As far as the eye can see

“As far as the eye can see.” How many times have we heard, and even uttered, those words without really considering their true meaning? Just how far can the eye see? Adults use the expression to convey wide open spaces, and as a kid I remember arguments on the playground about who had seen the farthest, trying to one-up each other with our ocular feats. To me the words “as…

The grass is greener

“You’re so lucky to live so close to <fill in the blank>”: Yosemite, Lake Tahoe, Big Sur, San Francisco, Muir Woods (and countless other coastal redwood sites), Point Reyes, the Napa Valley wine country, Mt. Shasta, Mono Lake. I hear it all the time. Okay, I’ll concede that—I’m lucky. But… Their implicit message is, “If only I lived closer to such-and-such, my photography would be so…

Chased by rainbows

Okay, you might guess that as a nature photographer I spend a lot of time chasing rainbows. True, but I swear that in Hawaii it feels like rainbows are chasing me. Hawaii is the only place I’ve ever been where rainbows just appear with no warning, where I can be standing in full sun beneath a handful of puffy clouds, glance toward the horizon, and do a double-take—where’d that come from? Because of Hawaiian rainbow’s seemingly spontaneous inclinations,…

Going with the flow

One bad apple Believe it or not, one of the questions I’m asked most frequently is whether I’ve ever had anyone attend a workshop who I would not allow in a future workshop. My answer has always been an immediate and emphatic, No. That changed in a recent workshop, which got me thinking that a successful photo workshop is as much about the people as it is about the location and conditions. And…

Channeling Wile E. Coyote

“When you want something badly enough, a few mishaps are no deterrent.” Wile E. Coyote Discovery (September 2012) Scouting locations for my Maui workshop, I scrambled cross-country down the rugged flank of West Maui’s north side, trying to make my way to a series of lava-rock, reflective tide pools. Once I’d descended to ocean level, reaching the pools still required hopscotching across wet basalt that was a disconcerting hybrid of banana peel slippery…

Aloha from the top of the world

March 4, 2015 Just a quick update from Maui, where I’m in the midst of my annual Maui workshop (and because there’s nothing better to do when you wake up at 4 a.m. than post a blog). Before the workshop started I held my breath as I warned my group that on our first morning we’d need to leave at 3:30 to photograph sunrise from the 10,000 foot summit of…

Being a better fisherman

“Many of us would probably be better fishermen if we did not spend so much time watching and waiting for the world to become perfect.”  ― Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It I don’t fish. But then, Norman Maclean’s words really aren’t about fishing anyway. I’m reminded of his quote every time I see photographers frozen by minutia, mired in the moment by small distractions that matter very little on the…

Megapixels are overrated

As regular readers know, in November I switched to Sony, replacing my 22 MP Canon 5D Mark III DSLR with the mirrorless 36 MP Sony a7R, plus three Sony lenses. My decision to switch had nothing to do with resolution and everything to do with the Sony’s image quality, dynamic range, and high ISO performance. Oh yeah, and the compactness of mirrorless. And after watching other DSLRs surpass…

Seeing the light

On the first night of this year’s Yosemite Horsetail Fall photo workshop I’m pretty confident that my group got to photograph what will turn out to be Horsetail’s only truly red display of the year. I’d love to say that this was due to particular genius on my part, but mostly it was just plain good luck (with maybe just a little bit of experience…

Mirrorless and my telephoto renaissance

Going smaller Like most people, my original expectation for my nascent mirrorless world was a significantly lighter backpack, and indeed, I haven’t been disappointed. In my Canon days my primary pack was an F-Stop Tilopa with a medium ICU (F-Stop’s interchangeable internal module for storing and organizing gear), which held my 5D Mark III, Canon 16-35 f/2.8, 24-105 f/4, and 70-200 L lenses, plus a Zeiss 28 f/2…