The Colors of Autumn

Few things get my heart racing more than the vivid yellows, oranges, and reds of autumn. And after missing most of last year’s fall color thanks to the double whammy of COVID and California’s extreme fire season, I was especially excited as I motored over the mountains for this year’s Eastern Sierra workshops. Of course as much as I love it, this trip doesn’t come…

Mono Magic

Yesterday morning I wrapped up the first of two Eastern Sierra photo workshops with a truly glorious, and unique, sunrise at Mono Lake. The prior morning the group enjoyed a nice sunrise at Mono Lake’s far more heralded South Tufa, but for the final sunrise I like to take my groups to this isolated stretch of shoreline on the north side of the lake….

Frozen in Time

Lightning Strike, Brahma Temple, Grand Canyon Sony a7RIV Sony 24-105 G 1/4 second F/8 ISO 250 I’ve always been intrigued by still photos’ ability to reveal aspects of the natural world that are missed by human vision.  A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the camera’s ability to, through long exposures, blur motion and reveal unseen patterns in moving water. And last week…

Confessions of a Happy Photographer

More than anything else, photography needs to make you happy. When photography was my hobby, that wasn’t really a problem—I photographed what I wanted, where I wanted, when I wanted, with no pressure to please anyone else. Pretty nice. But, as I mulled turning photography into my livelihood (nearly 20 years ago!), I couldn’t help thinking about the photographers who had become unhappy after…

Return to Paradise

I’m still working my way through my Grand Canyon images, but because life goes on, I “had to” spend the last week leading a workshop on my favorite Hawaiian island, Hawaii. (It’s a tough job, but…) Until last year, I’ve spent a week each year since 2010 on Hawaii’s Big Island. And while I’d love to blame COVID for the missed year, it just so…

Grand Canyon: The South Rim Strikes Back

Last week I expressed some pretty strong feelings for why I prefer the North Rim of the Grand Canyon to the South Rim. And while I’m not about to issue a retraction, let me just say that the relative merits of the canyon’s two sides are somewhat more nuanced. You might even say that last week’s post was authored by Gary Hart, Human Being….

Grand Canyon: North vs. South

North vs. South When people decide to cross the Grand Canyon off their bucket list, they usually look at a map and see that the South Rim is an easy one hour detour off Interstate 40, or just a little more than three (mostly interstate) hours from Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix. The North Rim, on the other hand, is nearly five hours from…

(More) Lightning Lessons

This post is all about different aspects photographing lightning—some of the stuff I write about here is covered in much more detail in my Lightning Photo Tips article, so you might want to start there I’ve been photographing lightning at the Grand Canyon (especially) and elsewhere for 10 years, but I’m happy to say that I’m still learning. While going through my images from…

The Reason I Do This: Redux

Three Strikes, Lightning and Rainbow from Bright Angel Point, Grand Canyon Canon EOS 5D Mark III 1/3 second 24-105L ISO 100 f/11 August 2013 Nature photographers plan, and plan, and plan some more, but no amount of planning can overcome the fickle whims of Mother Nature. Few things are more disappointing than a long anticipated and perfectly executed shoot washed out by conditions beyond…

More Monsoon Magic

Greetings from the Grand Canyon. It’s pretty hard to post a blog in the middle of a workshop, and downright near impossible when the Internet is down and your cellular carrier has capped your roaming data at 200 megabytes (which I ripped through in 3 days, with only 12 days to go—thank you very much, T-Mobile). But here I am, a day late, with…