Happy Anniversaries to Me

I just realized that January 2026 marks a couple of milestones for me. Twenty years ago this month, I left my “real” job at Intel (good company, lousy manager) to pursue my dream of becoming a landscape photographer. And 15 years ago this month, I started writing this blog.

Leaving Intel was a leap of faith that, I now know, was far riskier than I believed at the time. That it worked out I attribute more to fortuitous timing than some kind of genius master plan. By the time I left Intel, I’d accumulated a pretty good portfolio of images that I’d printed and sold in weekend art shows. I also had prints in a few local galleries, but print sales alone didn’t generate anywhere near enough money to justify leaving a good job (or for that matter, even leaving a bad job).

My first post-Intel step was to ramp up my art show schedule and upgrade my art show booth lighting and display panels; despite decent art show success ($1000-$4000/weekend, doing the math told me that the time, effort, and relentless (intrastate) travel necessary to earn a fulltime income on the art show circuit would soon suck the joy from photography, and leave precious little time for actual photography. So I concentrated on a handful of quality shows within a 100 mile radius of my Sacramento home, and started looking for other ways to support myself with landscape photography.

I knew that many landscape photographers made a good living selling stock images, but by 2006 it was clear to me that digital photography was taking a toll on stock photography income, and there no end to the decline in sight. A couple of years earlier, just a few months after purchasing my first DSLR (a Canon 10D), I’d taken a weekend photography workshop to explore Point Reyes (thanks, Brenda Tharp!) and it occurred to me that I was qualified for something like that in Yosemite: I know photography well enough to teach it, I have a lifetime of Yosemite knowledge, my 20 years in the tech world had focused almost entirely on technical communications (training, writing, tech support), and (not insignificant) I like people. That this insight happened a few years before the photo workshop wave flooded the photography world was a fortunate fluke.

Pivoting to the photo workshop plan, I did a little teaching and guiding as 2006 progressed, but most of that first year was spent setting my workshop business up: building a website, scheduling workshops for the best times to photograph Yosemite, and getting the word out. I also stuck with my modest weekend art show schedule, doing one every two or three months.

Looking back now, I realize the I never would have succeeded had I not spent money I didn’t really have to hire a professional web designer to create a professional website (this was before website templates made web design easy for the masses), and display a monthly ad in “Outdoor Photographer” magazine. By the time my full workshop schedule kicked off in early 2007, every 2007 workshop had filled, and subsequent workshops started filling almost as soon as I posted them.

That first year was all Yosemite, but I soon expanded to include the Eastern Sierra and Death Valley, then Hawaii, Grand Canyon, and beyond. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my friend Don Smith, who’d already had a very successful career as a professional sports photographer, but was hoping to transition to landscape photography. Don assisted virtually all of my early workshops, and within a year or two was doing his own workshops too, which I in turn assisted. (Over the years our workshop schedules became so packed that we’re no longer able to assist each other much, but Don and I still partner on the New Zealand and Iceland workshops, and stay in pretty close contact throughout the year.)

Between arranging lodging, applying for location permits (not to mention meeting all the criteria each permit requires), answering e-mails from workshop students and potential workshop students, preparing workshop material, and actually conducting the workshops, my plate became pretty full. As much as I enjoyed doing the art shows (I really did), I felt like I was running two businesses. When the Great Recession took and obvious bite from my art show sales, while my workshops attendance didn’t even flinch, dropping the art shows became a no-brainer.

To further increase my exposure, I started writing a blog on a small photoblog site in early 2009. I say this was to increase my exposure, but it was just as much in satisfy my insatiable urge to write. I’ve been a writer all the way back to first grade, when each Monday we were assigned a list of spelling words to learn before the Friday spelling test (am I dating myself, or do they still do that?). The week’s homework assignment was to a create a “spelling sentence” for each word. But instead of spelling sentences, I always wrote spelling stories that used all of that week’s words. I can’t explain why I gave myself that extra assignment for no tangible benefit, except that I thought it was fun.

Ever since, I’ve always had to be writing something. For many years it was short stories (plus a novel that has lived in my head, but so far hasn’t made it to the page). At Intel I was a tech writer, which helped me refine my technical communication skills while feeding my internal writing monster. (One reason I left was resistance from “above” to my attempts to make inherently dull writing more readable.)

While I enjoyed the small community of photographers on that original photoblog site, I quickly found its interface limiting, and soon realized my page wasn’t attracting the eyeballs I’d hoped for. So I started looking for a blogging site that addressed those concerns, and in January 2011 landed on WordPress. What started as a weekly (-ish) blog of a few hundred words, grew to include posts with word counts in the thousands, photo galleries, and a Photo Tips section. By my estimation, I’ve probably written close to two-million words—and counting….

As much I’d love to attribute that volume to my own herculean work ethic, I don’t think I, or anyone for that matter, could sustain a weekly blog, week-in and week-out, for 15 years on guts and willpower alone. This anniversary says less about my dedication and discipline than it does about the fact that I simply love to write.

According to WordPress, I have nearly 40,000 subscribers. But because this blog is as much (more?) for me as it is for my readers, I’ve never tried to monetize those numbers by displaying ads or intrusive affiliate links. It’s satisfying to know that it has led to many workshop signups—probably not enough to justify all the time I spend on it, but that’s okay. And I never tire of hearing that people actually read and benefit from what I’ve written.

Though it wasn’t my conscious intent at the beginning, this blog has become an integral part of my photography. That’s because the subjects I choose, and the way I choose to capture them, are very much a reflection of my relationship with the natural world. To me, much of the beauty in my subjects transcends the visual and resides in the underlying natural laws. Augmenting my images with descriptions and explanations of those natural processes, makes my subjects even more beautiful to me, and (I hope) through my words, to my readers.

For example, lightning. I will freely admit that lightning’s appeal might be much greater to a life-long Californian like me, than it is to, say, a Floridian, to whom lightning is at best a nuisance, and at worst a persistent source of danger. But I do love everything about lightning—not just the way it looks, but the processes that cause it. Along with enabling me to share my images of lightning, my blog gives me an excuse to learn more about lightning, and to share that knowledge. Whether it’s the fascinating science that causes lightning, how to read the sky to understand where lightning might strike next, staying safe when lightning threatens, or the even best way to capture lightning with a camera, I’ve learned so much and am grateful to have a platform for sharing it.

Even though I’ve photographed lightning at Grand Canyon every year since 2012, it took last June’s Midwest storm chasing trip to show me how much I don’t know. At Grand Canyon, we’re usually photographing distant thunderstorms across the canyon. But not only does storm chasing put you in much closer proximity to the electrical storms generating the lightning, these storms, whether rotating supercells or “merely” towering thunderheads, are on a totally different scale.

These insights came on the trip’s very first afternoon, when we hightailed it from our Denver hotel up through the plains of northeastern Colorado and into southeastern Wyoming. The image I share today I captured on the workshop’s second stop. It was my introduction to both the power and proximity of Midwest electrical storms, and with it the realization that unlike Grand Canyon storm chasing, where we generally set up a safe distance and then just wait for the lightning, Midwest storm chasing is actual get-in-the-van!-step-on-it-screech-grab-your-gear-sprint-shoot-retreat!-step-on-it-repeat STORM chasing.

Later this afternoon I got my first look at an actual supercell. And a few days after that, my first (and second, and third, and fourth, and…) tornado. A couple of days later we witnessed a supercell and lightning display that was one of the most breathtaking experiences of my life. And nearly every day of this nearly 2 week trip we saw lightning.

Calling this storm chasing experience life-changing might sound hyperbolic, and maybe even a little cliché, but I can think of few things in my photography life that have left me more awestruck. It certainly rivals other photography firsts, like rafting Grand Canyon, and viewing the northern lights and a total solar eclipse. To think that I’ve been able to earn my living witnessing these sights, and to share it all here, Is a blessing I never want to take for granted.

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Storm Chasing Memories

Click any image to scroll through the gallery LARGE