I have been fortunate to have been selected as an Artist in Residence at several National Parks across the U.S. Residencies typically vary from several weeks to a month in length. In return for lodging, typically within the park, the artist is asked to provide one or two public programs during the residency, and to donate a finished artwork after the residency which often is displayed in the visitor center. These residencies have provided me with the luxury of time, to hone my craft and delve deeper into the respective parks, to go beyond what most visitors see. Each residency has given me the opportunity to more fully explore the park, returning to locations to see what else I could find.
Collected here are a few of my favorite images from each of my residencies.
Great Basin National Park
When I look back at my images from Great Basin, I find that many of my favorites were ones that I shot during twilight. Night photographers usually avoid shooting during twilight, preferring full night for better visibility, definition, and colors of the Milky Way and stars. And while I have made greater effort this year to explore twilight, I don’t think I really succeeded until now.
This shot of a Great Basin bristlecone pine tree was definitely one of my favorites. I just love the gradation in tonality in the sky, and the contrast of the snow with the bark. And then there are the stars which almost look like falling snow. I shot this in twilight out of necessity so that I would have time to hike back to my tent and get a few hours’ sleep before getting up to shoot at another location.
This was an image that almost wasn’t. I just happened to look towards the coming light as I was hiking to my intended shoot location, and saw this small grove of trees perfectly centered between the opposing slopes silhouetted against the sky. I had to stop to photograph it, and I’m glad I did.
Six minutes of twilight
This was another image that almost wasn’t. I stayed at this alpine lake after shooting Orion in the night sky, and got several more shots during morning twilight. This was the last shot on that two-night backpacking trip before my last camera battery died. So I didn’t get to see the image until I hiked back down the mountain to return to warmth and electricity.
And this was the image that was the reason I was at this alpine lake, taking my first shot not two hours after midnight. It was bitterly cold, and there was no sheltering from the wind. But the stars were incredible, and my camera revealed the wonderful colors of airglow.
Petrified Forest National Park
I spent two weeks at Petrified Forest National Park, which closes every day around sunset. But as an Artist in Residence, I was able to see a side of the park that few visitors see, the side that emerges after sunset. And for me, it was only then that the park truly came alive.
This tight grouping of hoodoos was in Devil’s Playground, which is part of the park’s National Wilderness Area. Permits are required to visit, and are limited to three per week.
Photographing the aurora is something that had long been on my wish list. But I never thought I would have that chance in Arizona! I was on the hike back out of the Painted Desert when I glanced to the side and noticed something odd in the sky. I stopped, quickly set up the tripod, and pointed the camera at the hazy white lines I saw in the sky. But where I saw white, the camera saw red. And lots of it. Five minutes after I first noticed the light, it had started to noticeably fade. Eventually, all that showed up in images was a very faint pink tint. But we both knew, the camera and I, that we had borne witness to something wonderful.
Capitol Reef National Park
I completed a four-week residency at Capitol Reef National Park as 2023’s night sky photographer. It was an amazing experience under some truly dark night skies. My first week was spent scouting suitable locations for night photography. First task was to find somewhere to shoot the Harvest Supermoon. The park’s remote Cathedral Valley provided just the scenery I was looking for.
I really love how the warm tones from the rising moon start to fade into the cool blue of twilight.
While I had shot many lunar eclipses, the annular solar eclipse of October 14, 2023, was my first solar eclipse. I found a remote location in the Lower South Desert and spent the night camped there in preparation for the eclipse. It fell below freezing that night, and it felt good to stand in the warmth of the sun when it finally came up.
The period of maximum eclipse lasted for four and a half minutes, rendering the sun as a ring around the moon. Light cloud cover added drama to the resulting photograph. And by noon, three hours after it began, the eclipse was over. I was tired and worn out, but happy that I had gotten the shot.
Capitol Reef National Park abounds in rugged beauty, most notably the eroded rock formations. I ended up shooting these same rock formations and their neighbors over four separate nights, finding different angles and perspectives.
Photography is all about being in the right place at the right time. And to that I would add recognizing when that right time is. And having a camera set up, focused, and pointed in the right direction. I was fortunate to have done the preceding when I saw a bright white light visibly moving across the heavens. I later determined that that white light was a Falcon 9 rocket which had been launched an hour and a half earlier.
Shenandoah National Park
I completed a three-week summer residency at Shenandoah National Park. For the first two weeks I didn’t even leave the park boundaries, and even then it was only because I was running low on groceries. It felt weird returning to “civilization” after being surrounded by forests for so long.
Magical. That is truly what I felt as I came upon this waterfall. Getting here involved finding my own way through the forest as there was no trail, but then it wouldn’t be an adventure if it were easy. As I approached from the foot of the falls, I was faced with a wall of rock. There wasn’t much flow that morning, so I chose this perspective to compress it and maximize what was there.
The park is best known for Skyline Drive, which runs the length of the park, and the overlooks that punctuate it every few miles. But I wanted something different than the same overlooks that everyone sees. I found this location, with its rock face overlooking the ridges beyond. Both I and my camera were perched on the rock wall for safety, given that I was next to a road in the dark. On this night, I was graced with a few stray meteors from the upcoming Perseids shower, as well as a few flashes of lightning on the horizon. This was taken around 3:30 in the morning.
This was the first Milky Way shot of my residency. By the time I had gotten all the shots I needed, the moon had already started to rise behind the mountain, and its light can be seen spilling through the saddle and onto the far ridge. I really liked how that looked, and so that moonlight remains here in the final image.