There’s No Whining in Photography

Do I need to tell you it was brutally cold this afternoon? Of course not (and I doubt anyone really wants to hear me whine about it anyway). I also probably don’t need to tell you that this scene was spectacularly beautiful. And unfortunately, these two facts are often inexorably intertwined because the best time for photography is usually the worst time to be…

Watch Your Backup

A funny thing happened to me on the way to this image. And when I say “on the way,” I don’t mean taking the picture, I mean after it was safely loaded onto my computer and fully processed, it seems that someone (who wishes to remain anonymous), accidentally overwrote it with a completely different image. Oops. Establishing a backup mindset Overwriting an image is…

Distilling the Essence

The art of subtraction Presented with a complex world, the nature photographer’s job is to identify a scene’s visually interesting elements and figure out how to use them in an image. While most photographers have no problem seeing what to include in their images, many struggle with what to leave out. But the best pictures usually work at least as much for what’s not in…

Perfect Timing

In the Alabama Hills to photograph sunrise in neck-craning proximity to the Sierra Crest, I knew precisely what time, on this date, the sun’s first rays would color the towering granite, and exactly when a 98% moon would would disappear behind the left flank of Mt. Williamson, California’s second highest peak. Clocks and calendars enable us to time some aspects of our lives, like sunrises…

Distraction Subtraction

Last week’s blog image was an ultra-wide scene chockfull of beauty, ranging from nearby frosted trees and shrubs, to a sky filled with sunset pink clouds, topped with a small dot of moon. It took a bit of work, but I was eventually able to find the position and framing that allowed me to assemble these diverse elements into something coherent. But because nature…

A River Runs Through It

Among the greatest joys of my photographer’s life is the opportunity to witness rare and exotic beauty I might otherwise have missed. An erupting volcano? Check. The dancing colors of the northern lights? Check. Shafting light in a Southwest slot canyon? Check. Southern Hemisphere night sky? Check. The view from the bottom of the Grand Canyon? Check. In my California-born-and-raised world, glaciers certainly qualify…

Lights, Camera, Action!

A couple of posts back I wrote about Nature’s gifts, natural phenomena that sometimes augment the ordinary enough to defy belief. In that post I cited reflections, relatively ubiquitous phenomena that improve nearly every scene they touch. Toward the other end of the commonness continuum are auroras, colorful lights that dance randomly in the frigid darkness high above Earth’s extreme latitudes. While everyone has seen reflections, many…

The Third Time’s the Charm

Large or small, crescent or full, I love photographing the moon rising above Yosemite. I truly believe it’s one of the most beautiful sights on Earth. The moon’s alignment with Yosemite Valley changes from month-to-month, with my favorite full moon alignment coming in the short-day months near the winter solstice when it rises between El Capitan and Half Dome (from Tunnel View), but I…

Know Your Subjects

One of my personal rules for photography is knowledge of my subjects—I simply get more pleasure from an image when I know something about what I’ve captured. Of the many potential subjects available to a landscape photographer, mountains have always been a particular draw for me. Living my entire life in the shadow of the Sierra Nevada has certainly influenced that connection, as have…

Yosemite Moonrise

Though last week’s harrowing story of a sneaker wave that drenched members of the Iceland photo workshop group had a (relatively) happy ending (R.I.P., 3 cameras and lenses), it generated more responses than any blog post in recent memory. Exactly one week later, that sobering reminder of Nature’s power and ability to surprise was still on my mind when I was gifted a reminder of…