Coast Culture | Chasing the Night: Jeremy Likness Finds His Place in the Universe

Most photographers who come to the Oregon Coast are chasing the light. They wait for the sun to sink toward the Pacific, hoping for an explosion of color across the water. Jeremy Likness tends to arrive after they have packed up and gone home.

For Likness, darkness reveals another version of the coast. The landmarks remain—the Yaquina Bay Bridge, both lighthouses, Gull Rock, Agate Beach—but overhead, the Milky Way rises, meteors streak across the sky and, on fortunate nights, the aurora glows above the ocean.

“Any juxtaposition of the night sky over the familiar environment that we're in is what I go after,” he said.

It is an unlikely calling for someone who never expected to become an artist.

Likness spent most of his professional life as a software developer. As a child, he dreamed of becoming an astronaut until his parents brought home a computer when he was about seven. Programming offered another way to imagine something and make it real. He wrote choose-your-own-adventure games and eventually built a career in software development, consulting, teaching and mentoring.

Photography came later, initially as another technical challenge. Then, in 2020, Likness was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. As the progressive condition increasingly complicated his software career, photography gave his curiosity and experimental instincts a new direction.

After moving to Newport, he began posting photographs online. People asked to buy prints. An invitation to speak at the Oregon Coast Learning Institute led to a connection with the Oregon Coast Council for the Arts and eventually his first exhibition at the Newport Visual Arts Center. A hobby had become an artistic practice.

“For me, the photo was about the experience, not the photons,” he said, highlighting the magic that happens in his soul over the magic that happens when light reaches his camera’s sensor.

Astrophotography captures light too faint for human eyes to see, sometimes over hours of exposure. But Likness is less interested in a clinical record than in recreating the awe of standing beneath the stars. His photographs embrace vivid colors and saturation to communicate that feeling.

“I hope they feel a kind of wonder at the picture, and curiosity, and a desire to learn the story behind it,” he said.

Where Earth Meets Sky

Likness’s photographs are not simply pictures of space. They are pictures of familiar places beneath it. One popular image shows the Milky Way over Gull Rock, with coastal communities visible below. Residents recognized their surroundings and requested prints. He began deliberately pairing celestial events with local landmarks: an aurora over the Yaquina Bay Bridge, comets above a lighthouse, the Milky Way rising over Yaquina Bay.

“All of Oregon is just amazingly beautiful,” he said. “If I can capture that aspect of it atnight when it's transformed, then I'm happy. I'm very happy.”

The coast rarely cooperates on demand. Its marine layer can swallow a promising sky in minutes. At Agate Beach, Likness once watched a wall of mist roll in, soaking his equipment and obscuring everything. Then it retreated just as quickly, revealing an aurora visible to the naked eye.

During a Newport photography workshop, fog threatened to end the evening. Likness took his students toward Cape Foulweather, hoping to climb above it. They emerged from the mist into a sky full of stars. He helped them photograph the Milky Way. Then someone noticed that the ocean below was glowing with bioluminescence.

“That is there, it's always been there,” Likness said of the Milky Way. “We just didn't know it because we can't see it the right way, and the camera helps us see it.”

Experiment First

His software background remains central to his methods. Astrophotography involves long exposures, telescope tracking, digital processing and image stacking: aligning multiple short exposures to gather more light while limiting the streaking caused by Earth’s rotation.

More important than the technology, though, is his willingness to challenge assumptions.

“I don't care what people say could or should be done,” he said. “I'm gonna go see what my camera can do.”

When told Newport’s light pollution made photographing the Milky Way over the Yaquina Bay Bridge impossible, he tried anyway. The results became favorites. He has captured the Andromeda Galaxy through a gap in storm clouds at Otter Crest and improvised a camera support from beer coasters when he lacked a tripod.

Failure is part of the process. Likness estimates only one in five astrophotography outings yields something he shares. Clouds interfere; experiments fail; essential adapters get left behind. Once, a USB connection sparked, flamed and smoked, destroying a camera, filter wheel and hub. Backup equipment proved unusable without an adapter, and Jupiter sank below the horizon before he could capture a worthwhile frame. He returned home empty-handed.

Other nights repay the effort spectacularly.

Seventeen Hours of Light A photograph of the Rosette Nebula, featured in his first Newport Visual Arts Center exhibition, represents approximately 17 hours of exposure. Its false colors are assigned to captured data that cannot be directly represented as visible light—not colors invented without reference to the image.

A comet nicknamed the “Devil Comet” offered a different challenge: roughly 45 minutes between appearing at dusk and dropping below the horizon. Likness had to prepare before it was visible, then account for the motion of the landscape, stars and comet when processing the image. The result, “Devil’s Gemstone,” earned magazine recognition.

Luck plays a role, too. Likness photographed a sunspot shortly before it produced a major geomagnetic storm, then witnessed the resulting aurora near Lincoln City. On a visit to his daughter in Colorado, he went out to photograph the night sky, only to be chased back by clouds. On his way inside, he spotted lights overhead and captured a payload disintegrating during reentry.

“I'm also one of the luckiest photographers in the world,” he joked.

Being outside at unusual hours creates less welcome encounters. He has heard strange noises from the Pacific, seen reflected eyes in the woods near South Beach—probably an elk—and encountered a black bear on an Oregon trail. Astrophotography is not always a quiet night behind a telescope.

A Different Measure of Success Parkinson’s has changed what Likness can do and how he measures a good day. Its effects can involve movement, speech, cognition and typing; sometimes involuntary movements make communication difficult. Other days his symptoms are less apparent.

He chose to speak openly from the beginning. On the day of his diagnosis, he created a website and wrote about it. Since then, he has helped develop resources for people with young-onset Parkinson’s and documented difficult days as well as good ones.

He wants others to understand that Parkinson’s is more than the tremor most people recognize. Cognitive changes, apathy, and involuntary movements can be less visible but deeply disruptive. Some people have confided that they fear disclosing their diagnosis could jeopardize their careers. Likness knows his circumstances give him room to speak when others cannot.

“I speak out as much as I can because I can,” he said.

The diagnosis has also shifted his priorities. An evening watching the Perseid meteor shower can now count as a success even if he brings home no usable photographs. The experience matters more than the output.

“I'm standing in an hourglass,” he said. “I have to pursue the things I want to now.”

Exactly Where He Needs To Be Likness arrived in Newport from Washington without expecting to exhibit art. Since then, he has taught workshops, partnered with a retired astronomer on star parties, volunteered, explored landscape photography, and returned to writing poetry after decades away. He and his wife have become more socially active, attending performances and participating in the local arts community. Three years after moving, the coast still surprises him.

“The ocean is never the same every day,” he said. “The marine layer's never the same.”

Asked what he most wanted people to remember about his story, he did not choose his software career, his photographs or his advocacy.

“I'm exactly where I need to be at this phase in my life,” he said, “and it's because of this community.”

That may explain what makes his work distinctive. He photographs the universe without losing sight of home. The Milky Way rises over Yaquina Bay; Orion reaches toward the Pacific; a lighthouse beam crosses beneath a meteor shower. The cosmos is not somewhere else. It is here, waiting beyond the marine layer.

Likness describes the process another way: light travels unimaginable distances before reaching his camera and becoming an image printed on metal.

“I steal the photons, and put them on metal,” he said. “Think about that for a second.”

For a boy who once wanted to become an astronaut, perhaps he never strayed so far from that dream.

You can see more of Likness’ work and even buy prints on his website: dswgalleries.com. Likness even has a 2027 calendar of his astrophotography for sale, a great gift for those on your holiday list.