12-9-24 I had taken a trip to find a photo location for a nighttime photograph, which would include Mount Shasta. I drove out on some forest service dirt roads looking for a nice composition. I came across the Union Pacific Railroad tracks and found an old water tanker railcar stored on a siding. The car…

4-8-24 I am adding this post a little late from the actual event. Many excuses, but better late than never. A little back story, back in 2017, my brother John and I traveled to central Oregon to witness a total solar eclipse. I had only seen a couple partial eclipses in the past, but the…

12-17-23 I had a thought on a potential night train photo with stars above the train. In the past, I did a photograph of a train passing in the night with a train signal visible in the shot. I really liked the photograph and I am surprised I never included it in one of these blogs. But it…

8-9-23 I was offered a job this summer working as a forest fire lookout in the Klamath National Forest in far northern California. If you have never been to a fire lookout, you are really missing out. As you can imagine fire lookouts are high in the mountains and give a commanding view while looking…

9-22-2022 The Central Oregon and Pacific Railroad runs from Weed, California to Eugene, Oregon. This is the former Southern Pacific Siskiyou Line back in the days when Southern Pacific was still operational (before Union Pacific RR took it over). After a few years of not operating, due to a tunnel fire, this railroad has been…

7-21-22 About a year ago, my wife and I were exploring the central part of Western Nevada and came upon Fort Churchill State Park. This is an old Army post from 1860 which had several buildings, back in the day. Today, most of the buildings are completely gone or in major levels of decay. The…

6-23-22 For a few years now, I’ve wanted to take a photograph of a fire lookout tower at night. My grandiose thought was to have a lookout with a small light inside, dark skies, and an arching Milky Way over the top. Of course, most lookouts are on an outcropping of rocks with little or…

8-3-22 I always wanted to take a photograph of the Milky Way over the top of Crater Lake (Crater Lake National Park). Every year, something comes up or something happens and I’m not able to capture the moment. Unfortunately, usually it is wildfires in the area which create so much smoke it either mutes the…

6-21-22 A couple years ago, I took a long exposure photograph of a train at night where I lit the passing engine with an off-camera flash. The effect was pretty interesting as you still had the blur effect of the long exposure and also the appearance of the engine being stopped within the frame. I…