By Ana Karen Perez-Guzman<\/strong> Justin Brownlee\u2019s photo of a starry night over Mount Rainier won The U.S. National Weather Service, Seattle\u2019s July photo contest.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n And he\u2019s only been taking photos for a year, with no professional training.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The 32-year-old Brownlee moved to the Kent-Covington area three years ago from South Carolina and began exploring the outdoors as much as possible.\u00a0After seeing all of the amazing sights Washington had to offer, he started taking pictures of his adventures to share.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n From waterfalls to hiking trails, he captured as much of the great outdoors as possible, accumulating more than 50,000 pictures in one year with the camera.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u201cI wanted people to see what I have been able to experience,\u201d Brownlee said.\u00a0When Brownlee entered his photo as part of the July contest, he was more than excited to be chosen as its winner.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n According to The U.S. National Weather Service, Seattle\u2019s Facebook page, Brownlee was able to capture considerable starlight and an atmospheric phenomena known as air glow. The faint green bands in the winning photo show the air glow, which is only visible under very dark, clear skies.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Brownlee is a self-taught photographer. He simply Googled any questions he had or watched YouTube videos.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Taking photos is Brownlee\u2019s escape from his hectic job as a bartender at Duke\u2019s Chowder House in Kent.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Brownlee is constantly getting compliments for his work.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u201cI just get a great feeling when someone can see the things I have seen, and they enjoy the photos,\u201d Brownlee said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u201cI like to make people happy and pay it forward, and I can do that by simply sharing my photos,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The photos he decides to share are meticulously chosen.\u00a0Brownlee is continuing to learn and explore the photography world and isn\u2019t going to stop anytime soon.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n His dream job would be to travel around the world and take photos.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Justin Brownlee\u2019s photo of a starry night over Mount Rainier won The U.S. National Weather Service, Seattle\u2019s July photo contest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":9697,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-9696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9696"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9696\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9696"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=9696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
aperez-guzman@maplevalleyreporter.com<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n