Beam Me Up

I won’t lie: The primary reason I go to the Grand Canyon in monsoon season—and for that matter, the primary reason most people sign up for my Grand Canyon monsoon workshops—is to photograph lightning. But as we all know, lightning is a fickle phenomenon, even during the Grand Canyon’s usually electric monsoon season. Because lightning is never guaranteed, I always do my very best…

(More) Lightning Lessons

This post is all about different aspects photographing lightning—some of the stuff I write about here is covered in much more detail in my Lightning Photo Tips article, so you might want to start there I’ve been photographing lightning at the Grand Canyon (especially) and elsewhere for 10 years, but I’m happy to say that I’m still learning. While going through my images from…

Smoke on the Landscape (and Fire in the Sky)

After 2 1/2 weeks at the Grand Canyon for three monsoon photo workshops, I’ve had very little time (and even less connectivity) for posting, but I wanted to share this image while the experience is still fresh in my mind. Here’s a new image and a short descriptive post, followed by a longer, but far more important, “refurbished” post. Beauty comes in many forms….

Last Light

It occurred to me while processing this image that, just like the lightning strike image in my previous post, this was my next-to-last image of the day. Which got me thinking about why I like these late-light images, and also about the similarities and differences between the two images. Both images were captured in conditions much darker than the final image indicates. In this…

Riding the celestial carousel

It’s pretty difficult to feel important while reclined beneath an infinite ocean of stars, peering into the depths of the Grand Canyon. Below you unfolds a cross-section of Earth’s last two billion years, chronological layers of landscape sliced by gravity’s inexorable tug on the Colorado River; overhead is a snapshot of the galaxy’s (perceived) pinwheel about the axis of our planet’s rotation. From our…

Making lemonade at the Grand Canyon

We’ve all heard Dale Carnegie’s trite maxim, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” Of course these pithy statements become popular because they resonate with so many people, photographers included. And it seems that not only are the photographers who adopt this attitude more productive, they’re just plain happier. For example…. Few pursuits are more frustrating than trying to predict Mother Nature’s fickle whims….

Making lemonade in the Grand Canyon

A lot of thought goes into scheduling a photo trip or workshop, with the prime goal being to photograph the desired location in the most photogenic conditions. For example, I try to schedule most of my workshops around the moon, timing them so the group can photograph a rising/setting full or crescent moon and then stay out after dark for moonlight or star trails….