July, 1969 I turned 14 that month. I was into baseball, chess, AM radio, astronomy, and girls—not necessarily in that order. Of particular interest to me in 1969 was the impending moon landing, a milestone I’d been anticipating since tales of American aerospace engineering ingenuity and our heroic astronauts started headlining the Weekly Reader, and my teachers began gathering the class around a portable TV to watch the latest Gemini or Apollo launch or splashdown. If you…
I suspect that nature photographers get themselves into more predicaments than the average person. Case in point: Following a long day on Kauai that started with a 4:30 a.m. wakeup and continued pretty much nonstop through sunset, I’m not sure why I thought it would be a good idea to extend my day further, especially given that we had another 4:30 a.m. wakeup set…
Photography is a source of joy, right? You know it and I know it. I mean, why else would we spend thousands of dollars on equipment, stagger out of bed hours before the sun, skip dinner, stand all afternoon in freezing rain, or hike three miles in the dark, just to take a picture? If you’ve experienced (or witnessed) the ecstasy evoked by an…
I returned couple of weeks ago from a week on Kauai where I assisted Don Smith with his workshop. Kauai used to have the reputation as Hawaii’s “quiet” island, and while it still may be a little more peaceful than Oahu or Maui, Kauai is certainly no longer a secret. But extensive and ongoing (painstaking) research has shown me that despite the crowds, it is possible to enjoy…
I do it all over again in 2015 (May 11-18)—contact me for the experience of a lifetime.
When we think of the Grand Canyon we tend to visualize expansive vistas, but it takes getting down to the canyon’s foundation to see how incomplete those notions are. Every day on the river our raft group was treated to an assortment of layered rock, turquoise pools, polished slot canyons, and plunging waterfalls that reminded us of nature’s complexity. More than simply beauty, these little gems helped all…
Last week I went to see Jon Favreau’s “Chef.”* As someone whose relationship with food is decidedly skewed to the consumption side, I was surprised by how much this film activated my artistic instincts. (In hindsight: “Duh.”) A line that particularly resonated was advice from Favreau’s character to his 11 year-old son (federal copyright laws that forbid me from employing a recording device in a movie theater force me to paraphrase here):…
Imagine Earth before electricity, vehicles, and pollution, when merely stepping outside on a moonless light was a humbling reminder of our tiny place in the Universe. Today there are people who have never seen the Milky Way, Little Dipper, or a meteor (shooting star), and as our cities expand and our atmosphere absorbs more sludge, the opportunities to witness these things shrink each day. I’ve been a camper…
It occurs to me sharing the full story of this image will require me to share delicate details not normally seen in a photo blog. (So consider yourself warned.) But before getting to the details of this image, let me just say that among a very long list of life-highlights and personal firsts, probably my very favorite thing about spending a week at the bottom of the…
Until last week, when I thought “Grand Canyon,” mental images of rim-top panoramas, plunging cliffs, and sculpted red layers came up. With no firsthand history to instruct me, my mental picture of the Grand Canyon from the bottom was an inverted version of my experience from the rim. But last week I finally had the opportunity strike the Grand Canyon raft trip from my bucket list, six days of complete canyon immersion that completely reset…