guam coast

looking directly at an enormous wall of ice as it crumbles into the sea. the ice is under intense pressure from the weight of the ice above and from the relentless pushing of new ice forming in distant mountains. this pressure causes the ice to be abnormally dense, and gives it an obvious teal colour. very loud cracks and pops can be heard as it continues being shoved downhill.

this is a closeup shot of the feathery scales on a Monarch butterfly wing. each scale has a length of around 1/220 of an inch, so the height of this entire shot would be equivalent to the thickness of 3 sheets of paper. this particular butterfly died naturally near our studio, so we took the opportunity to explore what it had to offer.

although passing for the scales on a blue dragon, this is actually an extreme close-up photo of the iridescent stripe on the wing of a Mallard Duck. the feather starts off with a main shaft (or quill) with hundreds of branches (barbs) protruding from the side. zooming in on one of these barbs, there are again hundreds of protruding tiny branches (barbules) on each barb. this photo captures approximately 4 of these barbules and their scale-like shapes. each of these 'squares' measure around 0.0012 inches across (less than the thickness of aluminum foil).

the extremely popular Multnomah Falls in the Columbia River Gorge happens to be the second tallest in the states, and is very easily accessible - just off the highway. This convenience allowed me to return many times to study how the moving sun dramatically changed the whole area's appearance. Most of the time, part of the falls are very brightly lit with direct sunlight and other parts are in significant shade, which makes for a terribly unbalanced exposure. Persistence paid off one day, when i arrived and the trees had a lovely pattern of light shining through and the entire upper & lower falls were evenly illuminated.

vertical blade-like mounds of sandstone in eastern Utah