I Can Relate (You Can Too)

Our lives revolve around relationships: romance, family, friends, work, pets…. Even that clown who cut you off on the freeway, for a few brief (I hope) seconds, might just be the most powerful influence in your life. Like most words in the English language, “relationship” can mean more than one thing. On the macro scale are the specific personal connections that matter to us—not…

What Would Michael Scott Do?

“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. — Wayne Gretzky” — Michael Scott  Rules are important. The glue of civilization. Bedtime, homework, and curfews constrained our childhood and taught us to self-police to the point where as adults we’re so conditioned that we honor rules simply because we’ve been told to. (Who among us doesn’t always wait for the signal to change, even…

Yosemite Moonrise

Though last week’s harrowing story of a sneaker wave that drenched members of the Iceland photo workshop group had a (relatively) happy ending (R.I.P., 3 cameras and lenses), it generated more responses than any blog post in recent memory. Exactly one week later, that sobering reminder of Nature’s power and ability to surprise was still on my mind when I was gifted a reminder of…

The Sea Was Angry That Day, My Friends

I returned from Iceland with a lot of memories, but none will stay with me longer than the events of this stormy February morning on Diamond Beach. I guess given how much of my life is spent chasing Nature’s most dramatic moments, every once in a while it’s good to be reminded of the suddenness with which Nature can surprise you to impose its uncompromising…

Reach for the Sky

We tend to photograph the things we love most, but I don’t think that necessarily happens consciously. For example, I never appreciated the role the sky plays in my photography until someone pointed it out a few years ago. Browsing my galleries to verify, I was amazed at the percentage of my images that include at least one of the following: the sun, the…

Step Aside and Let Nature Do Its Thing

Once upon a time, my most frequently asked question was some version of, “Did you put that leaf (or whatever) there?” (No.) When digital photography and Photoshop processing started to gather momentum, those questions expanded to whether or not I added the moon or the Milky Way to an image. (Again, no.) And now, with effortless sky replacement, any beautiful sunset seems to generate…

These Are Two of My Favorite Things

Camera or not, two of my very favorite things in nature are a rising moon, and the rich pink and blue twilight sky opposite the sun after sunset*. Once a month, in the days around the full moon, these phenomena converge, and I get an opportunity to photograph the moon actually in the best part of the sky. I spend a lot of time…

Shooting the Light Fantastic

Blue sky may be great for picnics and outdoor weddings, but it makes for lousy photography. To avoid boring blue skies, flat midday light, and extreme highlight/shadow contrast, landscape photographers usually go for the color of sunrise and sunset, and low-angle sunlight of early morning and late afternoon. Of course the great light equalizer is clouds, which can soften harsh light and add enough…

Getting Personal

In my previous blog post I wrote about creating visual relationships between landscape subjects—juxtaposing disparate elements in a scene in ways that move or stop viewers’ eyes. But I’m also a strong believer in the power of personal relationships with landscape subjects. Whether it’s the celestial choreography that decorates our night skies, the atmospheric machinations that spawn thunderstorms and paint rainbows, or the geological processes that…

Stop the Car!

Nature photography is all about identifying and creating relationships—between subjects, or between subjects and their environment. The relationships in some of my images require meticulous planning to align a predetermined foreground subject with a celestial feature like the Milky Way or a rising/setting moon. Other relationships happen when I travel to combine a beloved location like Yosemite with natural phenomena like fresh snow or fall color. And…