Still Learning

Whether it’s rafting Grand Canyon, gaping at a comet, or chasing supercells and tornados across the Midwest, instead of scratching an itch and moving on (as I’d expected would happen), checking-off a bucket-list item only seems to fuel my desire for more. Case in point I saw my first aurora in 2019. As with all my prior bucket-list experiences, the aurora experience actually exceeded…

Where in the World is Gary?

You may (or may not) have noticed that my “weekly” blog posts have slowed somewhat in the last month or two. I haven’t gone anywhere—or more precisely, I’m still going the same places and doing the same things I always have, I’m just prioritizing my time differently. After 15 years of stressing, staying up late, missing meals, and in many other ways pushing myself…

A Photographer’s Vision

I just returned from a spectacular workshop in Death Valley, one of the most fascinatingly unique locations on Earth. After missing Death Valley last year, it was especially nice to return. (Of course it didn’t hurt that I had a great group that enjoyed fantastic conditions from beginning to end.) I first got to know Death Valley as a kid, when my family camped there…

Going Out a Winner

There was nothing easy about this picture. Milky Way photography in general is a challenge, but trying it at the bottom of Grand Canyon is especially harrowing. In addition to the standard Milky Way photography difficulties, like insufficient light essential for composition and focus, any kind of night photography at the bottom of a mile-deep hole adds another level of dark. In this extreme…

Night Vision

When it comes to natural beauty, I’ll be the first to admit that there is nothing like being there. In person we get to enjoy all the movement and simultaneous multi-sensory input that’s lost in a still image—not to mention the synergistic amplification of awe and joy that comes with witnessing a special event with others. But let’s pause for a moment to appreciate…

A Moving Experience

I’ve been photographing Kilauea’s eruptions, in many forms, for 15 years, but never anything close to the spectacular display my workshop group and I witnessed in September. It wouldn’t be hyperbole to say that this was one of the most memorable experiences of my life. (I’ve said that about Kilauea eruptions before, but each time I say it, Kilauea seems to say, “Oh yeah?…

Open Mind and Open Eyes

As landscape photographers, it’s easy to arrive at a photo location with a preconceived idea of what we’re going to shoot. That’s often because there’s a single perspective that gets all the attention, dominating the images of the location shared online and skewing the perception of what its images should look like. At Mono Lake, despite its sprawling layout with lake views that span…

Hold My Gear (the Sequel)

After sharing in my prior post that I’ve been lugging a 30 pound camera bag through airports, it occurred to me that I haven’t updated you on the ever-changing contents of said camera bag lately. But before I continue, let me remind you that a photographer’s gear choice is no more relevant to his images than a writer’s pen is to her stories, or…

The Show Must Go On

Greetings from Grand Canyon. A big part of nature photography is anticipation and planning. And with planning comes expectations. Sadly, expectations often don’t live up to reality, so another big part of nature photography is how you handle the situations when expectations aren’t met. To those people who preempt disappointment by simply avoiding expectations (after all, if you don’t have expectations, you can’t be…

Storm Chasing Diary: More Tornadoes

A month ago I shared an image of my very first tornado. As exciting as that experience was, it turns out that was only the beginning…. When a large supercell reaches maturity, the urgency among storm chasers seems to ratchet up exponentially. So one indelible lesson from my first storm chasing experience is that there’s no time to bask in your success, no matter…