I’m deviating (briefly) from grand landscapes to remind you (and myself) that even the most beautiful scene is abundant with smaller, simple beauty. Case in point: The Eastern Sierra, which is filled with expansive views beautiful enough to easily drown out Nature’s exquisite subtleties. Last week I shared an image from North Lake that featured many of the components nature photographers look for in…
After sharing in my prior post that I’ve been lugging a 30 pound camera bag through airports, it occurred to me that I haven’t updated you on the ever-changing contents of said camera bag lately. But before I continue, let me remind you that a photographer’s gear choice is no more relevant to his images than a writer’s pen is to her stories, or…
I’m a naturally positive person who doesn’t have to work too hard to stay optimistic about pretty much everything. And while this “things always work out” philosophy generally serves me quite well, it can sometimes cause problems. Case in point… A couple of weeks ago I was in Jackson Hole to help out Don Smith with his Grand Teton workshop. Back in the pre-Covid…
For the full context of my experience with Kilauea eruptions in general, and the events leading up to the fountaining portion of this episode (33), check out my prior blog post: Kilauea Eruption Episode 33, Part 1: So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance… The euphoria of our (very) early Thursday morning Kilauea eruption shoot powered my workshop group through the day and into…
One out of a million… One of the great motivators for a nature photographer is the potential for the unexpected. As much as I love planning my photo shoots, especially when things come together exactly as hoped, the euphoria of the unexpected feels like photography’s greatest reward. Some natural phenomena can be predicted with surgical precision—events like a rising or setting sun or moon,…
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….
Greetings from Grand Canyon. A big part of nature photography is anticipation and planning. And with planning comes expectations. Sadly, expectations often don’t live up to reality, so another big part of nature photography is how you handle the situations when expectations aren’t met. To those people who preempt disappointment by simply avoiding expectations (after all, if you don’t have expectations, you can’t be…
Grand Canyon Lodge, North Rim (1928 – 2025) The images I share in this post were all captured on the North Rim of Grand Canyon, a place I’ve visited and photographed more times than I can count. And while Grand Canyon Lodge is no more, the North Rim will recover, thrive, and ultimately outlast us all. Yesterday I woke to the devastating news that…
I’ve been hyper-focused on my storm chasing images for nearly a month, and while I’m far from finished with them, I thought I’d take a brief break from those thrills to share a far more tranquil image from last month’s New Zealand workshop. What I most appreciated while processing this simple reflection, especially after being fully immersed in images of lightning and tornadoes, is…
As you might imagine, at the bottom of Grand Canyon the sleep schedule syncs with the sun. In May, that means flopping into our cots to await the stars around 8:00 p.m., then rising around 5:00 a.m. On a typical day, the morning pace is fairly leisurely, providing time for packing up our campsites, coffee, relaxed chat, breakfast, and even a little photography. While…