Today I took a short hike behind my house to stretch my legs, and to harvest some nettles. While stinging nettles can be a real pain (literally) on summer hikes, this time of year, they are both food and medicine. I like to fry up nettle leaves as a high vitamin side dish, and I make nettle tea, which has a variety of health benefits. On the top of the list, nettle tea has antihistamine properties, which means it’s the perfect treatment for my spring allergies. The only time

Have you ever wondered why sunrises and sunsets are so colorful?  And why are some more orange and some more red? Well, it’s not because of the colors that are there, but rather the colors that are not. Sunset Light Waves Light travels in waves, and all of the colors in the visible spectrum have different frequencies.  The cool colors like violet, blue and green have the shortest wavelengths and the warmer colors have the longest.  All the waves travel together at the same sp

Taking Pictures Of Waterfalls And Other Moving Water In landscape photography, you generally don’t work with moving subjects, so you can choose your exposure settings based upon the aperture that will give you either the depth of field you desire, or the optimal sharpness for the lens you are shooting with.  However, when shooting moving water, nothing is more important than choosing your shutter speed.  If you use a fast shutter speed (1/60th sec or shorter) you will have th

The Olympic Peninsula is amazing for many reasons, and one of the grandest is it’s rainforests. Because the forests have been protected by the US government since the times of Teddy Roosevelt, they are what’s called primeval forests, meaning they’ve never been logged. They also get an enormous amount of rain that comes in off the Pacific ocean and gets trapped and precipitates in the steep valleys on the west side of the Olympic Mountains. On our recent trip to the peninsula,

Peter's dad out photographing loons. Photography is in my blood. My father is a dedicated hobby photographer, and I remember watching him going to extremes to take interesting photos, and then spending endless hours printing and framing them, and selling them at local craft fairs. Although he had a true passion for it, his job at General Motors is what paid all our bills. My grandmother on his side was also a photographer, and while her subject was her family, she was rarely

Hi, I'm Peter James!  I love sharing about the adventures I go on to get my best landscapes and nature photography. I also enjoy teaching about photography and sharing photographic techniques.  I travel all around the Pacific Northwest from my home in Bellingham, WA, and you can come along with me through this blog. There are three main elements to taking stunning nature photos. First is being in the right place at the right time, second is having a deep understanding of the