A (Big) Mistake, and a (Small) Rant

By the time you read this, I’ll be done with my break and well into my Death Valley Winter Moon workshop. I’ll have gone from a stretch of two-and-a-half months with no workshops, to a stretch of one month with four workshops (and all the travel that entails): Death Valley, Iceland (10+ days), and two in Yosemite. And while I’ll kind of miss going…

2023: The Year of Fire and Ice

One of my favorite things to do at year’s end is to look back at the images that made the year especially memorable. And my favorite part of this exercise is the realization that, even though I can’t say how, I know I’ll be similarly rewarded in the coming year. But what to do with the images I’ve selected? I’ve always struggled with the…

Creative Juices

One of my favorite summer treats is the smoothie I whip up for lunch on hot days. I grab whatever fruit is available, toss it in my Vitamix with a little macadamia milk and ice, and let it rip. Each smoothie tastes different, but it’s always delicious. Why am I sharing food prep tips in a photo blog? Because I can think of no…

Watch Out For That Tree

I’m incredibly blessed to make my living guiding enthusiastic photographers to many of our planet’s most beautiful locations. While this makes my life far too rich for complaint, let me say (without complaining) that a particular challenge imposed by frequent return visits to the same locations is finding unique ways to photograph them. My usual go-to approach at these familiar locations is to play with…

Before and After

I’m sitting in the Queenstown, New Zealand airport waiting to board the first of four flights that will total 26 hours and land me a mere 2-hour drive from home. While I’m still coherent, I’ll attempt to whip out this week’s (slightly late) blog post, using low hanging fruit from the just-completed New Zealand workshop: The always beautiful Wanaka Willow Tree. Each year (that…

Resolution Revelation

For years I’ve been pleading with camera manufacturers to stop giving us more resolution, and instead concentrate on things like improving dynamic range and high ISO performance. And while I still think that would be a better approach, I have to admit that I’m loving having all these pixels to play with. The catalyst for my resolution revelation was this New Zealand sunset image….

New Zealand Sunset

This morning, while going through unprocessed images looking for something to blog about, I came across this image from last June in New Zealand. I realize the world probably doesn’t need any more pictures of this tree (which is why I’d never processed it), but after nearly two months of smoky skies that have robbed California of anything close to a normal sunset, sunrise/sunset…

Starry Night

It’s midnight and I’m right back where my day had started 21 hours earlier. Standing in the frigid dark beside Lake Wanaka, I feel equal parts energized and exhausted by the longest photography day of my life. And for the first time all day, I’m alone. With the moon’s arrival still a couple of hours away, most of my attention is on aligning the…

The Longest Day

After one of the most exhausting, exhilarating, and just plain productive photography days of my life, our van rolled into Wanaka a little before midnight and everyone’s thoughts, including my own, were on sleep. But the stars were out and the moon was not (yet), and I knew it would be at least a year before I’d get another chance like this. With a…

That’s so fake…

We’ve all heard it: “That’s so fake,” or “You Photoshopped that,” or some other derisive barb implying that an image is trying to be something it isn’t. But before you say that about this image, let me say that I processed it five times, each time dialing down the saturation, attempting to create something that would appear credible to the dubious masses. And with…