Same Place, Different Sunset

One of the things I love about Nature is its mutability: this image is of the exact same place as in the previous update just a few days afterward (landscape and portrait layouts notwithstanding), yet it appears to be striking and strikingly different.

Sun of a Hundred (Forest) Fires

For the past week, sunsets in much of the Rockies along the U.S. / Canada border have been spectacular, but not for a good reason. Particles from several dozen forest fires in this region have colorized the sky into unnaturally beautiful shades and made the air quality rather unhealthy. 

And yet, I kept missing my opportunities to capture and document the otherwordly Sun setting behind the smoke-filled horizon, meager selfies notwithstanding.

Until now.

This photograph will go nicely with similarly composed moonrise images I shot last year.

Before the Fires

Living amidst forest fires, a hundred of them in the area, has been a fascinating experience. Our air quality has been fluctuating between "unhealthy" and "very unhealthy," allegedly worse than certain industrial parts of China. 

As someone who's spent most of her life in large cities—indeed, I grew up in Moscow back when cars used lead exhaust—I'm no stranger to pollution. Yet, I've certainly never gone swimming outdoors when the environmental agencies advised against rigorous exertion. It sounds silly, but I didn't even consider how all the smoke particles in the air would affect hard-working lungs, especially in the water. 

A mid-lake coughing session later, I shall wait for Mother Nature to clean up its act..errr...sky a little and go back to looking more like the images below, so I could finish this season with a few more open-water sessions. 

Nearing Apocalypse

A landscape that normally looks like this:

...has taken on a post-Apocalyptic quality as of late due to the dozens of forest fires in the entire northwest of Canada and the U.S. 

With a blood-orange Sun above and the mountains almost completely obscured by the smoke on the horizon line, this is what the "very unhealthy" air-quality rating looks like.

Indeed, this made doing open-water laps, mainly coming up for air, noticeably unpleasant, which means I underestimated the extent of the fires. If these conditions persist, I'd love to venture out with my DSLR, though staying indoors is advised.

Gifts From the Earth

As we head toward the autumn Equinox, the farm shares we get seem to become more and more colorful--too beautiful not to photograph! And the Romanesco is simply otherwordly!

Young Moose

You know you're a bit spoiled if you go from, "Oh please, God, let me see some large wildlife on this hike that isn't a deer!" to "Why couldn't this moose show up when the lighting was better?"

This youngster with furry antlers emerged at a pretty high altitude in the mountains and came so close, in fact, that I had to remove my telephoto lens and use a regular macro portrait lens to photograph him.  And a gentle giant he was, though I backed away every time he came closer, having been charged by mountain goats before.