A large crowd attended the 37th annual Lantern Floating Ceremony at the Arcata Marsh and Wildlife Sanctuary on Saturday evening under clear skies. A gentle breeze helped push a few hundred lanterns that had been created earlier that morning on the Arcata Plaza out across Klopp Lake. The original Japanese ceremony uses floating lanterns to […]
Art
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North Coast Night Lights: Unexpected Magic: Rabbit Stargazer
What makes a photograph special isn’t always what was planned but what happens instead. Of course, sometimes what happens instead can make a mess of things. One has no choice in the matter, but it seems to me that if I’m open to the possibility that something unexpected can make the photo better then delightful […]
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North Coast Night Lights: A Humboldt Commute
I was where I wanted to be, out beneath the moonless night sky overlooking the Redwood Highway, watching others passing through the night on their separate journeys to their own destinations. What a wonderfully beautiful commute they had, I thought: redwood forests, clear air, the rivers, perhaps the rugged coast. Lucky we are to live […]
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North Coast Night Lights: Kneeland Road, One Year Later
Have you ever really thought about the difference between night and day? An interesting difference between day and night is that from one year to the next there are differences between night skies, but no differences between daytime skies. It may be a little odd-sounding if you haven’t thought of it, but it’s not strange […]
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North Coast Night Lights: A Milky Way Time-Lapse Medley
One can sit beneath the stars and watch them as they slowly traverse the skies; it merely requires your patience. But are we actually sensing them move? Or is it that our glance from time to time notes only that that the stars have changed position? Our perception moment by moment is that they are […]
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North Coast Night Lights: Eel River Overlook
The magic of the night was all around, so very quiet with only the sound of the redwood forest around us sighing in a light breeze and merging with the soft susurrus of the Eel River far below. From a protected hollow high above the river my companions and I looked out over a world […]
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Bubbling Over: Photos from the Fourth in Arcata
The only things exploding on the Arcata plaza for the 4th of July Jubilee were thousands of soap bubbles, as the Bubbles Promenade kicked off the event with a crowd of children and adults blowing bubbles. The soapy parade that also included a few rhutabaga Queens for Life and a mix of Kinetic Race vehicles, […]
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Photos of the Fairy Frolic
It was another “Frolick of Fairies” at the magical second annual Fairy Festival on the Arcata Plaza on Saturday. The large turnout of mystical fairies and other life forms for the costume contests, live music, belly dancing, a parade with a dragon, and other activities probably exceeded even the most optimistic expectations of everyone except […]
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North Coast Night Lights: The Survivor
The Survivor. The gnarled old pear tree was struggling to survive, hanging onto the edge of a dried embankment above a little dirt road when my family moved there over 40 years ago. It was small, not much taller than my dad, but already old, a twisted thing eking out a life on its own […]
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Photos from the Sand Sculpture Fest
The 24th annual Sand Sculpture Festival turned the Samoa Drag Strip into a packed parking lot on Saturday, as the Friends of the Dunes fundraiser attracted a large crowd to the nearby ocean beach. Nineteen teams of artists working in the medium of ocean beach sand competed for fun, cash prizes and various awards, while […]
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UPDATE: Reggae on the River Cancelled
UPDATE: Dusty Hughston, a Mateel Community Center board member, confirmed that the 2019 Reggae on the River show has been cancelled. “It’s real. They called me and the treasurer,” he told Redheaded Blackbelt. The Mateel Board will release a complete statement but at this time Hughston said that though the board won’t have the money […]
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North Coast Night Lights: Night Lights in the Fog
In which an expedition to photograph beneath the night skies encounters lemons in the form of a thick pea soup fog, so we make lemonade. We had hoped for a starry night and the Milky Way, but the lemonade turned out better than expected. In online photo circles, one will bump into other photographers through […]