After a good deal of thought and planning, I decided to go back to Northern California and the Oregon Coast for a period during the summer. I did this both for the wonderful photographs that typically emerge from this region of the country as well as wanting to get out of the Florida heat, whhich can be horribly oppressive. I thought that by flying to Portland, driving down the coast to Redwood National Park, then back up to Portland, I would get my usual batch of interesting photos.
Again, the weather conspired to make that more difficult than I would have liked. First, there was little to no fog in the Redwoods while I was there, which makes forest photos less than effective in some instances. Secondly, and even worse, smoke from forest fires along the Washington/ Oregon border drifted down to where I was staying, casting a hazy grey tonality over much of the landscape. The last several days of my trip were spent in a very difficult situation in which it was a struggle to become creative in a monochromatic, hazy world. Since my images often tend to focus on the larger, more epic landscape, those kinds of images became few and far between. While I did find several nice intimate landscapes, it always seemed as if I were somehow compromising on the creativity. Although forest fires were my stumbling block on this trip, several of the other places I had considered got hit with even worse climactic conditions. Flooding from heavy rains in Bryce and Zion National Parks was horrific and potentially life threatening, which the smoke from the fires was not, so I was at least pleased that I had seemed to make a reasonable, if not ideal choice. I am deeply concerned, however, that future summers may prove to be even worse if climate change moves along unchecked, and these issues become even more devastating in the coming years.
Sunstar in the Redwood Forest, Redwood State and National Parks, California 2026