Grand Canyon Lightning 2024: Part 1

Back at it—the chase is on Every year I schedule one or two (and one time three) photo workshops for the peak weeks of the Southwest US monsoon. Despite the summer crowds (which I’ve become pretty good at avoiding), I’d argue that monsoon season is the best time to photograph Grand Canyon. Given the monsoon’s frequent mix of thunderstorms and sunlight, adding colorful sunrises/sunsets…

The Joy of Sunrise

Most people who rise before the sun do it because they have to. And sadly, because we’ve been so conditioned by a lifetime of rising for school and work, rushing to “pressing” obligations, the joys of early mornings never seem to outweigh the pleasure of staying in bed. While I won ‘t pretend that I truly relish a 4:30 a.m. alarm, not only have…

New Zealand Rocks

(Yes it does.) This New Zealand winter morning dawned damp and gray, with a layer of low clouds hindering the light and obscuring the peaks. Not awful for photography, but far from the spectacular color and light photographers hope for. My workshop partner Don Smith was battling a nasty (non-Covid) virus, so I was solo with the group on the morning we visited an…

Channeling the Donner Party

Landscape photographers know suffering. With no control over the weather and light, we’re often forced to sacrifice comfort, sometimes even safety, in pursuit of our subjects. Cold, exhaustion, sleep deprivation, hunger—it all goes with the territory. But in the long run the successes, though never guaranteed, far outweigh the sacrifices. So, when my wife and I scaled the short but steep trail (336 stairs—I…

A Slippery Slope

I’ve visited New Zealand each (non-Covid) winter since 2017. And every year, from the day I return my wife has to endure weeks of my raving about how beautiful (and clean, and friendly, and quiet, and pretty much perfect) New Zealand is. So this year we decided to add 10 days to my New Zealand stay, and Sonya flew down to meet me after…

Breaking the Rules

Let’s have a show of hands: Who feels like their photography has stagnated? Let me suggest to all with your hands up that what’s holding you back may be the very rules that helped elevate you to your current level of proficiency. I’ll be the first to acknowledge that rules are important—the glue of civilization in fact. Bedtimes, homework, and curfews got us through…

Something Extra

Way back when I started getting into photography as a hobby, my subject selection criteria were pretty basic: is it visually appealing, and can I get there relatively easily? This worked well enough, because the world is full of relatively appealing subjects that are relatively easy to get to, and I was content with merely pretty pictures. But my decision more than 20 years…

New Zealand After Dark

This week I have New Zealand on my mind. In preparation for the New Zealand Winter photo workshop that begins next week, I started going through unprocessed images from prior New Zealand visits. I was actually looking for something else when I stumbled upon this Milky Way image from the 2019 trip, when Don Smith and I guided a group of Sony influencers around…

Channeling Your Camera’s Vision

About a month ago I wrapped up my ninth Grand Canyon raft trip. As my guides and I get better at identifying the best spots and when to be there, there’s an aspect of similarity from trip to trip, but thanks to group dynamics, weather conditions, and the secondary stops we chose to make on any given year, each trip always feels unique. As…

(Mostly) Unrelated Ramblings on Editing and Color in Nature

Lately I’ve been on a bit of a crusade against manufactured images in general, and AI use in particular. But, lest you perceive me as a luddite and old-school photography codger (“In my day, every shoot was a 5-mile uphill walk through snow in both directions, and sunrise always came at 1:00 a.m.”), let me just say that I am all-in on digital capture…