I love photos that show a slightly different perspective on the parks than we might traditionally see. I think this one from Glacier National Park is one those shots. Taken with a slow shutter with a bright moon, the effect is quite strange. There is so much light in the shot - from the moon, reflected in the clouds, and bouncing off the lake - my mind almost wants to believe this shot was taken in the daytime and then color adjusted in PhotoShop. But it's not.

To observe the National Parks Foundation Leadership Summit happening down in Austin, Texas this week, I thought it appropriate to select a "photo of the week" from Big Bend National Park.

Bryce Canyon is in Marion Littlefield's backyard, which provides him plenty of opportunity to capture the park's many moods. In this photo, he's caught the early morning light from a sunrise late in September.

This photo is of Miners Castle, which is among the more scenic places at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, in Northern Michigan along the shores of Lake Superior. This photo is taken by a friend of mine, Craig Rademacher. Craig's the editor of the ParkCast, a website and podcast about multimedia offerings available from the National Parks. Craig had been on a 4 month hiatus with the site and podcast, but I'm happy to see he is back.

I've selected this photo for the week, because as you may have heard by now, Ken Burns new multi-part documentary called "The War" is being broadcast on PBS. Not only does this photo show off the new World War II Memorial in Washington D.C., it also happens to look really cool at night with a long exposure! Ed Pien has shared his motivation for taking these type of great shots:

There are a few reasons I've chosen this photo of a Great Blue Heron in Everglades as the photo of the week. First, this photo just feels like it was taken in the early hours of the day; the water is perfectly calm, the colors are still very muted and cool, and then in the upper right hand corner of the shot, the colors are bright and red with the sunrise. The second reason is because this shot feels very much like a national park shot, especially the wooden walkway jutted out into the water, a feature so frequently found on a nature loop.

I've never actually stepped foot in Saguaro, but I've been to Tucson which splits the National Park down the middle. I've selected this photo because it captures my memory of the natural area pretty well; wide open landscape, big skies, those strange Saguaro cacti, and even the morning light transport me to that place (I assume this is morning light, as I think those are the Santa Catalina Mountains in the distance). I also like the simple composition of this shot, one big Saguaro in portrait, obeying the photographic rule of thirds.

Stephen Wopschall climbs on the 5.8 route "Where Two Deserts Meet" on Bovine Dome in Joshua Tree National Park (near the White Tank Campground).

This image is a panoramic montage of two photographs taken by a Canon S500 Digital Elph suspended below a kite. For more information on this novel technique for aerial photography visit:

http://arch.ced.berkeley.edu/kap/kaptoc.html

A shot of Mount Rainier taken from the Cowlitz Divide trail, captured Sept. 20, 2004.

Brooks Falls in Katmai National Park may be the very best place in the United States to get shots of Brown Bear catching salmon migrating upstream. This shot stands out because it appears to be taken at the very moment the fish is captured in the bear's mouth. Amazing.