Considering how the world is versus our perception of it is interesting. Take this photograph. What do you see in it? Perhaps give yourself a moment and label all the things you find in it. You could describe the image with all of the thousand words a picture is due, but yet miss entirely some […]
David Wilson
David Wilson is a Humboldt-grown photographer. His longtime love is creating nighttime images and he enjoys finding and using unique light. David received his Art degree with an emphasis in photography from Humboldt State University. He currently teaches photography in the Art Department at College of the Redwoods.
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North Coast Night Lights: Humboldt Moonset
When friends or family visit from afar my first wish is to share the natural beauty of our area with them, especially if they come from city lives insulated from nature. From the legendary forests of our towering redwoods to the beautiful beaches and rugged coastlines, the natural beauty of our area is its greatest […]
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North Coast Night Lights: Cave Fire Dancer
Photographing a fire dancer this week was a new experience for me, and I was unsure how things would turn out when Chelsea Burns, a local fire dancer, approached me about taking pictures of her as she danced with fire. It sounded like something interesting to photograph in the dark, so I was into it. […]
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North Coast Night Lights: Smoky Coastal Skies and Milky Way
At the end of the summer of 2015, my brother and I were out around midnight on a great rock overlooking the Pacific Ocean, enjoying the view between ourselves and the rest of the Universe. Fires inland had been burning for weeks, their pall of smoke glowing orange in the sky to the south of […]
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Stargazing on the North Coast
Without the glare of city lights, starlight casts its soft glow on the landscape. In rural Humboldt County, the dark skies are filled with an unfathomable number of stars and a foray into the night need not take you far to see them. As a rule of thumb, stargazing is best from the higher elevations […]
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North Coast Night Lights: Musings at Moonstone Cave
We stood in the mouth of the cavern, looking out through a great broken crack in the blackness into the night as if through a window into another world. It fired our imaginations, conjuring mysteries in the night. What is it about caves that stirs us so inside? My thoughts wandered and stories began to […]
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North Coast Night Lights: Reflections From Trinidad
I opened the camera’s shutter and waited. It was already high tide, and I didn’t expect any waves to reach me. When I had arrived half an hour earlier I’d set up where the small waves coming in across Trinidad Harbor lapped nearly at my feet. I’d taken a few photographs from there, but the […]
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North Coast Night Lights: Dawn Chases the Milky Way
I pulled into the turnout and shut off the engine and lights. The stars jumped out and I joined them. Above the horizon the core of our galaxy glowed in the last darkness of the night. I smiled. Hello, Darkness, my old friend, I thought. It seemed apt, though it was the sight of the […]
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North Coast Night Lights: Here at the Edge
The vastness of things often comes home to me while I’m photographing at the edge of the continent or beneath the stars. To the east is the grounding solidity of the great North American land mass, to the west the immense Pacific Ocean stretches far beyond the horizon, and above, the field of stars. And […]
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North Coast Night Light: Freshwater Lagoon
Sometimes a creative urge will drive me nutty unless I can find a way to make something. I’m an artist but I am only interested in one medium: photography, which of course includes working with photos after taking the picture, whether with current digital tools or in the darkrooms of old as I started out. […]
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North Coast Night Lights: Grandmother Rock
It was nearly dark when I arrived at the Trinidad Head parking area. Sunset gazers had seen the sun set some 45 minutes earlier and were heading for their cars when I struck north up the beach. Night was descending and in the waning light I could see the footprints of the evening’s activity in […]
Posted inNews
North Coast Night Lights: Reflections from Trinidad
I opened the camera’s shutter and waited. It was already high tide and I didn’t expect any waves to reach me. When I had arrived half an hour earlier, I’d set up where the small waves coming in across Trinidad Harbor lapped nearly at my feet. I’d taken a few photographs from there but the […]