I was having dinner with my good friends Andrew and Kara a couple of months ago, and I asked Kara, "So where are you taking the Polar Star this year?". As soon as she said "Tasmania", I knew where I'd be going soon.

It's Christmastime, and whether you're expecting a white Christmas or not, this time of year always conjures up images of sleigh rides and pretty little white steepled churches with children running and playing in the snow. So I'll leave you with some snowy images from past years to enjoy.

It seems that in the early 1900's, French-Canadian fur trappers working in the region of what is now Badlands National Park in South Dakota called the area "les mauvais terres pour traverse," or "bad lands to travel through." Apparently they hadn't been to Death Valley yet.

I know, I know, how much more fall color can we stand? Well, the season may be short, and most areas are well past peak by now, but I can never get enough of fall color landscape images!

I took a look at the east coast fall foliage map today just for fun. I left New England three weeks ago, so it doesn't do me any good for this year, but it's interesting to see that while most of the color is done, there are still a number of areas that are experiencing peak color, at least according to reports. I could have arrived a month later than I did and still found areas to photograph, it appears.

I've always wanted to do a fall foliage photo shoot on the East Coast, but I've had conflicts for the past few years. Well, this year was going to be different.

While I was running around the country on my latest photo shoot, I managed to get a Wi-Fi connection to see what was going on in the world, and I found that my "Lunar Eclipse and Aurora Borealis" image had won the "People's Choice" award at the Darkroom Gallery where it was hanging. But there was a dark side to the news, too.

Well, that's two wins in a row for me in the monthly contests held by the Darkroom Gallery in Essex Junction, Vermont! This time it was my image "American Dipper in Lake O'Hara" that won a spot in their "Curvilinear" contest.

This is a busy weekend for me! I'm participating in photography shows at opposite ends of the country, one in North Bend, Washington, and the other in Essex Junction, Vermont, and both galleries are hosting artists' receptions for me and the other participants!

Autumn is coming, like it or not! And I happen to like it, because some of the best opportunities for nature photography present themselves in the fall. As I prepare for my New England fall foliage trip, I thought this would be a good time for a fall color retrospective from past years.

I can't think of anything more mysterious, surreal, isolated, lonely, and timeless than standing in the middle of a frozen lake by myself for hours in the middle of the night watching a lunar eclipse take place under a sky filled with the eerie antics of the Aurora Borealis. Apparently juror Lance Keimig agreed.

A couple of weeks ago someone asked me what kind of Joshua tree images I had in my image library. I had already post-processed a few images after my trip to Joshua Tree National Park back in the spring of 2013, but I thought this would be a good time to dig into the archives and see what else I could find.

A visitor to my booth actually said that. She simply found it hard to believe that the image she was viewing was a photograph. Well, I'm pretty sure it's a photograph, since I don't actually know how to paint. In fact, I'm sure if I blew the image up large enough I would find a beer can or two in there somewhere! So how exactly did I make this photograph look so much like a painting?

People are always asking me where my favorite place is to shoot. I usually have no idea how to answer this, so I just say "Wherever I'm shooting now!". But I've actually thought about this a bit, and today I'm going to give you a real answer. And I won't just give you one answer - I'll give you my top five places to shoot!

Last week we talked about my visit to the Hoh Rain Forest, a temperate rain forest on the western edge of the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State in the Olympic National Park. The stars of the show are the old growth trees and the mosses that hang from them, but let's not overlook the understory and the wildflowers that grow there.

The Native American name "Hoh" means "fast white woman" - uh, water - I meant to say "fast white water"! Anyway, who wouldn't want to visit a place with fast white water!

Go to the desert, and chances are you're going to see a lot of cactus. The only question is what kind, and that depends on where you are. Last month I drove to southern Arizona to see what I could find.

Sometimes you just have to get in the car and go. That's the way I felt as I watched report after report get posted on the desert wildflower sites that I monitor. The poppies are peaking NOW!

"When astronauts return from their first landing on the moon and report their findings, will they describe the sort of terrain that you see here at Craters of the Moon National Monument?" These words from the 1961 version of the National Park Service brochure introduce the reader to an alien landscape, one I was to revisit after over 50 years.

On my recent trip to Yellowstone National Park, I made no secret of the fact that I was looking for wolves. OK, I was looking for any wildlife I could find, as well as nice landscapes, but my primary objective was to see the wolves. And see them I did. Kind of.