 It's story time. My name is David Patton. When I started photography, I wanted to make art. I wanted to be a landscape photographer. But with a family to feed and bills to pay, I decided it would be better to be a working photographer than a starving artist. So I took a job as a photojournalist. 25 years and thousands of assignments later, it was time to go back to my first love. It was time to follow my passion. Come along on my journey to become the best black in my photographer I can be. Whether it be film or digital, I will be sharing what I learned through my successes and my failures in hopes to inspire and educate. This is my journey. This is Bright in the Edge. Time for another story behind the photo. It's been quite a while since I've done one of these. And I thought I'd share the story behind this photo right here. I just came across this image, looking through some old photos. And I was reminded about this little trip I took with my youngest son, Andrew. I've lived in Oregon all my adult life. And I had never been to the Alford Desert. I'd seen it before, from about 9,000 feet up above the Alford Desert, up on Steens Mountain, which is just west of the Alford Desert. But I'd never been actually out on the Playa. So our plan was to drive a little car across the desert to the east side and just camp out there on the Playa for the night. We're just gonna spend one day out there. So we got there in the late afternoon and took some photos and set up camp and just kind of enjoyed being out there. And then when it got dark, I thought I would go ahead and put a light in my tent. Gotta get one of those glowing tent shots, you know, on the desert with some of the stars behind. Thought I'd make a shot like that just for a record shot. My camera gear wasn't really that great for astrophotography or anything, but I thought I'd go ahead and make a few photos. So I set my tripod up with the tent in the foreground and I was trying to get some stars in, knowing that it was just really a four record shot. I was probably shooting towards the east. So I looked back to ask my son a question and I looked past him with a weird, probably had a weird look on my face and asked him, what the heck is that? And I may have used a little different language. And he looks over and he's like, I don't know. I said, is there, do you think there's a town that direction? He said, I don't think so. Well, maybe it's a toxic waste dump. We were kind of joking around at that point. There were these rays of beams coming up from the horizon. They were faint, but they were very visible and it was kind of shocking to see. So frantically, I set my tripod up that direction and started making photographs. Probably 30 second exposures, something like that. And when I looked at the back of the camera, we were amazed at what we were seeing. The long exposure was probably adding to the vividness of the scene. It was the northern lights over at the Alford Desert. It wasn't something we knew was gonna happen. We actually had to research it when I got home because we still really didn't understand what we were seeing. It was like just this wonderful, amazing sight. That made this outing so special, so unique. It's one of those times where the photo really illustrated why I go out into nature for landscape photography. There's always that moment of surprise, of wonderment. I still feel that now when I go out and do landscape photography, it's magical times. It can be just magical to see a magnificent sunset or sunrise or the way the landscape and light are playing together. There's just so many really interesting, wonderful wonderment, so much wonderment in the experience of landscape photography. And after I made a few images, the light was starting to calm down a little bit. I thought I'd run out there and put the camera on self-timer and get a selfie. And I made a few of those images. And didn't notice until I got home, probably quite a while after I'd been home, got edited the main shot, that there was this, one of the frames had this really interesting little light event behind me that was kind of cool. It was actually kind of a unique looking thing. It looked like something was entering, it turned the atmosphere while I was taking the shot. I'm guessing it was probably a meteor. Could have been UFO, just saying. Image was made with the older 5200 series Nikon, smaller sensor. I knew it was gonna be fairly noisy. But now that I look at the image these years later, I actually can appreciate it more. I think now that I'm shooting film more, the imperfections don't seem to bother me as much. There's a little bit of noise. Doesn't really take away from the kind of the unique experience we had. That's what I see when I actually see this image is, I'm reminded of this wonderful little trip we took. Now back when I made this image, I was actually making a video, and which was part of a series I was doing back before I had this YouTube channel. It was called An Outdoor Life. And it wasn't really photography centric. There was photography in it at times. But it was more a general outdoor activity type of video series. And I think I'll go ahead and add a link either in the description or at the end of the video or up above if you'd like to check it out. It's just like a, it's a pretty short video. But I think it does capture the flavor of the Alvord Desert. Well, I want to thank you for listening to my little story on the Northern Lights or Borealis over the Alvord Desert. Hopefully my next episode will be out in the field taking pictures. I've got a trip planned and I'll be heading out in the next few days. And if you like the content I'm making on this site, I never say this, but subscribing would really be beneficial. It really helped. My channel is growing, but it's growing really slow. Love to be able to reach more people. So thumbs up, hit the bell and subscribe. That's all stuff that I hear all the time. I easily neglect to mention that. I probably should try to be a better YouTuber. Well, I think I'm in this video right here. Thanks for coming along on this little story behind the photo. So until next time, thanks for coming along for the ride.