Channeling the Donner Party

Landscape photographers know suffering. With no control over the weather and light, we’re often forced to sacrifice comfort, sometimes even safety, in pursuit of our subjects. Cold, exhaustion, sleep deprivation, hunger—it all goes with the territory. But in the long run the successes, though never guaranteed, far outweigh the sacrifices. So, when my wife and I scaled the short but steep trail (336 stairs—I…

A Slippery Slope

I’ve visited New Zealand each (non-Covid) winter since 2017. And every year, from the day I return my wife has to endure weeks of my raving about how beautiful (and clean, and friendly, and quiet, and pretty much perfect) New Zealand is. So this year we decided to add 10 days to my New Zealand stay, and Sonya flew down to meet me after…

Something Extra

Way back when I started getting into photography as a hobby, my subject selection criteria were pretty basic: is it visually appealing, and can I get there relatively easily? This worked well enough, because the world is full of relatively appealing subjects that are relatively easy to get to, and I was content with merely pretty pictures. But my decision more than 20 years…

New Zealand After Dark

This week I have New Zealand on my mind. In preparation for the New Zealand Winter photo workshop that begins next week, I started going through unprocessed images from prior New Zealand visits. I was actually looking for something else when I stumbled upon this Milky Way image from the 2019 trip, when Don Smith and I guided a group of Sony influencers around…

Channeling Your Camera’s Vision

About a month ago I wrapped up my ninth Grand Canyon raft trip. As my guides and I get better at identifying the best spots and when to be there, there’s an aspect of similarity from trip to trip, but thanks to group dynamics, weather conditions, and the secondary stops we chose to make on any given year, each trip always feels unique. As…

Organic Discovery

When I sit down each week to write a new blog post, I usually have a general idea of where I want to go, but little plan for how I’m going to get there. I’ll start with a couple of relevant sentences, then just see where that leads me. Depending on the topic, and my state of mind at the time, the effort that…

Feeding My Muse

Ode to the Coffee Table Book I grew up in an era when coffee table books were a thing. For decades, these dense rectangular blocks, packed with thick, glossy pages containing far more picture than text, dominated living rooms across America. Whether acquired by purchase or gift, once installed on a coffee table, most coffee table books would rest unopened for years, virtually untouched…

Go With the Flow

Despite many visits to Diamond Beach over the last half-dozen or so years, I still don’t feel like I’ve mastered the iceberg blurred water shot to my complete satisfaction. But I keep working on it, and this year I was at least was able to capture something I like. In previous visits, when my attempts to capture the perfect motion blur shot failed, I’d…

Visualize the Future

Virtually every scene I approach with a camera is beautiful, but a beautiful scene isn’t enough if all the parts don’t work together. Human experience of the world differs greatly from what the camera captures—the photographer’s job is to understand and use those differences. Ansel Adams and visualization Most photographers know that Ansel Adams visualized his final print, and the darkroom work necessary to…

The Battle of the Brains

Two photographers approach a dense forest festooned with blooming dogwood: One is drawn to a lovely bloom and can clearly visualize a uniquely beautiful image, but he has no idea how to manage his exposure variables to achieve it; the other photographer is so intent on minimizing diffraction while identifying the shutter speed that will freeze the gently swaying bracts without compromising the ISO,…