The best time of day

Imagine a world that’s so quiet you can hear nature’s every stirring, a place where each breath holds a pristine bouquet of subtle fragrances, and the sky is a continuously shifting kaleidoscope of indigo, blue, yellow, orange, and red. In case you haven’t figured it out, I’m describing the very world we live in, before the sun’s light and warmth draw out the dirty, noisy, oblivious masses. As a nature photographer,…

Grad School

Since the first photon struck a photographic plate, photographers have struggled to stuff the broad range of light their eyes see, into the relatively narrow range their camera can capture. When we shot film, the time waiting for the film to return from the lab was filled with self-doubt and second guessing, punctuated by ecstasy or despair. Then came digital capture, with its immediate image review, histograms,…

Over the hill

Tomorrow morning I head up and over the Sierra crest and down US 395 in the shadow of the precipitous Eastern Sierra. Under-appreciated by tourists, the Eastern Sierra is no secret to photographers. It’s no surprise that Eastern Sierra fall color photo workshop, which starts Monday, has been among my most popular workshops since I started offering it nearly ten years ago. The fall color on the other…

Out of my depth

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about appreciating the small stuff. Writing that article opened my eyes to how much I’d gotten away from aspects of photography that give me great pleasure, and that were a big part of my photographic style. Not completely away, but far enough to notice a difference when reviewing my images from the last year or so, a year that coincides with my switch…

Kilauea Milky Way fun (with the a7S)

Rain in Hawaii is great for almost everything—it fills the waterfalls, cleans the air (for the best sunrise/sunset color), sparks rainbows, and makes photographing Hawaii’s lush foliage a joy. But it’s not so great when your objective includes stars. And based on the forecast for this year’s Hawaii Big Island workshops, our odds for finding the Milky Way above Kilauea weren’t too good. But a…

Appreciating the small stuff

Posting as much as I do here in my blog and on Facebook, it’s sometimes easy to be sucked into sharing images that I know will generate the most enthusiastic response. But that’s not a complete reflection of my relationship with nature, or the reason I take pictures for a living. So every once in a while I find myself needing a reset, a re-focus…

Fallen color

When you’re surrounded by beautiful scenery, it’s easy to overlook the small details that make a scene special. But there’s no substitute for the pleasure that comes from spending a little time in a scene, identifying its intricacies, and creating an image that conveys this connection to others. Capturing these intricacies can be the most rewarding aspect of photography, because they’re almost always uniquely reflective your…

Going long

It’s no secret that a prime benefit of mirrorless photography is the smaller form-factor of the bodies and lenses. And while I was looking forward to lightening my bag when I made the switch, it turns out that my first mirrorless thought wasn’t, “Oh gee, this bag is so light!” (it was). My first thought was actually, “Oh gee, look at all that extra room!” While everyone knows that nature…

The dark night

How to offend a photographer Gallery browser: “Did you take that picture?” Photographer: “Yes.” Gallery browser: “Wow, you must have a good camera.” Few things irritate a photographer more than the implication that it’s the equipment that makes the image, not the photographer. We work very hard honing our craft, have spent years refining our vision, and endure extreme discomfort to get the shot. So while the observer usually means…

Hurry up and wait

Photographing lightning is about 5 percent pandemonium, and 95 percent arms folded, toe-tapping, just plain standing around. A typical lightning shoot starts with a lot of waiting for the storm to develop and trying to anticipate the best (and safest) vantage point. But with the first bolt often comes the insight that you anticipated wrong and: 1) The lightning is way over there; or 2)…