Full Circle

For many people of my generation, their earliest memories of landscape photography are some version of Dad pulling the family wagon up to an iconic vista and beelining (camera flapping around his neck) to the railed viewpoint to snap a few frames—if you were lucky, he’d take long enough for you to use the bathroom. In most cases these pictures would be quickly forgotten—until…

More Than Skin Deep

Beauty In the eye of the beholder, more than skin deep… We’ve all heard the clichés implying that beauty is both subjective and personal, and like many (most?) clichés, they’re founded in truth. Landscape photography is the glorious pursuit of natural beauty, however we choose to define it. In my mind, the beauty of the subjects I pursue transcends the visual and is rooted…

Grand Canyon Lightning 2024: Part 2

When I returned from my Grand Canyon Monsoon photo workshop earlier this month, I was so excited about this year’s last-day lightning experience that I immediately processed a few images and sat down to blog about them. But when my blog started approaching 4000 words, I thought for everyone’s sanity (both yours and mine), it might not be a bad idea to split my…

Grand Canyon Lightning 2024: Part 1

Back at it—the chase is on Every year I schedule one or two (and one time three) photo workshops for the peak weeks of the Southwest US monsoon. Despite the summer crowds (which I’ve become pretty good at avoiding), I’d argue that monsoon season is the best time to photograph Grand Canyon. Given the monsoon’s frequent mix of thunderstorms and sunlight, adding colorful sunrises/sunsets…

New Zealand Rocks

(Yes it does.) This New Zealand winter morning dawned damp and gray, with a layer of low clouds hindering the light and obscuring the peaks. Not awful for photography, but far from the spectacular color and light photographers hope for. My workshop partner Don Smith was battling a nasty (non-Covid) virus, so I was solo with the group on the morning we visited an…

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…

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…

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…

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,…