White Pocket, located on the Paria Plateau in northern Arizona, is a remote outcropping of oddly contorted landforms. Once a Jurassic period sandy desert, it is thought that an earthquake caused a large area of wet sand to slide into a lake or oasis and solidify over time. The parallel lines twisted into shapes reminiscent of scenes from the movie "Inception" are a perfect example of what you'll find all around the area. On this night, I had the entire place to myself. It was a bit eerie but very serene at the same time.

The aurora borealis is caused by the outflowing solar wind sending charged particles, mainly electrons and protons, in the direction of Earth. The color you see is caused by these particles colliding with nitrogen and oxygen atoms and molecules in our atmosphere causing light to be released. Green/red color auroras are due to collisions with oxygen and the blue/purple/violet color is from nitrogen.

I also named this photograph "Outflow" because the water seen here is an outflow from Tibbitt Lake. When the massive trucks travel across the lake on the winter ice road, the pressure generates waves under the ice which are eventually strongly felt and heard in the rushing of water in this exposed area.

Last night I drove to literally the end of the road in the Northwest Territories of Canada. Highway 4, better known as Ingraham Trail, runs out of asphalt at Tibbitt Lake at which point it turns into one of the famed ice roads. In fact, the Tibbitt to Contwoyto Winter Road was the first ice road featured on the television series "Ice Road Truckers". The road is open for approximately 10 weeks starting in January and runs around 370 miles from Tibbitt to Nunavut. While standing on the frozen lake at 4 o'clock in the morning, watching the streams of trucks embark on their journey north, the aurora exploded in a fantastic full-sky display of rippling curtains of purple and green light.

Boreal forests cover over 60% of Canada's land mass. It consists mainly of conifers like spruce and pine. The landscape in the area of Yellowknife is dotted by lakes which are surrounded by these forests. Even in the dead of winter between the aurora, trees, lakes, and rock formations there is a unique beauty here that I didn't expect to find.

At over 62° northern latitude, the celestial north pole is really high in the sky over Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories. In Seattle, by comparison, the celestial pole is about 47 degrees above the horizon. 15° may not seem like much but visually you really notice the difference. The star trail image you see here was captured over the course of about 35 minutes. The emerald background is courtesy of the aurora. Polaris, the North Star (which is not exactly at the celestial north pole), is the bright star closest to the center.

Standing directly below the incoming flow of charged particles from our star, the Aurora Borealis at the zenith is a psychedelic managerie of violet and green against the inky black backdrop of space.

After driving for over 20 hours in the past two days, I was welcomed to High Level, Canada with a beautiful aurora display. Even with all the time in the car, I was stoked to head out at 2am shoot the Northern Lights for a few hours. I didn't have an opportunity to scout locations so I had to setup more or less along, or even on, the road.

"Crazed Earth"

The mud flats of the Alvord Desert are an astounding puzzle of polygonal shapes broken up by even smaller geometric features. These mostly six-sided cells are formed as the seasonal lake evaporates leaving the mud behind to dry and crack. Potters intentionally work to recreate this pattern in their artwork through a technique called "crazing". To witness this effect applied to our planet's surface on such a grand scale is a sight to behold.

This nightscape, while relatively simple in composition, is one of the most technical images that I produce. It includes two separate focus blended foreground images, one lit and the other unlit. The two foregrounds are then overlaid to create a unique highlight and shadow profile that cannot be achieved in post processing alone. This technique gives subtle depth to an otherwise mostly flat appearing surface. The sky is comprised of a dozen 15-second images that have been star aligned, stacked, and median combined to deliver the equivalent of a 3-minute tracked exposure.

"Life Finds a Way"

From organisms that thrive at the bottom of the deep-sea near volcanic vents to microbes that spring to life after being shrouded in ice for millennia to plants that take root in the muddy cracks of a dry desert floor...life finds a way. If life happens everywhere it can conceivably be sustained here on Earth, what does that say about the possibilities of life on other worlds?