When I was growing up in the Black Hills of South Dakota, I was fortunate to have access to a variety of public lands that fed my desire to explore. Some of my fondest memories involve the night sky programs out at Badlands National Park. Over the years, I developed my love for nature photography. No matter where I travel, I often seek out night sky photography opportunities. 

Like many aspects of modern human living that threaten our natural world, the growth of cities and communities has threatened another under-appreciated resource - the darkness of our night sky. There are well-documented impacts to wildlife and ecosystems, human health, and other areas from light pollution. That is why in 2025, I signed up as an Advocate for Dark Sky International. Despite the abundance of dark skies in Alaska, there are no Dark Sky designations for communities, parks, or anything. Early in 2026, I joined a small group of other passionate Alaskans and founded Alaska Dark Skies, which we hope will become a Dark Sky International chapter and start making small changes to preserve this valuable resource. 

So what is a Dark Sky? Dark Sky International defines it as "Denoting or located in a place where the darkness of the night sky is relatively free of interference from artificial light." There are means of measuring and standards to determine the quality of light. A common method is to measure the darkness using a Sky Quality Meter (SQM) and interpret the data through the Bortle Scale. Read more about this process on the Dark Sky International website. 

While Alaska is known as a destination for aurora borealis viewing, it is not commonly considered a place to appreciate simply a dark sky. But with as much undeveloped land as we have in this state, there are great opportunities. My efforts in this area will be to measure the quality of darkness with a SQM at various locations - both on and off the road system - and accompany those readings with photography. I will be bringing art and science together to help promote a greater understanding of the wonders of Alaska's dark skies. 

Check out my Dark Sky gallery and search for any blogs with the Dark Sky filter to see my work in this area.