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Susan Jensen Photography A Gallery of photography

The harsh prairie elements have clearly taken a heavy toll on this old, weathered outbuilding. Did it house chickens? Ho...
10/24/2026

The harsh prairie elements have clearly taken a heavy toll on this old, weathered outbuilding. Did it house chickens? Hogs? What do you think?

This is a composite. The orientation of the Milky Way is correct. The landscape image is from an earlier shoot. Even tho...
10/18/2026

This is a composite. The orientation of the Milky Way is correct. The landscape image is from an earlier shoot. Even though the Milky Way is at the tail end of its season, we've had beautiful clear skies on and off over the last two weeks. Within this window of time, I’ve shot the MW on several occasions. With no location in mind to shoot a blue hour landscape, I headed out on Tuesday to an unobstructed area and shot a 2x2 sky pano. The light pollution along the horizon was ghastly (weird for Bortle 2), but the red and green airglow was a happy surprise!
Here’s the story behind the foreground: I took this photo at Coffeepot Lake, Washington State, near the campgrounds. This shed, along with the rest of the abandoned homestead, has since been demolished by the BLM to reclaim the land. The Project Manager asked me to photographically document the area before the heavy equipment arrived to clear the site. I was even there to see the demo crew tear it down and haul it away. Today, you’d never know that a small ranch ever existed on the property. I paired my newly stacked and stitched sky with one of the archival images I took at the lake. This is truly a special place to me.

What a difference a day makes (in reference to my previous post of my Milky way timelapse from the 2nd) and I took advan...
10/09/2026

What a difference a day makes (in reference to my previous post of my Milky way timelapse from the 2nd) and I took advantage of perfect nightscaping weather.
I discovered this abandoned homestead days before while I taking a different route home. Found it on Google maps and made my plan. Two miles down a small access road between fields and a quarter mile trek to this site. I love places like this. Complete solitude, guaranteed no one else is around. Except for the birds settling down for the night inside the building. I heard a lot of fluttering and an owl hurtled past my head when I arrived - minor jump-scare!
This is a 4 panel vertical panorama taken at 27mm.

10/04/2026

I set out last night to shoot the Milky Way, even though I knew the cloud conditions were iffy.

It’s always tough to tell exactly how much the clouds will block the night sky, especially when the forecasting apps throw a confusing mix of low, medium, and high cloud percentages at you hour-by-hour. Last night’s verdict? "Potentially OK for some stargazing, but not fantastic."

Still, I was anxious to get out and shoot. As darkness fell, I decided to pull over on a gravel road close to home—a perfect safety net just in case the whole expedition turned out to be a bust. Even after my night vision fully adjusted, the sky looked like a fuzzy gray blanket with only a few stars peeking through.

I was surprised by what I captured once I loaded the images onto my computer. This quick 12-second timelapse is the result of 305 images shot continuously from 8:20 PM to 10:00 PM.

* This shows actual cloud movement flowing in the opposite direction of the setting Milky Way.

I took this from Kachess Lake Road just off of the freeway. It was the perfect spot, as a huge area was cleared for heav...
09/25/2026

I took this from Kachess Lake Road just off of the freeway. It was the perfect spot, as a huge area was cleared for heavy equipment to park at the end of their workday. I'm in the foothills of the Cascade mountain range. I love driving through this area when I head to the west side of the state. The breathtaking view of the mountains ascending and descending the summit fills me with awe every time.

I've wanted to capture a Milky Way scene that included forest, mountains, river, ocean - anything outside of my native arid landscape. So this shoot, while not the best composition-wise, was very satisfying.

Quality: debatable. Mood: immaculate. Stayed up way past my bedtime to chase the Milky Way through the fog, and honestly...
09/14/2026

Quality: debatable. Mood: immaculate. Stayed up way past my bedtime to chase the Milky Way through the fog, and honestly, no regrets. 🌌

Anyone else stay up way too late for a shot?

9.14.26 2:30 AM

09/10/2026

The result of my efforts at Coffeepot Lake under the Milky Way. I'm standing on a rocky ridge above the lake waiting for true dark and could hear this flock of migrating geese a mile off. As they got closer, and louder, I used my recorder app to catch this amazing moment in the wild.

Farmland, rugged terrain and pine trees along Hawk Creek Road under the Milky Way💃9.5.26
09/08/2026

Farmland, rugged terrain and pine trees along Hawk Creek Road under the Milky Way💃
9.5.26

Last weekend we took a ferry ride to Kingston and explored the beauty of the upper Kitsap Peninsula. I love this area, i...
09/04/2026

Last weekend we took a ferry ride to Kingston and explored the beauty of the upper Kitsap Peninsula. I love this area, it feels so rural in the middle of forests, small farms, summer homes, all surrounded by waterways. Our route took us north to Hansville, down Hood Canal Drive, then to Suquamish, Indianola and back to Kingston. It was a special day. The perfect place to reset and enjoy nature's beauty. ⛴️🌲🎂

07/19/2026

It's easy to think the stars are moving, but almost all of the motion we see in the night sky comes from Earth rotating beneath them. Satellites are the obvious exception, moving across the sky under their own motion—a reminder of just how much is happening overhead on any given night. When hundreds of images taken over three hours are combined into a timelapse, the stars appear to race across the sky—but it's really our planet doing the spinning.

Eastern Washington was blanketed in thick wildfire smoke from several nearby fires all day, leaving me wondering whether it would even be worth photographing the Milky Way. As darkness fell, the sky appeared to clear somewhat, but the smoke lingered and can be seen drifting across the stars throughout this 20-second timelapse.

578 sky images with a single foreground image taken at blue hour

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