A Different Kind of Thrilling

Chasing tornadoes is undeniably thrilling, but photographers don’t live by thrills alone. Or maybe a better way to put that would be, thrills don’t necessarily need to set your heart racing. Because after nearly 2 weeks chasing supercells and their (thrilling) progeny, I was only home for a couple of days before jetting off to New Zealand for a completely different kind of thrills….

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…

Anchor Management

Virtually every scene I approach with a camera is beautiful, but a beautiful scene is rarely enough for a great image. Human experience of the world differs greatly from what the camera captures—the photographer’s job is to understand and use those differences. I’ve always felt that viewers of an image are more comfortable exploring the frame—and therefore tend to linger longer with the image—when…