Long have I been fascinated by photographing light in the dark of night. Other photographic interests come and go, but that one is always present, a constant pull on my imagination. If people go through phases in their art, I am definitely deep into a night phase. A photograph is not merely an impression of […]
David Wilson
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North Coast Night Lights: The Changing Milky Way
I think many people take the night sky for granted, not realizing all that is happening in our view. It’s the night sky, what is there to think about, right? When the weather is clear, it is full of stars, there is a moon, which is probably full or else it’s a crescent, and maybe […]
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North Coast Night Lights: Cooks Valley Bridge
In 1993, I spent a year in Chicago. Even then I loved photographing at night; I have always been drawn to it. I would use either available light or introduce light of my own, painting it into a scene much as I do now. I wasn’t comfortable photographing with models then, confining myself mostly to […]
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North Coast Night Lights: The Tower
The tower once stood silent sentinel in the quiet fields near the Marsh in Arcata, lonely and abandoned when I discovered it. Long disused, it rose above the tall grasses and blackberry brambles covering the broken concrete rubble of the bygone structures once surrounding it. Its floor was piled deep with broken chunks and slabs, […]
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North Coast Night Lights:The Covered Bridge of Elk River
Humboldt County is home to a number of noteworthy bridges, two of which are wooden covered bridges built in the 1930s. Both of these are still in service out Elk River Road and I’ve thought for a while that catching an unusual view of them beneath the stars would be interesting. Earlier this year I […]
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North Coast Night Lights: Milky Way over South Fork Eel River — Painting with Light
The word “photography” literally means “light painting” and there is something about taking that idea and actually adding my own strokes of light that appeals to me. Nighttime gives me the opportunity to make images that are illuminated in ways we don’t usually see, whether from moonlight, artificial ambient light sources or light that I […]
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North Coast Night Lights: 1964 High Water on the Avenue
In 1964 a perfect storm of snow melt and heavy rains caused a historic flood in Humboldt County and the greater Pacific Northwest. Along the Eel River watershed, the raging flood waters wiped out roads, bridges, and entire communities. U.S. Highway 101 was submerged at some points. That was before my memory, and now most […]
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North Coast Night Lights: Camping in the King Range
The Fall Equinox of Sept. 21, 2017, found me camping beneath the stars on Paradise Ridge in Southern Humboldt’s King Range, a BLM-managed area of our beautiful and famous Lost Coast. Friends I’ve known since childhood had invited me out to join them for a night of stargazing and Milky Way photography in one of […]
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North Coast Night Lights: Close Encounters on the Avenue
The Avenue of the Giants is as beautiful a drive as you will find. The groves along its 36-mile course line the Avenue with some of the grandest examples of the tallest trees on Earth, the California coast redwood, Sequoia sempervirens. Some are thousands of years old. If a disproportionate number of my photographs are […]
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North Coast Night Lights: Humboldt County Skyline
It’s unlikely for one who lives in Humboldt County to be unaware of a certain industry, which shall here remain nameless, and for which the county is known somewhat beyond its borders, and which recently became legal in our state, for the subject naturally becomes a part of many conversations. I could discuss it in […]
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North Coast Night Lights: This Way to the Galactic Core
I found myself on a ridge line along the Kneeland Road the night of July 18, 2018, on an impulsive late-night mission to the Galactic Core. It was out there, all I needed was a stretch of road that would take me up to meet it at the horizon. We live in the Milky Way […]
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North Coast Night Lights: Milky Way Over Kneeland Snow
I was enwombed in a place of dreamlike comfort and warmth. In the honey hum of perfect slumber, I was suspended in the vibrations of the universe. Dreaming of misty sunbeams and forest floors, and floating like a butterfly. Except … Except the sound of Dr. McCoy’s medical scanner was intruding. It peeled away the […]