take as much time as you need to do what you want to do. This long exposure photograph from 2012 is a good example—the North Light is miles from where I was staying, it was long past sunset, and I had never tried to blur the waves crashing on a beach with a long exposure before. Yet I spent half an hour photographing the lighthouse from this vantage point. Block Island gave me the space to capture one of the first long exposures I've ever been proud of. I can't wait to go back.

500 Canaries Can't Be Wrong

Midway Atoll is, I've been told, the only place in the world that a self-sustaining population of yellow canaries—some 500—can be found. But they are of course not native to this far-flung spot. They were brought to Midway in 1910 by an employee of the cable company that laid the first round-the-world telegraph cables. Nevertheless, their century-long inhabitation is impressive, and many other non-native occupants wreak far worse ecological havoc. The canaries flitter about the island, generally unconcerned about the much larger birds that share the space. This bristle-thighed curlew, which breeds in Alaska and winters on tropical Pacific islands, seemed much more aware of them than they were of it! The juxtaposition of two species I saw almost every day but which are rarely associated with Midway Atoll made for a comical shot.

Rough Day 2

Dragonflies are hard to sneak up on. Sometimes, if you're lucky, they have a favorite perch, which you can wait next to, camera at the ready, until they come back. But with a nearly 360º field of view, they see you coming and almost always dart away. That is, unless they're exhausted. I imagine it's tiring to fly when you're having a rough day and missing almost an entire wing. I think that's why this dragonfly at Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens allowed me to get so close.

The Food Chain

White terns nest anywhere and everywhere on Midway. There was one pair who laid an egg in a shrub at the front corner of the Chokedee House, where I lived, and I got to watch their chick grow from the tiniest ball of fluff into a fledgling and eventually into a juvenile. One day, I noticed one parent sitting in the shrub with the fledgling nowhere to be found. I presumed it was out practicing to fly. But white terns don't feed their chicks by digesting and then regurgitating their food—they catch appropriately-sized fish in their bill, and bring them back whole. So this parent had to wait with these fish in its bill until its chick came back. Apparently it had been waiting a while, because as I stood there, taking advantage of the opportunity to get this close-up, an ant crawled up the tern's body, onto its bill, and into the mouth of the fish!

Fire Over Hurricane

During the culminating Colorado Plateau field trip that my Regional Field Geology class took in the summer of 2014, we passed through the town of Hurricane, Utah. We had driven past some small and distant brush fires during the day, and then camped in a state park on a reservoir outside the town. But as darkness descended, we realized that the fires were bigger and closer than they had seemed, and appeared to be looming just behind a ridge over Hurricane. After dinner, I stood on the back bumper of one of our vans and balanced my camera on the roof to take this 30-second exposure. Neither us nor the town were in danger though, so we just watched in awe...and started singing "I set fire to Hurricane" to the tune of Adele's "Set Fire To The Rain."