Leighton Photography & Imaging

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  • This rock was once molten lava forced from deep within the earth as it covered most of Central Washington, up to three miles deep in some places. Many thousands of years of erosion, weathering and exposure to the elements has left us with massive crumbling rock formations like this basalt rock wall.
    Rocky Basalt Bluffs of Cowiche Canyon
  • El Capitan in West Texas' Guadalupe Mountains (100 miles east of El Paso) is the world's premier example of an exposed fossil reef from the Permian Era, dated at about 260 million years old - much older than the golden age of dinosaurs. This whole part of Texas back in this time was once covered in a shallow sea that geologists call the Delaware Sea, in a time when all of Earth's continents were still joined into one supercontinent that we call Pangaea. The entire top of El Capitan is made of limestone formed from the fossilized remains of aquatic plant and animal remains such as corals, algae, shellfish and plankton, and now stands at just above 8000 feet above sea level. The base is formed by layer upon layer of sand laid down over millions of years, in the manner you would expect from the ocean floor resulting in a very typical sedimentary rock formation,  further eroded by millions of years of desert heat, rain, abrasion and wind.
    El Capitan, West Texas
  • The beautiful Florida Gulf Coast just south of Tallahassee, Florida where everything is still wild and free!
    St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge
  • Sunset on Lover's Key in Lee County, Florida. Beautiful!.
    Lover's Key
  • There are holes in the wall that lead to the surface, resulting in magnificent sprays of water shooting high into the air when a wave crashes into it just right.
    Blowing Rocks Preserve 2
  • Amazing rock formations at the Blowing Rocks Preserve on Jupiter Island, Florida. This limestone rock wall is an exposed ancient coral reef that gets pounded by the Atlantic Ocean incessantly.
    Blowing Rocks Preserve 1
  • Sunset on Lover's Key in Lee County, Florida. Beautiful!
    Lover's Key Sunset
  • Caspersen Beach in Venice, Florida. This is one of the best beaches for finding fossils, particularly shark teeth.
    Caspersen Beach
  • A perfect winter day on Captiva Island, Florida.
    Winter on Captiva Island
  • Low tide at Mashes Sands on Florida's Gulf Coast. As part of the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge - it is protected from development.
    Mashes Sands
  • After waiting and then almost giving up due to the fog, the sun burned through enough of it for me to get this shot.
    Foggy Dawn and the Burning Sun
  • The rising sun at Lighthouse Point on Sanibel Island.
    Sanibel Sunrise
  • Photograph of the Gulf of Mexico, photographed from atop one of the 25-foot dunes that parallel the coast (using the boardwalk of course - it is illegal to walk on the dunes themselves for several ecological and environmental reasons).
    St. Joseph Peninsula Dunes
  • A wildly pink sunrise on a rare below-freezing winter morning over the Ochlockonee Bay on Florida's northern Gulf Coast.
    Ochlockonee Bay Sunrise
  • A thunderstorm looms over St. Joe's Bay on the Florida Panhandle.
    St. Joe's Bay
  • Sunset on Lover's Key in Lee County, Florida. Beautiful!
    Boating at Lover's Key
  • Cabbage Palm on Sanibel Island taken from a very relaxing position on the beach!
    The Best View
  • Portrait of the beach on Sanibel Island.
    Land, Sea & Air
  • Lover's Key in Lee County, Florida. Just in the right spot at the right time.
    Sunset at Lover's Key
  • A storm brewing off of Sanibel Island.
    Sanibel Storm
  • This is an amazing place to visit, and it is really hard to think that this is a Florida beach.
    Blowing Rocks Preserve 3
  • A distant thunderhead over the Gulf of Mexico at Mashes Sands in North Florida.
    Offshore Storm
  • One of the most beautiful places in all of Florida - Cedar Key, at sunset.
    Boathouse on Cedar Key
  • A wildly orange sunset over St. George Island on the Florida Panhandle. Even though the mosquitoes were awful and something big was buzzing around my head, the end result was  very worth it.
    Tangerine Sunset
  • A fantastic cloudscape at the beach in the evening. Nothing more beautiful than a sunset with an incoming storm on the beach!
    Mashes Sands Storm
  • Sabal palms in silhouette on a glorious sunset over Apalachicola Bay.
    A Sense of Place
  • Another day ends beautifully with a dazzling sunset over Apalachicola Bay on the Florida Panhandle.
    All's Well That Ends Well.....
  • Layers of a valley, dunes, a sandstorm, mountains and clouds in White Sands National Monument in New Mexico.
    White Sands 2015-2.jpg
  • Layers of a valley, dunes, a sandstorm, mountains and clouds in White Sands National Monument in New Mexico.
    White Sands 2015-3.jpg
  • A wild sun halo on a chilly winter day on the Gulf of Mexico, just south of Tallahassee, Florida.
    Sun Halo over the Gulf of Mexico
  • This spectacularly wild and unique part of the Pacific Northwest is one of the largest temperate rainforests in the United States, receiving 140 to 170 inches (12 to 14 feet!) of precipitation per year! Located on Washington's Olympic Peninsula, it remains protected from the logging industry by being part of the Olympic National Park.
    Hoh Rain Forest
  • Early morning tranquility on the banks of the Santa Fe River in North-Central Florida with red filter applied.
    Santa Fe River
  • Coulees, hills, ridges and thousands of small creeks are very typical of the vast wild land between Ellensburg, Washington and the mighty Columbia River to the East. This view is facing east from the base of Whiskey Dick Mountain.
    Sagebrush Country
  • A coastal douglas fir forest trail winds its way up the hill near the cliffs of Fidalgo Island on Washington's Puget Sound.
    Anacortes Landscape-9.jpg
  • Cerro Castellan - also known as Castolon Peak or Castellan Peak, is a conical volcanic mountain in West Texas that rises 1000 feet above the desert floor (3,293 feet above sea level) in Big Bend National Park. Cerro Castellan itself is part of an ancient series of summits once known as the Corazones Peaks that has since succumbed to millennia of erosion by wind, precipitation, searing heat and bitterly cold winters. <br />
Geologically, this ancient mountain range remnant is a high stack of volcanic rocks, including ash, lava, and tuffaceous rocks. It is capped by a dense lava flow underlain by various tuffs and basalts. A somewhat northwest fault cuts the eastern face of Cerro Castellan. Although little vegetation grows on the sheer cliffs and steep, pointed profile of its peak, the lower slopes of Cerro Castellan support a sparse growth of Chihuahuan Desert scrub, including most prominently such characteristic species as creosote bush and ocotillo.
    Cerro Castellan
  • Sea stacks tower above the sitka spruce that line the Pacific coastline of Washington's Rialto Beach and Olympic National Park.
    Sea Stacks and Coastline at Rialto B..gton
  • Double Arch is found in Arches National Park in Eastern Utah and is part of the amazing red alien sandstone landscape that is called the Moab Desert. This area has the largest number of natural stone arches than anywhere else in the world, but what makes this rock formation so unique is that they were both eroded from the very same piece of stone. Most arches are formed from water erosion flowing either within or from the sides of the rock over the millennia, but these two arches were formed from water eroding from the top of the stone, downwards. For this reason they are called pothole arches. Because this photograph was made at the beginning of a sudden storm, you can see the rainwater running down the rock from the top of the arch, and this is the very process that carved these arches to begin with, and that will also eventually one day cause this magnificent national treasure to collapse.
    Double Arch, Moab Desert, Utah
  • This incredible wild and harsh desert near the Mexican town of Sonoyta is deep in the Ajo Mountain range in Southern Pima County, Arizona. Saguaro cacti, gila monsters, rattlesnakes, scorpions, tarantulas, a searing sun are staples of this dangerous part of the Sonoran Desert, and there is a long, deep history among the remnants of the Tohono O'odham Nation who thrived here for centuries, and the ancestral Puebloans who created a vibrant culture here before them.
    Diablo Mountains, Arizona
  • Clouds over an enormous New Mexican sunny day over White Sands!
    White Sands Desert and Dunes, New Mexico
  • The sun went behind a cloud for a moment in White Sands....
    Sky and Sand - White Sands, New Mexico
  • Layers of dunes, a sandstorm, mountains and clouds in White Sands National Monument in New Mexico.
    White Sands Desert, New Mexico
  • The sand verbena (sometimes also called the purple or pink sand verbena) is a very hardy, heat-resistant desert survivor in the American Southwest. Not many plants survive in the gypsum sands desert of White Sands National Monument in Southern New Mexico with its shifting dunes, but this one does just fine.
    Sand Verbena
  • The infamous and rare, bleached earless lizard (Holbrookia maculata ruthveni) - a lizard with an evolutionary adaptation to living on the white gypsum sand dunes on White Sands (the largest gypsum sand dune desert in the world). This beautiful member of the Phrynosomatid lizard family has evolved white scales to enable it to blend in with the white gypsum sands. I wouldn't have seen it if it hadn't moved.
    Bleached Earless Lizard
  • A bombardier beetle (a type of darkling beetle) stands out in extreme contrast against the sand dunes of White Sands National Monument in Southern New Mexico, a wild landscape of gypsum sands piled into massive sand dunes.
    Bombardier Beetle
  • The infamous and rare, bleached earless lizard (Holbrookia maculata ruthveni) - a lizard with an evolutionary adaptation to living on the white gypsum sand dunes on White Sands (the largest gypsum sand dune desert in the world) found resting in the shade of an enormous dune late in the morning of a bright and sunny spring day.
    Bleached Earless Lizard
  • An incredible fiery sunset on a rare sunny winter evening on Oregon's Tillamook Head - just north of Cannon Beach.
    Sunset on Sea Lion Rock, Oregon
  • Early morning and the sun is burning through the fog over the salt marshes of the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge in North Florida.
    Stillness and the Salt Marsh
  • The famous North and South Window arches at 4am on an incredible moonlit night deep in the Moab Desert in Arches National Park in Eastern Utah.
    North and South Window Arches at Night
  • One of the 2000+ arches found in the Moab Desert in Arches National Park, lit by an extraordinary moon on a hot summer night.
    Moab Desert at Night
  • A waning gibbous moon on a warm summer night in the Moab Desert in Eastern Utah at nearly 4am. It was so bright out that I could easily navigate between the cacti and jagged rocks without my flashlight!
    Desert Moon
  • The famous Delicate Arch stands 65 feet (20 meters) above its sandstone base in the surrounding canyons and ravines in Arches National Park in eastern Utah's Moab Desert.
    Delicate Arch
  • The famous Delicate Arch stands 65 feet (20 meters) above its sandstone base in the surrounding canyons and ravines in Arches National Park in eastern Utah's Moab Desert.
    Delicate Arch
  • The famous Delicate Arch stands 65 feet (20 meters) above its sandstone base in the surrounding canyons and ravines in Arches National Park in eastern Utah's Moab Desert.
    Delicate Arch
  • The famous Delicate Arch stands 65 feet (20 meters) above its sandstone base in the surrounding canyons and ravines in Arches National Park in eastern Utah's Moab Desert.
    Delicate Arch
  • The famous Delicate Arch stands 65 feet (20 meters) above its sandstone base in the surrounding canyons and ravines in Arches National Park in eastern Utah's Moab Desert.
    Delicate Arch
  • A perfect combination of low tide, the last rays of sunlight, and a spectacular  location made for a very satisfying photograph with rippled sand and ultra-vivid colors as I waited out the sunset on Washington's Ruby Beach in the Olympic National Park on the Pacific Ocean.
    Ruby Beach at Last Light
  • Very early on a chilly fall morning, just before sunrise on the Olympic Peninsula's Rialto Beach on Washington's Pacific Coast. Stands of dead sitka spruce trees line the shore (standing and fallen or washed ashore) on one of North America's most spectacular remote beaches.
    Rialto Beach at Dawn
  • A truly breathtaking sunset with a wildly-colored sky was my reward for waiting out the sunset on this otherwise, hazy/foggy evening on the Oregon Coast near the Pistol River. Just as the light was fading and nearly gone, the fog cleared up just enough for me to wade out into the surf with a heavy tripod to get this shot.
    Oregon Sea Stacks in Fading Sunset
  • The Oregon Coast is renowned for its natural beauty, sea stacks, and gorgeous sunsets. I caught this rock formation in the late afternoon "golden light" and focused on the interplay between light and shadow.
    Oregon Sea Stacks in Golden Light
  • Sometimes there are patterns that emerge in nature that you can't help but notice. I saw this wavy, wet pattern of sand and salt water at Crescent Beach just outside of Crescent City, California.
    Surf, Sand and Water
  • Wind Cove opens out into the Pacific Ocean on the Southern Oregon Coast and is a shallow protected cove and sandy beach. It seems that just about every mile along this coastline has jaw-dropping views and  rock formations (called sea stacks), even if the weather is just a little bit hazy, like this day was.
    Wind Cove, Oregon Coast
  • Ancient basalt columns are a typical sight in Central Washington. They are formed by cooling lava, forming cracks that create these columns by contracting. The faster the lava cools, the thinner the columns. These thick columns cooled gradually over some time. The presence of the lichens that now cover the stony face is an indicator of very good air quality and a lack of pollution.
    Lichen-Covered Basalt Cliff in Cowic..nyon
  • Sunset is almost always a dramatic show of light and shadow, as witnessed here in Cowiche Canyon, just west of Yakima, WA. Strong beams of sunlight beautifully backlit these desert wildflowers (Carey's balsamroot).
    Sunset in the Sagebrush Desert
  • Rolling arid hills and miles upon miles of aromatic sagebrush, crumbled basalt rocks and heat in this desert-like landscape in Central Washington near Vantage, WA.
    Sagebrush Country
  • One of the best things about the Pacific Northwest on the eastern side of the Cascade Mountains is the big, open sky and hundreds of miles of sagebrush in all directions.
    Sagebrush Country and the Big Sky
  • A carpet of large western sword ferns covers the understory of the Hoh Rain Forest on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State, where the air is always cool and dark, and the forest floor is nearly always wet. Historically and importantly, the original native peoples of this part of the world could rely and survive off of the roasted roots (rhizomes) of these ferns during lean times.
    Western Sword Ferns
  • The rocky coastline of Cape Flattery is located at the most extreme northwestern corner of the contiguous United States. Millennia of pounding waves, tides and erosion have sculpted the landscape into something from a fairytale.
    Sea Stacks of Cape Flattery
  • Last light as the sun dips in into the Gulf of Mexico on Cape San Blas.
    Sunset on the Gulf of Mexico
  • A nameless creek meanders through the Apalachicola National Forest.
    Tranquility
  • Black & White image of driftwood and tree stumps on a rural beach on Cape San Blas, Florida.
    Timeless Florida Coast
  • Salt marshes along the Florida Panhandle Coast. This brackish waterway to the Gulf of Mexico plays a key role in the life cycle of most of our marine and estuary sealife.
    Carrabelle Salt Marshes
  • Mashes Sands near the mouth of the Ochlockonee River in North Florida on the Gulf Coast.
    Clouds over Mashes Sands
  • Driftwood and tree stumps on a rural beach on Cape San Blas, Florida.
    Timeless Florida Coast
  • Sea oats blowing in the wind of a chilly Atlantic breeze on Bald Head Island on one of North Carolina's most beautiful beaches.
    Sea Oats & Sunrise
  • An amazing sunset in a salt marsh in Estero, Florida. This shallow water was hot from the sun, and the mud could devour your shoes, but the reflection was gorgeous!
    Estero Bay Salt Marsh
  • A spectacular sunrise on the Atlantic coast on Bald Head Island, North Carolina.
    Sunrise on Bald Head Island
  • Rocky Coulee is one of the many thousands of coulees in the area around Vantage, Washington that is essentially drainage route that hasn't really quite become an official "creek" but can occasionally carry running water with rain or snowmelt. This particular one in Whiskey Mountain area is absolutely beautiful in the springtime with its explosion of wildflowers including balsamroots, bitterroots, hedgehog cacti, lupine, wild onion, larkspur and many more! Also found at various times in the year: bighorn sheep, bears, elk, all kinds of game birds and birds of prey, and even some spawning salmon at the right time of year!
    Down into the Coulee
  • Coulees, hills, ridges and thousands of small creeks are very typical of the vast wild land between Ellensburg, Washington and the mighty Columbia River to the East. This view is facing east from the base of Whiskey Dick Mountain.
    Sagebrush Country
  • The Chisos Mountains of West Texas is the southernmost mountain range in the United States, and is surrounded by the Chihuahuan Desert on the US-Mexico border. Located wholly within the borders of Big Bend National Park, this incredible view of this ancient volcanic mountain range was photographed on a late spring afternoon as the sun began to set in the "golden hour".
    Chisos Mountains of West Texas
  • One of the many great rock formations in the Chisos Mountains in Western Texas' Big Bend National Park and is known as the "Mule Ear Peaks." These twin peaks  are formed from a part of a dike-like intrusion of relatively young rhyolite, and rise about 1040 feet (3,881 above sea level) above the desert floor.
    Mules Ears
  • Cerro Castellan - also known as Castolon Peak or Castellan Peak, is a conical volcanic mountain in West Texas that rises 1000 feet above the desert floor (3,293 feet above sea level) in Big Bend National Park. Cerro Castellan itself is part of an ancient series of summits once known as the Corazones Peaks that has since succumbed to millennia of erosion by wind, precipitation, searing heat and bitterly cold winters. <br />
Geologically, this ancient mountain range remnant is a high stack of volcanic rocks, including ash, lava, and tuffaceous rocks. It is capped by a dense lava flow underlain by various tuffs and basalts. A somewhat northwest fault cuts the eastern face of Cerro Castellan. Although little vegetation grows on the sheer cliffs and steep, pointed profile of its peak, the lower slopes of Cerro Castellan support a sparse growth of Chihuahuan Desert scrub, including most prominently such characteristic species as creosote bush and ocotillo.
    Cerro Castellan
  • Cerro Castellan - also known as Castolon Peak or Castellan Peak, is a conical volcanic mountain in West Texas that rises 1000 feet above the desert floor (3,293 feet above sea level) in Big Bend National Park. Cerro Castellan itself is part of an ancient series of summits once known as the Corazones Peaks that has since succumbed to millennia of erosion by wind, precipitation, searing heat and bitterly cold winters. <br />
Geologically, this ancient mountain range remnant is a high stack of volcanic rocks, including ash, lava, and tuffaceous rocks. It is capped by a dense lava flow underlain by various tuffs and basalts. A somewhat northwest fault cuts the eastern face of Cerro Castellan. Although little vegetation grows on the sheer cliffs and steep, pointed profile of its peak, the lower slopes of Cerro Castellan support a sparse growth of Chihuahuan Desert scrub, including most prominently such characteristic species as creosote bush and ocotillo.
    Cerro Castellan
  • Cerro Castellan - also known as Castolon Peak or Castellan Peak, is a conical volcanic mountain in West Texas that rises 1000 feet above the desert floor (3,293 feet above sea level) in Big Bend National Park. Cerro Castellan itself is part of an ancient series of summits once known as the Corazones Peaks that has since succumbed to millennia of erosion by wind, precipitation, searing heat and bitterly cold winters. <br />
Geologically, this ancient mountain range remnant is a high stack of volcanic rocks, including ash, lava, and tuffaceous rocks. It is capped by a dense lava flow underlain by various tuffs and basalts. A somewhat northwest fault cuts the eastern face of Cerro Castellan. Although little vegetation grows on the sheer cliffs and steep, pointed profile of its peak, the lower slopes of Cerro Castellan support a sparse growth of Chihuahuan Desert scrub, including most prominently such characteristic species as creosote bush and ocotillo.
    Cerro Castellan
  • Sol Duc Falls (pronounced “Soul Duck”) is one of many hundreds of waterfalls found in the Olympic Peninsula’s temperate rain forest in Washington State, and also one of the most beautiful. Somewhat isolated, and off the regular beaten path of most day-hikers (except for locals) and tourists this raging waterfall can be visited year round. The Sol Duc River gets its name from the Quileute (also spelled Quillayute) word roughly translated as “magic waters.”
    Sol Duc Falls
  • This wild seascape was shot as a storm was coming in from the Pacific Ocean at the Washington-Oregon border at the mouth of the Columbia River, photographed from the Oregon side.
    Storm Coming In!
  • A vividly memorable and bitterly cold sunset on Oregon's Cannon Beach.
    Pacific Sunset
  • This massive rock on Oregon's Cannon Beach is one of the world's biggest sea stacks. This one was photographed just at the perfect moment of low tide, sunset and as a storm was coming in at full speed!
    Haystack Rock
  • Dusk settles and sea mist rises among the cliffs and seastacks at Tolovana Beach on the Oregon Coast.
    Light and Shadows
  • One of the most beautiful coastlines in the world - Oregon's Clatsop County from Ecola State Park to Cannon Beach, at sunset.
    The Oregon Coast
  • Standing at 7,325 ft, Casa Grande (Spanish for "Big House") is the fourth highest peak in Texas' Chisos Mountains and is found in the heart of Big Bend National Park.
    Casa Grande in the High Chisos Mountains
  • Saguaro cacti stand tall as sunset fades in the Puerto Blanco Mountains in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument along the US-Mexico border in Arizona. Truly one of my favorite places in the Sonoran Desert.
    Sunset in the Puerto Blanco Mountains
  • Golden hour near the Ajo Mountains in the Sonoran Desert! Big skies, lowlands filled with saguaro and organ pipe cacti, and loads of wildlife and incredible wildflowers - springtime in Arizona is about as beautiful as nature gets!
    Ajo Mountains
  • Once an ancient Permian ocean reef, these hills and cliffs that are part of the Guadalupe Mountains in Northwestern Texas near Salt Flat are an example of one the world's very best and oldest fossilized coral reefs. Now part of the Chihuahuan Desert the area is teeming with sea life fossils.
    McKittrick Canyon in the Guadalupe M..ains
  • A lone, wind-beaten creosote bush stands solidly at the beginning of a sandstorm in White Sands National Monument in Southern New Mexico.
    Creosote Bush
  • One of the hardiest of all desert wildflowers... this sand verbena persists when all other plants fail.
    Sand Verbena in White Sands, New Mexico
  • View of the desert dunes, valleys and sky at New Mexico's White Sands National Monument.
    White Sands Dunes and Sky, New Mexico
  • White Sands National Monument: New Mexico.
    Ripples and Clouds
  • Layers of a valley, dunes, a sandstorm, mountains and clouds in White Sands National Monument in New Mexico.
    White Sands Desert, New Mexico
  • White Sands National Monument and the snowy peak of Sierra Blanca in the distance.
    Hot Deserts and Snowy Peaks
  • Close-up detail of the sand verbena. This southwestern native wildflower is found in the wild only in Arizona, New Mexico and parts of Texas.
    Sand Verbena
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