with Lorelle and Brent VanFossen

Tag Archives: nature

Backlighting Devil’s Club Overhead

Traveling to Seattle, a friend and I went to the John Bastyr School for one of their health and herbal festivals. A nature walk through the forest next to the campus intrigued me. It was incredibly informative, discussing how to use plants in the wilderness for medical treatments and health. The Pacific Northwest forest was […]

Flash Isolates Natural Subject

This dried thistle head in the Painted Hills of Oregon caught my attention with its textures and lines. I’ve always loved thistles, alive and vital with their fluffy tops, and dried out cone-like structures of mystery and pattern. To isolate this thistle, I used flash to force the background to go to black. The flash […]

Exploring Painted Hills in Oregon

A few years ago, my mother and I went on a genealogy romp through Oregon trying to track down the records of my family. We swung out into Eastern Oregon to one of my favorite nature parks, Painted Hills. I’ve photographed it for many years. Here are a few of the choice images from that […]

Just Bugging You

I’m not a fan of funny email jokes (seen them 58 times before you did and emailed it to me), videos, and other virtual time wasters. But this one had me going for over an hour. I emailed the graphic to a bunch of my RVing and outdoorsy friends and they are now having too […]

Photographing Water Droplets

Risk. Danger. Anticipation. And nerves of steel. These are the thrills and spills of photographing water droplets. There is a constant threat of danger as they dangle, so close to the edge, hanging on until the last second…then splat. Gone. We love photographing water droplets. They are lenses within your lens, offering a new perspective […]

Jeff Master’s Review on Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth About Global Warming

I haven’t seen it, but Jeff Master’s review of “An Inconvenient Truth”, the Al Gore movie, seems a good and fair review of not just the movie, but the environmental impact and sciences behind the truth about global warming. The science presented is mostly good, and at times compelling, but there are a few errors […]

Using Window Design To Protect Birds from Collisions With Windows

Treehugger offers information on “Using Window Design To Protect Birds”, a new technology which will help to protect birds from flying into your windows. I was delighted to find this as I am currently staying with my mother and the bedroom has a view window out the backyard where she’s put a large bird feeder […]

Arctic Village Resident Blogging Against Drilling for Oil in the Arctic Refuge

Gwich’in Arctic Village Resident Matthew Gilbert is Blogging on the Arctic Refuge for the NRDC Action Fund to stop drilling for oil. A resident of the Alaskan community which borders the Arctic Refuge, Gilbert is speaking out against the House and Senate “budget resolution” to begin the process of drilling for oil in the Arctic […]

Great White Shark Migration

According to a report in BBC Science News’ Great white’s marathon sea trek, conservationists and scientists investigating how far great white sharks migrate, found some of them migrate from South African to Mozambiquan territorial waters. …Ramon Bonfil of the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York, US, and colleagues were stunned by the epic journey of […]

Alaskan people tell of climate change

Could it be that global warming is not a unique experience? That changes in the the weather have occured for millenium and we are just catching up? While I certainly don’t believe that the current global warming trend is a “naturally” caused effect, it was fascinating to find a story from BBC News that Alaskan […]

Environment Cleanup: Manufacturing Plants Eliminating Garbage

There is a growing determination and effort by manufacturers, enforced and willingly, to clean up the environment. Some are actually coming up with some amazing ideas. In a news story on Wired News, At Clean Plants, It’s Waste Not, the Subaru factory in Lafayette, Indiana, turns out cars not garbage. According to the report, “When […]

Nature Archives – Now Back to 1970

While this isn’t one of our recommendations on books, it is another resource nature and science lovers need to know about. The Nature Publishing Group has announced it is releasing their archives to the public back to 1970. Started in 1869, Nature is the the most highly-cited weekly multidisciplinary journal. Nature Publishing Group (NPG) announced […]

Nature Photography, Stink and Smells

In an older article I found on Boing Boing, it mentions how humans can track smells which helps us learn about how animals can track smells. UC Berkeley researchers report that humans can determine where a smell is coming using just our noses. In Berkeley study study, subjects were presented with essence or rose, cloves, […]

Open Your Aperture

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness – all foes to real understanding. Likewise, tolerance or broad, wholesome charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in our little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.~ Mark Twain When you think of Alaska, don’t you imagine it as the last refuge […]

Darwin’s Descendents to Count Flowers – First Ever Biodiversity Audit

According to an article in the BBC Science News, The Darwin family will repeat the flower count. To honor their ancestor, the descendants of Charles Darwin are “retracing his footsteps by surveying wild flowers in the meadows around his former home at Down House in Kent.” Begun in June of 1855, Charles Darwin studied local […]