About

I purchased my first DSLR in 2014 and experimented with a variety of photography genres but didn’t get truly bitten by the bug until I tried my first astro-landscape several years later. As a byproduct of my newfound interest in astro, I started spending more time in our local public lands looking for nighttime compositions, and my daylight scouting trips naturally began to include more landscape photography. I now spend my days capturing the starkly beautiful high desert of Central Oregon, while nights are dedicated to the sea of stars overhead and the magnificent sweep of our Milky Way Galaxy.

A lot of planning goes in to creating astro-landscapes. The faint illumination of stars and nebulae is easily washed out by artificial lights, so capturing these delicate subjects requires dark skies far from the light pollution of populated areas. Days are spent scouting remote locations and plotting where the Milky Way and other celestial bodies will appear after nightfall. Sometimes it takes years for the right combination of star positions, moon phase, weather, and landscape conditions to come together for a particular composition.

Surrounded by scents of arid soil and sagebrush, coyotes’ voices carrying on the breeze, I wait patiently in the dark while photons emitted from distant suns are gathered by the camera lens and focused on the surface of a tiny silicon chip. The light waves landing on that camera sensor have traveled for hundreds, thousands, even millions of years before finally ending their cosmic journey here on Earth, culminating in a single precious image.

Alone in the dark beneath the slowly wheeling stars, I find my connection to the universe. I’m filled with wonder at the staggering vastness of space and the unimaginable opportunities awaiting us beyond our own solar system. I hope some of that awe is shared with you, the viewer, and that you may be inspired to seek it out in your own adventures.