A Peek Behind the Curtain

A particular highlight of my annual Eastern Sierra photo workshop is our sunrise shoot at North Lake. Made famous as the default desktop image for macOS High Sierra, North Lake is a small lake in the shadow of snow-capped Eastern Sierra peaks, near the top of Bishop Creek Canyon a little west of Bishop. It’s encircled by aspen, and reflections in its sheltered bowl…

Here Comes the Sunstar

As striking as they might be, some people find sunstars (AKA, diffraction spikes, sunbursts, or starbursts)  gimmicky and cliché. When I (and pretty much any other landscape photographer) arrive at a location, of course I hope for some combination of dramatic clouds, vivid color, and soft light. But when the sun dominates the scene, it turns out that including a sunstar is usually the…

Where to Draw the Line

I’m in the midst of 11 days and two workshops chasing lightning at Grand Canyon. Despite daily 4:15 a.m. wake-ups, very late dinners, and lots of waiting for something to happen punctuated by bursts of extremely intense activity, I am in fact (to quote Cosmo Kramer) lovin’ every minute of it. The first workshop group photographed an assortment of monsoon thrills that included lightning,…

Right Place, Right Time

A few years ago I listened to an NPR show about time and the arbitrary ways we Earthlings measure it. The guest’s thesis was that the hours, days, and years we measure and monitor so closely are an invention established (and measured with increasing precision) by science and technology to serve society’s specific needs. A question posed to listeners was, “What is the most…

Nature’s Gifts: Reflections

Sometimes Nature delivers us something that’s so beautiful, it just has to be a gift. When we think of Nature’s gifts, it’s often in terms of locations, like Yosemite or Grand Canyon (gifts indeed!). But today I’m thinking about Nature’s transient beauty: the perfect arc and vivid colors of a rainbow, a brilliant crimson sunrise or sunset, or an aurora dancing among the stars…

Near, Middle, Far

I’m in Yosemite for a workshop so my blogging time is significantly curtailed, but let’s see what happens… Photography is the futile attempt to render a three dimensional world in a two dimensional medium. It’s “futile” because including actual depth in a photograph is literally impossible. But impossible doesn’t mean hopeless. One of the simplest things photographers can do to elevate their images is think…

Variations on a Scene

One million words January 2023 will mark the start of my (more or less weekly) Eloquent Nature blog’s 13th year. Not counting the 30 or so sporadically created Photo Tips articles, today’s post will be number 710. Doing the math, that actually turns out to be more than 1 blog post per week; at 1500 words per post (a conservative estimate), I’ve written more than 1…

Natural Light Painting

Once upon a time, moonlight was the only kind of night photography I did. As lifelong astronomy enthusiast, I’ve always been mesmerized by all the stars that come out when the moon is down, but film and the earliest digital cameras were just not capable of adequately capturing the world after dark without help from multiple exposures or artificial light (dealbreakers for me). While…

Surf’s Up

To prove that Hawaii Big Island photography isn’t all just magma, Milky Way, and macro, I’m sharing this image from last month’s workshop on my favorite Hawaiian island. With all due respect to Big Sur, the combination of shimmering tide pools and rugged black basalt hammered by violent surf makes Hawaii’s Puna Coast the most beautiful coastline I’ve ever seen. What especially thrills me…

Creative Juices

One of my favorite summer treats is the smoothie I whip up for lunch on hot days. I grab whatever fruit is available, toss it in my Vitamix with a little macadamia milk and ice, and let it rip. Each smoothie tastes different, but it’s always delicious. Why am I sharing food prep tips in a photo blog? Because I can think of no…