Happy New Year!

 

Happy New Year everyone!  Here's to hoping that your year is packed full of adventures!

Moody Morning in the Frozen Forest

 

I'm working on a major overhaul of my image library, attempting to clean it up and simplify it, getting rid of redundant images, etc. In the process I'm finding a lot of photos that I never worked on and never did anything with, and this time around they're striking me in a way that they didn't before. This is the first of those. It's a photo from February 2015, taken at Tettegouche State Park on the Minnesota shoreline of Lake Superior. Tettegouche has large cliffs right next to the lake and when the conditions are right, high winds and large waves can throw spray well up over the top of the cliffs into the forest, coating every inch of every tree in a thick layer of ice. It's one of the most fascinating things, in my opinion, that occurs on Lake Superior. 

Utah Aurora!

 

From my November trip to the Moab, Utah area... the night of November 11th yielded some surrealistic skies over my campsite along the Colorado River. An incredibly strong aurora storm filled the sky with some super intense colors, colors unlike just about anything I'd ever seen before. I spent a few hours watching and photographing the sky... it was very hard to pull myself away to go to bed in the rooftop tent, but eventually I had to call it a night. This was at the start of my time in the southwest on this trip, and I couldn't have imagined a better beginning to what would become two weeks of awesome adventures!

My Favorite Morning - Autumn 2025

These photos are from my favorite morning of the 2025 autumn season. Fog blanketed the landscape on the morning of September 23rd, and boy did it sure make for some awesome images! There was also a brisk north wind, which meant the fog was rolling through rather quickly. The conditions made for an ever changing palette of photographic opportunity. The 2025 fall color season was an interesting one, as most are, and this day was definitely the high point of the season. 

The Beginning of the 2025 Fall Color Season

Here is a series of photographs that I made at the beginning of this year's fall color season. Taken on a morning where the fog added a ton of interest to the scenes laid out before me. These photos were made during the 3rd week of September. 

 

Late October Evening Adventure

 

A few days ago I took the Jeep up into the woods to try out the tent and to look for some nice evening light to photograph. I found a great spot to pop the tent for a short nap before sunset. A little while later, as the sun was nearing the horizon, I found some things that really caught my eye... a stand of trees catching the last light of the day while the ridge behind was engulfed in shadow, and some beautiful backlit ferns. I'm super excited about the tent setup... its going to open a whole new world of photography possibilities, allowing me to stay in comfort out where the photo opportunities await. 

James Baroud Off Road Tent - Trial Setup

Last night I went for a drive up in the woods to test out the rooftop tent and new bed rack on my Jeep Gladiator. It was fairly cold out, about 28 degrees. Even though the skies were completely clear and it seemed like a very dark night, there was a strange green haze in the sky (at least, green is how the camera interpreted it when set to auto white balance). I switched the camera to incandescent white balance to "get rid" of the green and produce images with an overall more blue tone. I had originally meant to record some sky quality measurements, but the glow in the sky was too impactful to get decent readings. 

So, I decided to set up the tent and make some photographs of it. I really like the tent setup on the truck, and the new bed rack is amazing!  Opening and closing the tent is so much earlier than it was on my Wrangler. I can't wait to spend some nights in it. I didn't last night because I had a long day and didn't have all my camping gear with me.