Visual balance

Olmsted Point is one of my favorite easily accessible locations in Yosemite. I enjoy it for the different (from the more common Yosemite Valley angles) view of Half Dome, the range of wide to tight composition possibilities, and for its many foreground options. I visit Olmsted Point a lot, both on my own and with workshop groups. It’s where we shoot the final sunset…

Cameras are stupid

In a previous life I spent several years doing technical support. For me job-one was convincing people that, despite all error messages to the contrary, they are in fact smarter than their computers. Most errors occur because the computer just didn’t understand: If I misspell a wurd, you still know what I mean (rite?); not so with a computer. A computer can’t anticipate, reason,…

Discover your inner Magellan

Sometimes I wonder if humans’  inherent need for discovery has been dulled by the proliferation of artificial stimuli. Television, movies, the Internet, and video games are indeed pretty amazing, but if Magellan were alive today, do you think he’d be riveted to “The Discovery Channel” or hunched at his computer, probing Google Earth? If Magellan had a camera, would he be online mining GPS coordinates…

Happy Birthday, Dad

  Today would have been my father’s 81st birthday. Dad was one of those people who did everything well, but I don’t think there was anything he enjoyed more than photography. His work kept him so busy that the only time he ever got to take pictures was when he was on vacation, but he made up for lost time then. I’ll be eternally…

Are we having fun yet?

Every once in a while, when I’m really bored, I’ll surf over to one of the photography forum (discussion) sites, only to be instantly reminded why it’s been so long since I visited. The litany of complaints, insults, and one-upsmanship makes me wonder whether there are any photographers who truly enjoy their craft. Of course I know there are, because I meet them all…

A landscape photographer’s time

On my run this morning I listened to an NPR “Talk of the Nation” podcast 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 (with increasing precision) by  science and technology to serve society’s specific needs; the question posed to listeners was, “What…

Let’s get vertical

Whose bright idea was it to lable horizontal images “landscape,” and vertical images to be “portrait”?  To them, let me just say: “Huh?” As a landscape-only photographer, about half of my images use “portrait” orientation. Sometimes I wonder if this unfounded naming bias explains why so many people default to a horizontal orientation for their landscape images, missing some great opportunities to improve their photography in…

Dogwood Bouquet

Earlier this week I had the good fortune to be in Yosemite for the peak of the annual dogwood bloom. Photographing dogwood is one of my favorite things, yet in recent years it seems I’ve been thwarted in my attempts to capture the event at its peak. Yosemite’s average peak bloom is around May 1, but that can vary by a couple of weeks;…

What’s on your hard disk?: A project for a sunny day

One of the risks of making photography your livelihood is the possibility (likelihood?) that the business will preempt the photography. Even though I’ve consciously chosen to continue photographing only what I want to photograph without concern for the marketability of an image, when I return from a trip the demands of the business often leave little time for my captures. A few days ago…

Shoot now, think later

Magic moments in nature are rarely static, and reacting to them as they happen is rarely productive. But taking the time to do you homework helps you anticipate these special moments well enough to consistently put yourself in position before they happen. Understanding the conditions necessary for a rainbow, anticipating a sky favorable for a colorful sunset, and  plotting the moon’s position above an…