Coastal photography from the Pacific Northwest and beyond
Why ChromaLuxe?
On our Alaska voyage, Queen Elizabeth could not travel all the way into Disenchantment Bay, (icebergs & oceanliners, anyone?) so we transferred to two smaller excursion boats to get closer to the glaciers. One of the boats can be seen here, , giving a sense of the scale of Turner Glacier behind it. Turner is roughly half the height of Hubbard Glacier just to the east, which makes the comparison even more striking.
It’s difficult to hard to render the scale of Hubbard Glacier, even in a wide photograph – it’s nearly as tall as a 40-story building. The fractured wall of blue ice dominates the foreground, yet beyond it rise snowfields, mountains, and glaciers stretching toward the horizon. And it thunders as it continues, inexorably, to Disenchantment Bay.
Lime Kiln Lighthouse is poised on the western shore of San Juan Island on the Salish Sea, looking toward Victoria, BC and the Olympic Mountains across the water. I took many photos and selected this one for its symmetry (which required my balancing on a rock edge.)
Aerial photography allows you to “rehearse” a route once and then use autopilot to repeat the circle. Of all the angles, I love seeing the 1905 Coupeville Town Wharf in front of the town it symbolizes. And for my friends back in New England, this is Whidbey Island, Washington, not Maine.
I used aerial cameras for this, flying in from several miles away over Deception Pass at the North tip of Whidbey Island, Washington. I was thrilled to turn the camera down and capture the 1935 bridge that floats almost two hundred feet above a silvery spring afternoon.
In August 2022, we spent several days staying in Sequim, Washington on the Olympic Peninsula while visiting Olympic National Park. Sequim is one of the sunniest spots on the Pacific Northwest - outside the “rain shadow” of the mountains and known for it’s lavender fields and ocean views. This station sits just east of downtown. And since my father worked for Texaco for almost twenty years, it was an obvious subject.
I was fortunate to discover Ebey’s Landing on Whidbey Island on my first trip there, and it remains a beautiful place to observe the Salish Sea, from the beach or the bluffs. This was a magnificent autumn day – windy and warmer than it looks.
A hot day in June. I had just driven a rescue dog out to the Tri-Cities and headed out to visit Palouse Falls. On my way back, this view to the west made me turn back to see it again.
During an architecture tour of desert homes in the Twin Palms neighborhood of Palm Springs, one retro Atomic Age home had a fantastic collection of midcentury cars, including this 1958 Oldsmobile Super 88 in “Turquoise Mist”.
We have a family tradition to stay for a long weekend in Coupeville, Washington on Penn Cove each October. Coupeville Wharf is an icon, and the sky was especially moody on this blustery early morning.
Shot on an extremely dark late October morning near the mouth of the Samish River, near Edison, Washington, I was drawn to the long-abandoned wreck of a wooden boat, its owners and journeys lost to time.
Lake Twentytwo in ’22, actually—on the northern shoulder of Mount Pilchuck in the Cascade Range. Still plenty of snowpack on the way up to the outflow. The brilliant contrast of the clouds reminds me of the booming snowmelt and icefalls, cracking and echoing from the cliff face.
The largest beach on Long Island Sound in Southold, New York on the North Fork. I lifeguarded at many beaches, including this one, when I was growing up.
An editing “accident” while proofing Alone 2023—the same original image—led me to appreciate the great tonal contrasts of this abandoned house in Clyde, Washington.
We spent a day touring the south coast of Iceland. Vik is famous for its church, its black sand beaches and its puffins. But this woman reading alone on the basalt columns at the beach was a striking contrast that needed no color adjustments at all.