Unexpected Rewards

One summer when I was a kid, my family took a camping vacation to the Canadian Rockies. Bits and pieces of that trip return to me as vague memories, but one memory permanently etched in my brain is the color of Lake Louise and Moraine Lake. My dad, a very passionate amateur photographer, was frothing with excitement and must have exhausted half his film…

New Zealand Night

If you know anything about me, you know how much I love the Milky Way—not only to photograph, but also just to look at. And by the Milky Way (since pretty much everything we see with the naked eye is part of the Milky Way), I (especially) mean the galactic core. I think it’s pretty cool to realize that the galactic core photons that tickle…

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…

To Polarize, or Not to Polarize

One of my most frequently asked questions during a workshop shoot is, “Should I use my polarizer here?” Of course that’s an impossible question to answer absolutely because as a creative choice, the polarizer decision is rarely absolute. While many people believe the sole purpose of a polarizer is to make the sky darker (deeper blue), blue sky is just a byproduct of the…

Another Decade in the Mirror

The change of a decade is the perfect time to reflect and marvel at the changes. So here goes… Y2K Who remembers Y2K, when computers were going to meltdown and airliners were doomed to fall from the sky? At the time I was an enthusiastic amateur photographer with a solid career in technical communications (tech writing, training, and support) for tech companies small and…

2019 Highlights

We’ve reached that time of year where everyone is compiling their Top 10 lists. I like retrospectives as much as the next person, but I’ve always resisted assembling these “top-whatever” end-of-year countdowns of my own images. Then last week Sony asked me to provide my favorite image of 2019 and I struggled mightily because it felt like they were asking me to pick a…

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 Milky Way My Way

What’s my problem? I’ve been sharing lots of Milky Way images lately. But then, so has everyone else. And when I look at some of the other truly spectacular Milky Way images posted online, I realize I’m working at something of a disadvantage—not because of deficient equipment (not even close), a physical or mental handicap (though as I get older…), or even because I…