"Midnight Symphony" The Northern Lights, (Aurora borealis), pulse and sway in a silent slow dance across the midnight skies above Lake McDonald, in Glacier National Park.

Creative photographs of Glacier National Park & western Montana. Moonbows, star trails, light paintings -- even some traditional landscapes.

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JohnAshleyFineArt > "Avalanche Gorge."

The cool, blue waters af Avalanche Creek patiently etch their way through a bedrock gorge along Avalanche Creek, in Glacier National Park, Montana. (Note cards available here.)

Behind the Lens.

This is one of the most photographed spots in all of Glacier National Park. A nice boardwalk trail circles through a mature cedar / cottonwood grove along the banks of Avalanche Creek. This spot, where the trail crosses the creek, has been photographed millions of times, so I had to approach it differently. Let me just say that the colors are real, and they were achieved by the way I photographed the scene. Can you figure it out from those clues?

Answer - this is a "light painting," a photograph made in the dark using a flashlight. It is a 15-minute exposure made at 4AM. The blue-ish color in the background is from the natural ambient light, collected over the 15 minutes. The foreground colors are a combination of the blueish natural light, the color of that particular flashlight, and the colors of the rocks themselves. And the rapids blur together into a smooth, blue blur.

The result is an original image of a place that gets photographed millions of times every summer. Just Google up "Avalanche Gorge" images and you'll see how boring daylight photographs can be. You have to use your imagination and creativity to make something unique.

JohnAshleyFineArt > "Midnight Symphony"

The Northern Lights, (Aurora borealis), pulse and sway in a silent slow dance across the midnight skies above Lake McDonald, in Glacier National Park.

JohnAshleyFineArt > "Mt. Reynolds Milkyway."

A shooting star (lower center) falls from the early-summer Milkyway above Mt. Reynolds, in the Logan Pass area of Glacier National Park, Montana.

Behind the lens.

All of the motion in the night sky fascinates me. Mt. Reynolds is one of the most recognizable peaks in Glacier National Park, so I set out to photograph the Milkyway behind it. But on my first try, the Milkyway moved on past the peak before I got the image I wanted. But I was ready on my second try. To me, this is a classic image that represents how the park is timeless to us mere mortals. Generations from now, there will still be stars flying past Mount Reynolds.

$JohnAshleyFineArt > "Swiftcurent Creek" Swiftcurrent Creek flows crystal-clear from its namesake glacier, less than a mile up the valley from this fracture falls. Behind the lens. This is a stitch of three images top to bottom. I really needed a tall ladder to capture the scene, but I seldom hike with ladders. So I stood as far back on the rocks as possible, as high on my tippy-toes as I could, and stretched my neck to get every inch of this image.$

JohnAshleyFineArt > "First Light."

The first light of dawn anounces the arrival of a new day on Lake McDonald, in Glacier National Park, Montana. (Note cards available here.)

Behind the lens.

Watching dawn's early light is my big payoff for working through the night. Its arrival usually means that the photographing (star trails, moon, etc.) is over. But on this day, I worked late. When the horizon was barely visible, I created this time exposure using my headlamp to "paint" light back and forth across the colorful stones in the shallow water along the shore. The result is one of Tracy's favorite photographs (and it's always a good idea to please one's wife!).

JohnAshleyFineArt > "Good Medicine."

The Milky Way stretches across the midnight skies above Sinopah Mountain and Two Medicine Lake, on the east side of Glacier National Park.

JohnAshleyFineArt > "Bighorn Canyon Moonrise."

The full moon rises above the colorful cliffs of Bighorn Canyon, in southeastern Montana.

Behind the lens.

I must confess that this was just a "placemark" photo that I made while scouting locations for an interval moonbow image. But the clouds moved in on the day that the moon was in the necessary position. I never got to try my moonbow, but this photo has run in three different magazines. Sometimes it's just dumb luck.

JohnAshleyFineArt > "Huckleberry Moon."

The full moon floats silently past the Fire Lookout atop Huckleberry Mountain on a midsummer’s night in Glacier National Park, Montana. (Note cards available here.)

Behind the lens.

This photograph first appeared in my head while studying maps of Glacier National Park, and I had to work hard to get it out of there. Azimuths, transits, calculations, lines drawn across the map. Climbing around in good grizzly bear habitat with compass in hand, then hanging out in total darkness waiting for the moon to rise. All this and it still took me three tries to get it right!

On the first night, the moon rose just west of the lookout. The second night I overcompensated my location, and the moon just missed to the east. Finally, on the third try, the moon slid behind the lookout and I jumped around in a silent celebration dance -- yesssss!

JohnAshleyFineArt > "Buffalo Jump"

The sun falls over the horizon at the "First Peoples Buffalo Jump" state park near Great Falls. For thousands of years, before the arrival of horses, Plains Indians on foot drove herds of buffalo over this mile-long cliff.

JohnAshleyFineArt > "Many Moons Ago."

The moon's path across the sky changes every night. Here the moon's changing path is captured from a single camera location on five consecutive August nights. On the fifth night, I also photographed the sunset from the same camera position.

Behind the lens.

This was an incredibly difficult image to create. The weather forecast called for five days of clear skies (very unusual here), starting on the night of the full moon. I set a sturdy tripod on a friend's deck, and planned the image. Each night, every five minutes, I took three moon images -- one dark, one light and one normal. On the fifth night, at sunset, I asked Tracy to canoe across the lake. I then selected the best moon exposures for each night, assembled the moonbows, and layered in the canoe image. So this image literally started as many hundreds of photographs, all taken from a single point. The end result is a five-night long exposure that captures an inspiring celestial event.

JohnAshleyFineArt > "Wild Goose Moon & Stars."

The setting moon shines a spotlight on Wild Goose Island in St. Mary Lake, during a summer's night in Glacier National Park.

Behind the lens.

This is another one of those locations in Glacier National Park that has been photographed by every visitor and every professional photographer in the world, I suspect. But none of those photos look anything like this. Early evening stars above the moonset, with high thin clouds for a touch of color. If you try a little harder, photography doesn't have to be the same old scene over and over!

JohnAshleyFineArt > "Chief Mountain Moonrise."

A full moon clears the horizon and rises silently past Chief Mountain, on the east side of Glacier National Park, Montana.

Behind the lens.

Many years ago, I photographed the full moon rising behind Chief Mountain. The image didn't justify the reallife event, so I mulled it over. And over. Almost twenty years later, I finally created this image of the same celestial event. For me, this photograph begins to hint at the mysterious way that we respond to certain locations, like Chief Mountain. Finally, after all these years, this image begins to do justice to the mountain that is a sacred site to the Blackfeet Indians.

JohnAshleyFineArt > "Fire on the Water."

The calm and clear waters of Lake McDonald reflect the blazing skies of a springtime sunset in Glacier National Park, Montana.

Behind the lens.

It's hard to believe that I almost missed this sunset. I was working on the lakeshore late in the evening, getting ready for the full moon to rise towards the south. All of my attention was focused towards the imminent moonrise, as I was preparing two cameras on tripods and double-checking all of my measurements and pre-focusing before it got dark. I lost track of the skies to the west and north.

When I stepped away from my cameras and glanced behind me, I finally saw the "fire" on the water. I yanked on of my carefully placed tripod and camera sets and ran north, where I knew of a patch of colorful rocks laying just offshore in shallow water.

I had about two minutes to reset my equipment and capture the image before the clouds and water faded to gray. I quickly decided on a vertical stack of three separate horizontal images, but I ended up using the bottom two and cropping a bit.

Afterwards, I had to turn south and start setting up for the moonrise all over again...

JohnAshleyFineArt > "Lake McDonald Pearls."

The reflection in Lake McDonald makes a pearl necklace out of the moon’s path across the sky, from moonrise to moonset. I started this photograph at about 11 PM and finished around 4 AM.

Behind the lens.

This is one of our most technically challenging photographs. On the previous night, I was photographing the moonset from the other side of Lake McDonald. Standing on the gravel beach, in the silent glow of a full moon, I studied the moon's path and then stared across the lake. Back to the moon, then back across the lake. Over and over. Suddenly, this image appeared in my head. You know what that meant -- I had to return the following night and stay awake AGAIN if I hoped to create this image before the weather forecast brought wind and the surface reflection was lost.

I showed up early the following evening, took my compass readings, and set up my gear. A handful of tourists overcame their shyness to ask why I was sitting there next to my camera but not taking photos. I tried my best to describe the moonbow that I hoped would happen later that night -- a scene that I had never actually seen anywhere but inside my head. Most of the people I talked to nodded politely and at least pretended to comprehend my challenged description. "You mean you have to stay up all night?!" Yes, I said, knowing just how strange I must have seemed to them. But for this photograph, strange was worth it...

"Midnight Symphony"

The Northern Lights, (Aurora borealis), pulse and sway in a silent slow dance across the midnight skies above Lake McDonald, in Glacier National Park.

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Keywords: montana glacier national park northern lights aurora borealis lake mcdonald john ashley

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