“Spruce Ballroom” — photo of the week ending January 24, 2015 [In my "Alaska Skies" album] Snow-clad spruce trees at sunrise. Sunrises have to be one of my favorite things about Fairbanks, next to the...
Welcome to the Alaska interior, welcome to the boreal forest. This is a unique biome. Coniferous trees dominate the landscape, yet stands of birch and aspen remain plentiful in many places. The leafy trees love...
“2 PM” – Photo of the week ending January 17, 2014 [Boreal Forest Album] We're just about a month past the winter solstice, but the sun still doesn't get very high in the sky. The...
“Northern Lights” — photo of the week ending January 10, 2015 After about 20 minutes of bright aurora bands filling the sky, it seemed like the display was fading, the brightest bands dwindling off into...
Purchase Print Where do I even begin? I mean, the title kind of says it all. As I sit here writing, I am purely exhausted. I was driving to the post office this morning and...
“Aurora Landscape” — photo of the week ending January 3, 2015 Everything was so still. Except for the sky. The sky was crawling. The cold snow crunched beneath my feet with every step. The ice...
Sitting at the computer last night, I had given up any hope that we'd have any good aurora this weekend, so I started writing a trip plan for 2015. I flipped to my tab with...
My last "photo of the week" for 2014 . . . I'm crazily excited to see what 2015 will bring! The "blue hour" - that period of twilight before the sun rises and after it...
This is the first year we've had pine grosbeaks regularly at the feeder, sometimes up to 6 at a time. It's been at least 8 days in a row now, so I'm hopeful they'll be...
The big dipper and north star is the subject of the Flag of Alaska (designed by 13 year old Benny Benson in 1927, when Alaska was still a territory). I thought it would be nice...
Fairbanks is dark in the winter. The official length of the day on the winter solstice is 3 hours, 41 minutes, and some change. Luckily, we benefit from having a lot of twilight, long sunrises...
Last night I strapped on my snowshoes to take a walk around Murphy Dome. It's not really my favorite spot, but it's a convenient location with a good view and a mostly dark sky. It's...
It seems like every night the clouds roll in fast, no matter how nice of a day it may have been. I still managed to catch some brief glimpses of the aurora before the clouds...
Early last week I took a photo-walk downtown, shortly after we finally had our first significant snowfall. There has been some snow on the ground since early October, but things were beginning to look a...
It wasn't very easy to see the stars when the moon was shining so brightly, but you can still make out the big dipper over the road. The big dipper is the constellation on the...
From October until April we live in a mostly monochromatic world. The sky makes some pretty dramatic colors at sunrise and sunset, but in the middle of the day (for all 3 hours of...
Beautiful Morning Sunrise - Monday November 24, 2014 Full disclosure -- I didn't take many photos this week. I slept in late on Sunday after my Angel Rocks trip, then spent the week cleaning, shopping,...
With little to no snow on the ground I packed up my winter hiking boots instead of my ski boots and hiked slowly out to Angel Rocks (about 50 miles from Fairbanks). I had hopes...
