Breaking My Own Rules

Follow the Lights, Snaefellsnes Peninsula, Iceland
Sony α1
Sony 14mm f/1.8 GM
ISO 3200
f/1.8
6 seconds

My goal is to create images that celebrate Nature, images that allow viewers to imagine a world untouched by humankind. So it makes sense that I avoid including anything manmade in my images. But I also rail against (most) camera clubs for their rule-bound creative constipation, and those strong feelings collided earlier this year on a chilly January night Iceland. I resolved the conflict by reminding myself that any time I’m following rules (even my own rules), I’m not being creative.

Earlier in my photographic life I was somewhat less discriminating with my subject choices. In fact, I’d actively seek any outdoor subject that I found beautiful, regardless of its origins. Though many of my bridge and skyline images from those days were on (or atop) my personal bestseller list ($$$), as my career evolved, I found myself resenting humankind’s intrusion on the natural world and became less inclined to validate that intrusion with a photograph. These subject choices eventually, and pretty organically (not consciously), evolved into my present style: photograph the world untouched by humans, which made the mere presence of a building, fence, path, or human being reason enough to put my camera down.

I don’t think it’s wrong to photograph manmade objects—in fact I enjoy others’ photos of a wide variety of subjects outside my wheelhouse—it’s just that I’m not personally drawn to photograph them. But since I am still a photographer at heart, it’s difficult to pass beauty of any sort. In recent years, I’ve scratched the itch to preserve “unnatural” beauty with my iPhone. Though I rarely do anything with these images spontaneous snaps, somehow knowing I’ve saved the scene makes me feel better.

Since becoming so hardcore about avoiding manmade objects, I have encountered a handful of scenes that tested my resolve. For example, there was that frigid night beneath the Milky Way atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii, when a giant telescope made too perfect a foreground to ignore. And the night, also beneath the Milky Way, at Cape Royal on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, when a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket photobombed my scene—that time I almost resisted photographing it, and am so glad I didn’t.

Milky Way and SpaceX Falcon 9, Wotan’s Throne, Grand Canyon

Looking Up, Milky Way and Mauna Kea Gemini Observatory, Hawaii

But whether it’s a streaking rocket, dilapidated fence, or photogenic bridge, some things are too beautiful not to preserve just because of some self-imposed rule. Most recently, on this January night in Iceland the northern lights outperformed our most unrealistic expectations, but for a little while the best display included a road and our hotel. (I already described that night in my recent Shock and Awe blog post, so I won’t bore you again with the story.)

Night Lights, Snaefellsnes Peninsula, Iceland

For most this night’s kaleidoscope display, the aurora danced beautifully above snowy peaks and pristine snowfields—dark sky and no human intrusion involved. But as usually happens in the most intense aurora shows, the lights weren’t limited to the northern sky, and this evening they seemed to be especially drawn westward, where the “highway” (in the sense that it’s the main route encircling Snaefellsnes—we didn’t see a single car while we were out there) and the lights of our small hotel intruded on any scene I could imagine.

Nevertheless, I regularly checked-in on the rest of the sky and at one point just couldn’t ignore what was happening in the west. Grabbing my tripod/camera, I hustled to the road to look for any composition that might work. It was immediately obvious that the road would be unavoidable, but I saw that by moving farther west, I could at least eliminate the hotel and a few other minor distractions.

Given that the road was a non-negotiable condition of photographing in this direction, I just decided to lean into it and make the gently curving blacktop into an actual subject that guided the eye skyward. Orienting my camera vertically maximized the aurora and highway, and minimized potential distractions on the periphery. I only took a couple of frames in this direction, and it wasn’t until I saw the results on my camera that I realized how much I like this “unnatural,” rule-breaking image.

Don Smith and I just added a 2026 Iceland Northern Lights workshop

Golden Morning, Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco, Marin Headlands

Sunrise, Lake Natoma, Folsom

Rainbow Bridge, Folsom, California

Follow the Lights, Snaefellsnes Peninsula, Iceland

Moonrise, Tower Bridge, Sacramento

Milky Way and SpaceX Falcon 9, Wotan’s Throne, Grand Canyon

Nightfall, Coit Tower, San Francisco

Poppy Hillside, Highway 49, California Gold Country

Looking Up, Milky Way and Mauna Kea Gemini Observatory, Hawaii

After Dark, San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge, Marin Headlands