Long Days, Great Light

Morning sun on barn and meadows near Belt, MT.

We've recently returned from a week apiece in North Dakota and Montana. In addition to adjusting to the different landscape, different birds, and earlier time zones (Central and Mountain Time) of the western Great Plains, I've found notable differences in the light. It's more buttery or lemony early and late in the day, but also brighter during the mid-day hours. American white pelicans that at dawn look pinkish or creamy yellowish-white, are blindingly white at noon.

One other major difference is the length of the day at these more northerly latitudes. It starts getting light shortly after 4:30 am and you can still read a book or ID a bird through your binocs at 10:15 pm! I found this especially noticeable during the two nights we were camping along the Missouri River. The poor-wills were still calling when the western kingbirds and western meadowlarks began their morning vocal crescendi.

End of the day Slaughter River, MT.

Not that I minded that. It is fear that motivates me to get up early when on vacation: fear that I will miss out on something cool or amazing or beautiful. And I want to squeeze every last drop of juice out of the plum that is my "vacation" (even when it is a mostly working vacation trip as this one was). So I always stay up late and get up early, camping or not, when traveling.

Pheasant under grass, early morning near Pingree, ND.

Here are a few of the scenic views that caught my eye and camera during the first two weeks of June when I was way out west.

Sunset behind our cabin at Lakeview Meadow Resort, near Jamestown, ND.

Sun sparkles over sage, Little Sandy Creek, MT.

More sun sparkles over sage, Little Sandy Creek, MT.

Dusk settling in at Stonewall Canyon along the Missouri River.

How many sunsets have these stone walls seen?

New Mexico in Low Light

New Mexico is called The Land of Enchantment but it could just as easily be called The Land of Amazing Light. I can see now why photographers and artists come here to pursue their creative muses--the light goes from pale lemony to deep tangerine to milky blue and then back again in the course of a day. The air is clear and the vistas are vast. And then there are the places where the desert meets the mountains. It's one giant inspiration of light.

Here are just a tiny few of the digital images I've shot this week in New Mexico's low light--early and late in the day.

Pintails at dawn over Bosque del Apache NWR.

At dawn the birders and photographers gather on the Flight Deck for the morning fly out of the cranes and waterfowl.

A pre-dawn blizzard of snow geese.

Cranes and waterfowl darken the dawn sky at Bosque.

Phragmites is an invasive scourge, but its heads look feathery in the afternoon sunlight.

Sunset uses the same pink paintbrush on the desert and the mountains.

A drake pintail in the predawn glow.

Cranes are still flying well after sunset.

A Chihuahuan raven croaks at its flockmates.

Coots a half hour before first light.

The morning sun peeks through a notch in the rim of Water Canyon.

Pintails over pink clouds at Bosque.


Gleaming wires near El Salto del Rey.

A tangerine sunset from Arroyo Seco.