You had to be there

If you read my blog enough, you know that I do lots of advance planning, particularly when I want to put the moon in my frame. I have my own workflow for determining the moon’s position relative to the landscape, a workflow I established long before tools like “The Photographer’s Ephemeris”  simplified the process immensely. (TPE is a new trick, and I’m an old…

Monument Valley by moonlight

After a successful and satisfying week co-leading Don Smith’s Arches/Canyonlands workshop, Don and I detoured to Monument Valley on our way home. The evening of our arrival we hired a guide to take us to Teardrop Arch at sunset, but with cloudless skies and a 14+ hour drive home to Central California, we decided to pass on a sunrise shoot that was unlikely to…

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…

Keeping it simple

Last week I guided my Eastern Sierra workshop group into the Alabama Hills to photograph the Sierra crest at sunset. We stayed until the sky darkened enough to reveal a sliver of moon low in the west, just about to vanish behind Lone Pine Peak. While my eyes easily pulled detail from the shadows of the distant mountains and nearby boulders, and simultaneously registered the…

Macro magic

The Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden is photographer heaven. Meandering its verdant paths through a breathtaking assortment of tropical plants, a photographer could take an hour to move ten feet. Eventually the trails make their way all the way down to the crashing surf of Onemea Bay. And if that isn’t enough to occupy you, just as you think you’re ready to exit, you stumble upon…

Over the volcano

The night before photographing my Milky Way image, I took my workshop group to the popular Halema`uma`u Crater overlook at the Jagger Museum. I’ll never forget my first sight of the radiant caldera at night from there, and was excited to share the experience. As is often the case on Kilauea, a dense cloud cover soon gave way to a mixture of clouds and…

Under the Milky Way

I’m violating a personal rule by posting this image, but I just can’t help it. In this  case it’s my “cool threshold rule,” which states (in the privacy of my own brain) that an image must be more than simply cool to qualify for external exposure. By that I mean, no matter how “cool” a scene, I strive for (and try to share only) images…

Sunrise on the rocks

I “discovered” this unnamed beach while scouting locations for my Hawaii workshops. It wasn’t on any maps or in any guidebooks, it was just there, tucked into a narrow strip separating the churning Pacific from lush Kapono-Kalapana Road. Through the trees the beach looked promising, so I pulled into a wide spot and explored more closely. A pair of children’s shorts draping a branch…

Where the wild things grow

Hawaii isn’t all beaches, sunsets, and palm trees. One of the first things to strike me each time I visit the lush (Hilo) side of the Big Island is the abundance of wild flora considered “exotic” back home. Here, nobody thinks twice about roadside hibiscus, bougainvillea, impatiens, or orchids that would (at the very least) require a trip to Home Depot and months of…

Moonlight on the water

Not a lot of time for blogging right now. I’m in Hawaii for 2 1/2 weeks, leading two photo workshops on the Big Island. Yesterday we departed for sunrise at 4:45 and went pretty much straight through sunset (and beyond), with only a short break for breakfast. We started just as early today, but since we’re staying out late to photograph the Kilauea Caldera…