On February 1, 2026, I had hopes to shoot the rising full moon somewhere near my Lassen County California home. However, high clouds in the direction of the rising moon said otherwise. The good news is that high clouds can be excellent for a sunset and they were a bit thinner to the west than they were to the east so I went to Plan B and set up two cameras to shoot the sunset.
I aimed one camera toward “my mountain,” Thompson Peak, and captured this image right after the sun dipped behind the ridgeline…
I aimed the other camera, fitted with a telephoto lens, toward my favorite old barn that long time followers of my work will recognize. It is in more of a southwest direction from where I set up but all that high haze did an excellent job of reflecting color across the whole sky for a good long while. This time of year I see a great deal of purple, pink, and magenta tones in morning and evening skies and this sky did not disappoint! For anyone unfamiliar with this area, that water in the background is Honey Lake. Honey Lake is an often dry lake at the very bottom of our valley, known as (wait for it) the Honey Lake Valley…
Next, this old weathered tree, likely a cottonwood, caught my eye so I pivoted from the barn to it. The bird nest at the lower crotch is likely that of a red-tailed hawk, the most common raptor in this area…
Finally, as I was just starting to pack up for the evening I heard snow geese in the air. Still having the telephoto camera set up, and on a fluid tripod head which pans smoothly, I found a flock of geese against the still colorful sky and fired off a few frames while panning with them. Given that the light was getting quite low by this point, I knew there was no way I could pull off a shot freezing the motion of the birds which would require far too high of a shutter speed (not to mention the birds would have gotten away before I could have changed my settings – I’m slow). Therefore, I decided to stay with the slow shutter that was already set and just embrace the blur. Pablo Picasso once said, “Learn the rules like a pro so you can break them like an artist.” I’m not sure I got there but that was the goal here. I think it has a bit of a surreal and dreamy feel to it while fully understanding it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea.
Thank you very much for visiting. I’ll see you next time.