Compare photographs by Chris McNulty and help curate the Cascadia Oceanic collection.
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Coastal photography from the Pacific Northwest and beyond
Quiet, expansive views of land and sky
Urban landscapes and architectural detail
Magnets and small format prints
The roof is broken, boards are missing, and I'm not sure what's keeping parts of this old service station in Thrall, Washington, standing. I photographed it a few minutes after sunrise, on a freezing October morning near Yakima Canyon, shooting toward the east with the sun coming through the big tree behind the building. Black and white seemed right for this one, especially with the contrast between the failing wooden addition and the station beside it.
On that October sunrise morning, I circled around to photograph the Thrall station from the road. The old canopy and its two columns looked better straight on, especially in black and white. There's a No Trespassing sign beside the entrance, which seems a little optimistic given the condition of the building. Still, there are plenty of unknown histories and untold journeys from this place.
On an early October morning at the head of Yakima Canyon, I came across this abandoned service station in Thrall along the old freight line. The old canopy is still standing, along with the peeling stucco, boarded windows and a green door that has seen better days. I love finding places like this and wondering when someone last stopped for gas.
On our Alaska voyage, Queen Elizabeth could not travel all the way into Disenchantment Bay, (icebergs & oceanliners, anyone?) so we transferred to two smaller excursion boats to get closer to the glaciers. One of the boats can be seen here, , giving a sense of the scale of Turner Glacier behind it. Turner is roughly half the height of Hubbard Glacier just to the east, which makes the comparison even more striking.
During our October trip through Yakima Canyon in central Washington, we hurried to capture the light, with heavy clouds in the forecast. At the time, I didn’t know I already had great river light in my aerial shots, so I stood on the riverbank when I glimpsed the silver sunlight. I like to include human elements in my work – this time, four silhouettes, fishing against the afternoon sky and basalt canyon walls.
Carcross Desert is an ancient dry lake in the Yukon, and Michelle and I shot this (again) from a painter’s pole atop a dune on a clear September afternoon. I’ve long been fascinated with infrared film, so I used an infrared filter to bring out the sky’s depth and the radiance of the pines. Another image from my Alaska/Yukon honeymoon series.
One cool fall Friday after the U-District art walk Michelle and watched the Seattle skyline at the Mountaineering Club on the Graduate Hotel rooftop. After a few experiments, I decided to shoot a crisp raw image and remove the focus in the studio. Yosemite 2014 was accidental and I wanted to experiment with a city scene both recognizable and unknowable.
Driving back from Yosemite National Park, I was struck by the split between the early evening horizon and the commercial landscape below. My camera focused on the windshield, the traffic light turned, and I forgot about it. Until I rediscovered this “mistake”, a light abstraction that tells the early winter story without a Carls’ Jr. sign.
In 2020, I drove cross-country four times. Late in one trip, I spent an afternoon exploring Glacier National Park. Going to the Sun Road crests Logan Pass on the Continental Divide at 6,646 feet, and a quick mile hike leads you past mountain goats and longhorn sheep to a lake you can’t see from the road – Hidden Lake. In a time of isolated 1,000 mile days, I was content to sit and stay a while.
Driving through the Yukon the day after our wedding, Michelle and I stopped along the shore of Tutshi Lake. The view wasn't obvious from the roadside, hidden behind a band of scrub brush, but we suspected there was something special beyond it. Without a drone, we improvised by mounting the camera on a fifteen-foot painter's pole and raising it above the vegetation. Michelle held and rotated the pole while I framed the composition remotely, making this photograph a true collaboration. The effort revealed a sweeping view of lake, forest, and mountain, shaped by immense geological forces over thousands of years.
Mirror Lake in Misty Fjords National Monument earns its name on calm days, when the water becomes so smooth that it can be difficult for floatplane pilots to judge their altitude during landing. This dock serves one of only a handful of private cabins that predated the creation of the monument in 1978. Michelle and I flew here from Ketchikan during our honeymoon, arriving in one of Alaska's most remote and peaceful landscapes.
Late summer weather in Alaska is capricious, so I was fortunate to capture this helicopter (look closely) hovering above Mendenhall Glacier near Juneau. The glacier's luminous blue ice and surrounding peaks made for a spectacular scene, but what I remember most – this was also the place and time of my wedding day.
It’s difficult to hard to render the scale of Hubbard Glacier, even in a wide photograph – it’s nearly as tall as a 40-story building. The fractured wall of blue ice dominates the foreground, yet beyond it rise snowfields, mountains, and glaciers stretching toward the horizon. And it thunders as it continues, inexorably, to Disenchantment Bay.
Flying above Misty Fjords National Monument near Ketchikan, breaks in the late-summer cloud bank revealed dark lakes and forested ridges thousands of feet below. The shifting weather opened and closed the landscape by the minute, offering a fleeting glimpse into one of North America's most dramatic coastal wildernesses before the mist reclaimed it. It’s also vast and silent – about the size of Connecticut – with no buildings or development.
Same day as Snow Island at Lake Wenatchee. Snow and low light make it hard to tell this is not a black and white image. I refused to adjust the bridge tint, better to reflect quiet snow and the late winter on a snowshoe hike with my daughter in the Cascades.
Also from my McDowell Mountain series, shot after sunrise in late summer. Unlike the sky in Desert 2025, the clouds to the west burned off quickly. This cactus, of hundreds and hundreds, against the brilliant blue captured the vivid isolation of the Arizona desert for me.
This was my first aerial photo, other than the roof of my house. We launched from about a mile down the Snoqualmie River - my first time navigating over distances. I thought I was getting close, and swiveled the camera – and saw Snoqualmie Falls with Mt. Si in the distance and a perfect early spring day.
I had to get up early to make it to McDowell Mountain Park to capture the desert sunrise (and before the early September temperature topped 100F.) The trail led me toward Four Peaks, the early sun bringing light to the saguaros and the desert floor.
Nearly two feet of snow fell on the Cascades this March day – we had to drive several hundred miles through White Pass to get back to Index, but that’s another story. Snowshoeing at the lake gave us this vignette of Emerald Island at the source of the Wenatchee River.
Aerial photography allows you to “rehearse” a route once and then use autopilot to repeat the circle. Of all the angles, I love seeing the 1905 Coupeville Town Wharf in front of the town it symbolizes. And for my friends back in New England, this is Whidbey Island, Washington, not Maine.
I used aerial cameras for this, flying in from several miles away over Deception Pass at the North tip of Whidbey Island, Washington. I was thrilled to turn the camera down and capture the 1935 bridge that floats almost two hundred feet above a silvery spring afternoon.
Another image from the abandoned 76 gas station in Woodinville, Washington. Just as 20th Century America saw the world through television screens, today we increasingly view our world through cell phones.
Just down the hill from my home, across Highway 522 in Woodinville. The former 76 gas station has been abandoned for many years despite being poised at the entrance to downtown. The midcentury angles contrast sharply with the graffiti.
At the Best of the Northwest 2025, a friend asked if I’d considered wokring with Birches 2015 in black and white. It was a great idea – the trees are radiant against that high New Mexico winter desert sky.
Shot on an extremely dark late October morning near the mouth of the Samish River, near Edison, Washington, I was drawn to the long-abandoned wreck of a wooden boat, its owners and journeys lost to time.
Aquebogue, New York, close to where I grew up, home to the Modern Snack Bar since 1950. I shot its iconic mid-century sign standing in the middle of Main Road, dressed in black—possibly not the best attire given the speeding October traffic.
I’ve taken a few pictures along Chuckanut Drive overlooking Samish Bay and the San Juan Islands. This improvised trilithon, built by an unknown visitor in August, framed the idea of Chuckanut—the trees, the rock face, the Salish Sea.
Lime Kiln Lighthouse is poised on the western shore of San Juan Island on the Salish Sea, looking toward Victoria, BC and the Olympic Mountains across the water. I took many photos and selected this one for its symmetry (which required my balancing on a rock edge.)
An editing “accident” while proofing Alone 2023—the same original image—led me to appreciate the great tonal contrasts of this abandoned house in Clyde, Washington.
Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, northeast of Wichita, Kansas, is the largest remaining stand of what the great prairies of the Midwest were before farms, cities, and towns. The Lower Fox Creek School opened in 1884, closed in 1930, and—restored—was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.
We spent a day touring the south coast of Iceland. Vik is famous for its church, its black sand beaches and its puffins. But this woman reading alone on the basalt columns at the beach was a striking contrast that needed no color adjustments at all.
A hot day in June. I had just driven a rescue dog out to the Tri-Cities and headed out to visit Palouse Falls. On my way back, this view to the west made me turn back to see it again.
Taos Pueblo—a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a U.S. National Landmark—was built between 1000–1450 AD. Although 160 people still live in the complex, it was a surprisingly long wait to find a moment without tourists in Orlando Magic jerseys wandering into the shot.
I have no idea why this happened - a solo chimney, house long gone, still decorated for the holidays, on the road up to Yosemite National Park in December.
We have a family tradition to stay for a long weekend in Coupeville, Washington on Penn Cove each October. Coupeville Wharf is an icon, and the sky was especially moody on this blustery early morning.
The largest beach on Long Island Sound in Southold, New York on the North Fork. I lifeguarded at many beaches, including this one, when I was growing up.
Snowshoeing in the foothills outside Santa Fe, New Mexico, on a windy, cold winter day. I didn’t have the right coat, but I had my camera. Office visitors have often asked for a copy as a screensaver.
Summer’s end. This was shot through my windshield during a fierce Atlantic downpour on the ferry dock at Orient Point, New York heading back to Massachusetts on Labor Day.
Leaving an art walk in the Belltown neighborhood of Seattle, I was struck by the momentary emptiness of Pike Place, angular neon jutting in different lines and angles.
Lake Twentytwo in ’22, actually—on the northern shoulder of Mount Pilchuck in the Cascade Range. Still plenty of snowpack on the way up to the outflow. The brilliant contrast of the clouds reminds me of the booming snowmelt and icefalls, cracking and echoing from the cliff face.
During an architecture tour of desert homes in the Twin Palms neighborhood of Palm Springs, one retro Atomic Age home had a fantastic collection of midcentury cars, including this 1958 Oldsmobile Super 88 in “Turquoise Mist”.
In August 2020, I was driving cross country solo. Midafternoon, I pulled off to find gas - and found this station instead. It reminded me of Edward Hopper’s famous “Gas” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Also, my father worked for Texaco for almost twenty years.
In August 2022, we spent several days staying in Sequim, Washington on the Olympic Peninsula while visiting Olympic National Park. Sequim is one of the sunniest spots on the Pacific Northwest - outside the “rain shadow” of the mountains and known for it’s lavender fields and ocean views. This station sits just east of downtown. And since my father worked for Texaco for almost twenty years, it was an obvious subject.
I was fortunate to discover Ebey’s Landing on Whidbey Island on my first trip there, and it remains a beautiful place to observe the Salish Sea, from the beach or the bluffs. This was a magnificent autumn day – windy and warmer than it looks.