Birds of Incarceration
On an air-conditioned bus to Tule Lake, we fold shimmering sheets of colored paper into delicate, mystical birds. The weight of the shared ritual makes my fingers fumble. Itβs been decades since I made origami with my immigrant mother, and I feel pressure to reprise...
2019 Nature Calls
I finally captured an image of a pronghorn with a healthy, pronged horn and without details blown out. So I’m doing wildlife again–half mammals, half birds. And I’ve been saving these for this calendar. Nine of these pictures were never shared on social media. Making...
No Right Way to Be Outside
The first time I tried my hand at astrophotography (shooting the stars, as opposed to shooting stars) was on a clear night just outside Mount Rainier National Park. I was renting a cabin with my wife and her family, a trio of sisters from Colombia...
WE ARE OUTSIDE!
One of my favorite places in the outdoors has multiple trails, several different habitats, and offers spectacular views of a major snow-capped peak. There is an old-growth forest where, among the mossy trees, you are serenaded by the rat-ta-tat-tat of pileated woodpeckers, hoots from barred...
Urban Osprey Nest
This is a sampling of images taken while monitoring an osprey nest in the Union Bay Natural Area in the middle of Seattle, Washington, behind Husky Stadium. Included are some of the neighbors and onlookers. The monitoring is in its fourth month, beginning in early...
Japanese American Activation
After a sometimes rousing, mostly solemn, and often tear-filled memorial ceremony brimming with Japanese and Japanese American influences, a scene unfurled that, to common understanding, may have seemed very un-Japanese. It happened beside an old jail nested in a much larger prison, the Tule Lake...
