The view from the bluff above Santa Monica Beach offers each chances for great sunsets.

A break from the birds, Enjoy!

Here's a great example of a Parasitic Jaeger living up to its name. It was pestering the tern on the left until the tern dropped its fish in order to get away. In the very next frame, you can see the fish being caught and subsequently gulped down by the jaeger. Some birds are just jerks. The thing is, in the image taken before the first one, I can't see the fish in the terns mouth so it must have already swallowed it and the spit it up to get away from the jaeger.

I was out on a pelagic birding trip today, where you hop on a boat and look for birds that don't usually come ashore, when I took this surreal, or maybe impressionistic? photo. That's the main control town for LAX on the right with an oil tanker in the foreground. Behind it all is downtown Los Angeles. Sure, LA has crappy air quality at times and honestly, there was a yellow pallor over land today as seen from the ocean.

No, you can't buy tickets for the 2028 Summer Olympics and Paralympic Games in Los Angeles today, but you can register for a random drawing when tickets are available in April. And if you're a resident of certain counties close to LA or Oklahoma City (where some events are being held) you can get early access. Simply go to…

It's been said the difference between a professional and an amateur in most fields like photography is the professional doesn't admit their mistakes. At this point in my career I'm not making the majority of my income from photography so let me be an amateur for a moment. While this photo does not suck, it's certainly not what I planned. I took three others that truly suck, most of which totally missed framing the subject in the frame at all.

Not all kites need strings. This is a White-tailed Kite found by Ballona Creek in Los Angeles. They hover while searching for prey and very much resemble the typical four point kite flown at a beach. It's my second time spotting one in this general area and I was tipped off by a local who had been at a river clean up the day before and spotted the bird. He returned the next day when I was there and as luck would have it, lead me right to it. Such big eyes!

One lesson on birding that pops into my head every time I go out is, "You're not done till you're back at the car". So many times I've spotted either more birds or nice compositions like this Great Egret by Ballona Creek in LA, on my way back or even just about at my car. Keep the lens cap off. Keep your ears open and eyes scanning. There's almost always more to see.

Here’s a tricky one. Any guesses?

When two parts of a glacier come together from different directions, their sides that were turned dark from rubbing rocks off the sides of mountains make a single track. This line was photographed in Patagonia but since the Canon R5 doesn't have a GPS on it, I'd be guessing at which glacier it was. Needless to say, it's one of the cold ones.

Cruising through Chile's fjords and looking up at the myriad glaciers and cliffs.

This was one of those chance encounters with good enough weather, a port side seat and just the right angle to capture most of Las Vegas in one frame. At least the Vegasy part of Las Vegas. Downtown is just creeping out of frame.

It's the kind of light photographers drool over. Sun breaking through a mixed layer of clouds with a passing storm in the background. This scene is just outside of Manzanar National Historic Site (a place all Americans should visit in California).

This location has become one of my favorite spots to camp with just one trip. It's not so easy to get to (11,000' pass) and requires a permit that has limited availability. But Kearsarge Lakes in Kings Canyon National Park is well worth the effort. I haven't planned my trip for this year, but hope to make it part of a larger hike to Rae Lakes and back.

If you looked at yesterday's panorama of Columbine Lake, it may have looked like a desolate landscape, barren of all life except the backpackers. At nearly 11,000', not a lot grows there, for sure. But this little plant called Mountain Pride (Penstemon newberryi)clings to the rocks close to show where water is abundant.

One of the best four day hikes I've ever done, last summer saw me and two friends hike a 27 mile (or so, we all had different stats) loop in the Mineral King area of Sequoia & kings Canyon National Parks. Before we got close to the parking lot on the last day we had seen a total of about 25 people, its was that kind of backcountry, lonely bliss that has me hooked on revisiting the Sierra each chance I get.

Glaciers like Pia Glacier fascinate me. Located down in Patagonia with very few visitors each year, the glacier continues to calve off chunks of ice, filling and emptying the bay in front of it. It can be found on a map here.

Amongst the 'freshly' scrapped rocks as a glacier in Chile's Patagonia region, the patters of lichen mix with the rock below.

The birds, they are watching you.

To be honest, I'm only 86% sure this is actually in Zion National Park. There is a little section of the road that actually pops out of he park before popping back in and I might have taken the photo in that area (Canon: please add GPS to the R5 line!).

It's time to scroll through the highlights from 2025 and pick favorites. I gave up on the Top 10 list a while ago because life's short, more photos. This year was a bit of a struggle artistically. And it wasn't. It wasn't because I ended up going to beautiful and interesting places including 10 National Parks. It's hard not to take photos you love in National Parks.

Kestrels are compact little suckers with beautiful plumage. The blue and orange combo makes them fairly distinct.

I saw a few of these guys tonight while birding the Ballona Marsh Wetlandshere in LA. While not this particular bird, they are easy to tell from a distance with their beak length and shape and head size.

The blue on these South American birds, known as Imperial Cormorants (Leucocarbo atriceps), and the blue in their eyes makes them a beauty to behold.

Last night I went to a spot overlooking the Santa Monica Pier to film a timelapse and it didn't go as planned. The overall lesson that I was reminded of was this: Creating Art requires failure and there is not greater freedom in Art than the freedom to fail. Over and over. This, that and the other thing weren't quite right and I won't bore you with the details.