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I have several childhood memories of the natural world that are forever etched in my brain. The oldest is probably the time in Yosemite when I helped my dad with an ill-advised lightning shoot atop Sentinel Dome, then later that evening, just down the road at Glacier Point, enjoyed rainbow across the face of Half Dome. Another was waking in the predawn darkness to…
As striking as they might be, some people find sunstars (AKA, diffraction spikes, sunbursts, or starbursts) gimmicky and cliché. When I (and pretty much any other landscape photographer) arrive at a location, of course I hope for some combination of dramatic clouds, vivid color, and soft light. But when the sun dominates the scene, it turns out that including a sunstar is usually the…
We had reached the final night of this year’s second and final Grand Canyon monsoon photo workshop. To say that I’d spent the weeks leading up to this year’s workshops monitoring the Grand Canyon weather forecast, praying for the monsoon storms that bring lightning, would be a gross understatement—but despite all this vigilance and no small amount of strategic scrambling during the workshop, we’d…
Landscape images can be divided into two categories: the right place at the right time images, and the “Hey, look at this!” images (that creatively reveal something easily overlooked). While I do everything I can to get myself and my workshop groups in the right place at the right time for something special, it’s the HLAT! images that I find most satisfying. Right-place/right-time can…
Last week’s Grand Canyon Milky Way shoot almost didn’t happen, but by the time all was said and done, we ended up with far more than we’d bargained for. My Grand Canyon monsoon workshops are ostensibly about photographing all of Grand Canyon’s unrivaled beauty, but ask anyone who signs up and they’ll tell you their number one goal is lightning. About 70 percent of…
I’m in the midst of 11 days and two workshops chasing lightning at Grand Canyon. Despite daily 4:15 a.m. wake-ups, very late dinners, and lots of waiting for something to happen punctuated by bursts of extremely intense activity, I am in fact (to quote Cosmo Kramer) lovin’ every minute of it. The first workshop group photographed an assortment of monsoon thrills that included lightning,…
Once upon a time I posted a rainbow image on Facebook and someone commented that getting a shot like that is simply dumb luck. After having a good chuckle, I actually felt a little sad for the commenter. Since we all tend to make choices that validate our version of reality, imagine going through life with that philosophy. No one can deny that photography…
After several weeks working through my New Zealand images, I’m giving myself (and you) a break from the land Down Under and returning to Yosemite. Because I absolutely refuse to visit Yosemite in summer, I returned to images from my trip in early May to photograph the dogwood, two subjects on my short-list of favorites. Looking at these Yosemite images, combined with my still…
A few years ago I listened to an NPR show about time and the arbitrary ways we Earthlings measure it. The guest’s thesis was that the hours, days, and years we measure and monitor so closely are an invention established (and measured with increasing precision) by science and technology to serve society’s specific needs. A question posed to listeners was, “What is the most…
Many of the places I visit are known for their extraordinary beauty, striking features and eye-grabbing vistas that justifiably attract thousands of daily visitors and inspire millions of photographs. Stimulating scenes like these seem to be every nature photographer’s goal, but today I’d like to issue a shout-out to ordinary beauty—the simple scenes with the ability to soothe, by virtue of their subtle beauty,…
Eloquent Images by Gary Hart 