Storm Chasing Grand Canyon Style

Before returning to the Hawaii trip, I want to wrap up my Grand Canyon trip with another image from the wonderful lightning show on the last night of the second workshop. I wrote about this evening, and the frustrations that preceded it, in my August 29 “Feast or Famine” post. I’ve actually processed three of my favorite lightning strikes from that evening, and it…

I Was There

I have several childhood memories of the natural world that are forever etched in my brain. The oldest is probably the time in Yosemite when I helped my dad with an ill-advised lightning shoot atop Sentinel Dome, then later that evening, just down the road at Glacier Point, enjoyed rainbow across the face of Half Dome. Another was waking in the predawn darkness to…

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…

Feast or Famine at the Grand Canyon

We had reached the final night of this year’s second and final Grand Canyon monsoon photo workshop. To say that I’d spent the weeks leading up to this year’s workshops monitoring the Grand Canyon weather forecast, praying for the monsoon storms that bring lightning, would be a gross understatement—but despite all this vigilance and no small amount of strategic scrambling during the workshop, we’d…

Watch Your Back

Landscape images can be divided into two categories: the right place at the right time images, and the “Hey, look at this!” images (that creatively reveal something easily overlooked). While I do everything I can to get myself and my workshop groups in the right place at the right time for something special, it’s the HLAT! images that I find most satisfying. Right-place/right-time can…

That Time Elon Musk Photobombed My Workshop…

Last week’s Grand Canyon Milky Way shoot almost didn’t happen, but by the time all was said and done, we ended up with far more than we’d bargained for. My Grand Canyon monsoon workshops are ostensibly about photographing all of Grand Canyon’s unrivaled beauty, but ask anyone who signs up and they’ll tell you their number one goal is lightning. About 70 percent of…

Smart Luck

Once upon a time I posted a rainbow image on Facebook and someone commented that getting a shot like that is simply dumb luck. After having a good chuckle, I actually felt a little sad for the commenter. Since we all tend to make choices that validate our version of reality, imagine going through life with that philosophy. No one can deny that photography…

Natural Synergy: Building Relationships In Nature

After several weeks working through my New Zealand images, I’m giving myself (and you) a break from the land Down Under and returning to Yosemite. Because I absolutely refuse to visit Yosemite in summer, I returned to images from my trip in early May to photograph the dogwood, two subjects on my short-list of favorites. Looking at these Yosemite images, combined with my still…

“Ordinary” Beauty

Many of the places I visit are known for their extraordinary beauty, striking features and eye-grabbing vistas that justifiably attract thousands of daily visitors and inspire millions of photographs. Stimulating scenes like these seem to be every nature photographer’s goal, but today I’d like to issue a shout-out to ordinary beauty—the simple scenes with the ability to soothe, by virtue of their subtle beauty,…

Dinner Can Wait

Among the (many) highlights of the New Zealand workshop Don Smith and I do each year is the short but steep hike to the Tasman Lake vista. Somehow the people at Aoraki / Mt. Cook National Park have managed to cram the .4 mile trail (I measured) with 334 stairs (I counted), but once you’ve caught your breath at the top of the trail,…