Grand Finale

For most of my full moon workshops, I try to schedule the moonrise main event for the workshop’s final sunset. Sometimes other factors prevent this (for example, in Yosemite I try to avoid weekends), but when the schedule works, a nice moonrise gives the group something exciting to anticipate throughout the workshop. This becomes especially important when some or all of the workshop’s hoped-for…

Surprise Sunset

Greetings from Iceland. Running a workshop that starts before the sun and often goes deep into the night doesn’t leave a lot of time for blogging. But I want to share this image from earlier this month in Yosemite, along with a few paragraphs about its capture. We all long for drama in our landscape images, and I try to time each of my…

The Best Camera Is…

… The one that’s with you Yes, I know it’s a cliché, but like most clichés, this one is founded on truth. Even people like me, who pay the bills with our pictures, don’t carry our “real” cameras 24/7. In those instances, when I see beauty I deem worthy of recording, I’m happy that my iPhone (which is always with me) gives me serviceable…

One Night, Two Moons

I wrapped up this year’s workshop schedule at the beginning of this month and am now enjoying a much anticipated Holiday breather before my schedule ramps up again in January. This isn’t exactly a vacation, because the end of the year is when all my permit reporting and next year’s permit applications are due, and my 2025 workshop prep starts to ramp up, but…

Dome Sweet Dome

Poll 100 random people about the feature they most associate with Yosemite, and you’ll probably get a variety of answers. Near the top of the list will be El Capitan and Yosemite Falls. Bridalveil Fall might get some love too. But I’d wager more than half of the votes would go to Half Dome, both for its striking profile, and for the way it…

Isolate and Conquer

For years (decades), especially in autumn, Bridalveil Creek has been my go-to Yosemite location for intimate images that eschew cliché. Then, 2018, the entire area closed for 5 years to undergo a much needed facelift. Despite the magnitude of this overhaul—repaved, rerouted, and brand new trails and vistas; repaved parking; and (finally!) bathrooms with flush toilets (including the new water and sewer lines to…

Feeding My Muse

Ode to the Coffee Table Book I grew up in an era when coffee table books were a thing. For decades, these dense rectangular blocks, packed with thick, glossy pages containing far more picture than text, dominated living rooms across America. Whether acquired by purchase or gift, once installed on a coffee table, most coffee table books would rest unopened for years, virtually untouched…

Visualize the Future

Virtually every scene I approach with a camera is beautiful, but a beautiful scene isn’t enough if all the parts don’t work together. Human experience of the world differs greatly from what the camera captures—the photographer’s job is to understand and use those differences. Ansel Adams and visualization Most photographers know that Ansel Adams visualized his final print, and the darkroom work necessary to…

The Battle of the Brains

Two photographers approach a dense forest festooned with blooming dogwood: One is drawn to a lovely bloom and can clearly visualize a uniquely beautiful image, but he has no idea how to manage his exposure variables to achieve it; the other photographer is so intent on minimizing diffraction while identifying the shutter speed that will freeze the gently swaying bracts without compromising the ISO,…

Happy Earth Day

My commitment for this blog is one image/post per week. With a workshop that started Sunday and ended Wednesday, I’m a little behind this week, but I made it! Next week I have a workshop that goes from Monday through Thursday, and the following week I’ll be completely off the grid rafting the Grand Canyon. But one way or the other, I’ll continue with…