Ron is sharing a new portfolio of his autumn photography from Colorado and Zion National Park today. Like most of our recent work, he is sharing the photos in a PDF portfolio ebook (you can download it here, no email address or sign-up required). Each time we share one of these new ebooks, we receive a lot of questions that fall into two categories: why do you share your work this way and how can I create a similar PDF for my own work? We will answer both of these questions in this article.
Read MoreBlack and White: Learning to See Opportunities While Out in Nature
If you spend much time looking at nature photography on social media, you have probably seen a common type of post: a photographer, lamenting the poor conditions at the time, explains how they tried to salvage a photo by converting it to black and white. Before you read any further, I’m asking you to forever dismiss this kind of thinking about working in black and white. Instead of seeing black and white as a backup processing option when the conditions you hoped for do not materialize, I encourage you to instead think about black and white nature photography as an expressive form that stands on its own and holds the potential to open up many new creative avenues for sharing the connections you make with the natural world. A key step in shifting this mindset is learning to see opportunities for black and white photography while you are out in nature.
Read MoreManaging Expectations and Bringing an Open Mind
When I talk about my photography, I often try to emphasize the importance of minimizing expectations and being open to what the landscape has to offer during your visit - be present for the opportunities that exist, not the opportunities you wish existed. I emphasize this lesson both because I think it can be vitally important to creating expressive photographs but also because it is a lesson that I need to learn over and over again. Below, I share how this played out during a photography trip to Vancouver Island, British Columbia and some practical advice if you find yourself in a similar situation.
Before I took up photography, a 2007 article in Sunset Magazine about Port Hardy, one of the area’s northernmost towns, sparked my interest in visiting Vancouver Island. The photos that accompanied the essay were haunting – almost monochrome because such a thick fog enveloped the massive monolithic seastacks, leaving just a faint hint of the dense vegetation that characterizes this landscape visible. I had never seen such a landscape in person and almost couldn’t believe it exists.
Read More15+ Free and Low Cost Photo Education Resources You Can Access from Home
In about an hour from now, I was supposed to start teaching a photo workshop in Zion National Park. Instead, like most of you reading this, I am sitting in my home trying to figure out what life looks like going forward. Last week, I spent far too much time obsessing over the news and feeling anxious about all the suffering that is happening across the world because of the coronavirus. This week, I am trying to focus on more productive things. Since I am assuming that may of you are going through the same evolution and might be looking for ways to occupy your mind and build your knowledge, I have pulled together a list of some of the resources I turn to to improve my photography skills and stretch my thinking. I know that many of you are likely facing financial uncertainty, so everything I include below is free or affordable. If you find post this helpful, you are welcome to share it widely.
If you do have more to spend and are looking for an online learning opportunity, I would encourage you to consider Out of Chicago LIVE, which is a new interactive photography conference that will be be held April 24-26, 2020. I, along with 60 other inspiring photographers, will be teaching on a variety of topics related to nature and landscape photography. You can learn more here: https://www.outofchicago.com/live/.
Finally, if you have a favorite photographer who makes their income through workshops and speaking, please consider supporting them right now by doing things like buying tutorials, ebooks, or online teaching sessions. Since many working nature photographers are self-employed, this is going to be an especially difficult time for our profession (example: most of my income for the year disappeared overnight). Self-employed people typically cannot access programs like unemployment compensation, so the loss of income from in-person workshops or speaking engagements is going to create a dire situation for some photographers who are your biggest sources of inspiration.
Read MoreMirrorless Camera Technology and Expanding Opportunities for Creative Expression
Canon just announced its newest mirrorless camera, the R5, causing the usual online buzz among photographers. One band of naysayers has me perplexed - nature photographers who use digital equipment but say things like “Never mirrorless!” in response to such announcements. Even though mirrorless cameras have been out for years and are used by many photographers, these negative attitudes persist. Given my own recent experience with a mirrorless camera, my response is “Why not mirrorless?” As I share below, some features specific to mirrorless cameras help remove barriers to creative expression and have enabled me to create photographs that I previously would have passed up due to technological limitations of my equipment.
I certainly do not think that the newest and best technology is necessary to create meaningful, inspiring, and technically sound photographs. And, for people with limited financial resources, spending money on experiences and time in the field is almost always going to be a better investment than buying a new camera. A camera is a tool and a skilled photographer will be able to create with a range of equipment. However, if new technology helps expand opportunities for creative expression, why not have an open mind?
Read MoreA Slice of Focus: Lessons for Photographing Plants Using Shallow Depth of Field
Below, you will find a snippet of this recent article published on the Nature Photographers Network - click here to read the full post >>>
Photographing small subjects opens up a world of opportunity for nature photographers. By seeking out nature’s details, a photographer can explore a world of plants, patterns, textures, and abstract subjects that are often overlooked or seen in a less interesting way by the human eye. In this article, we will discuss one way of photographing small scenes: using shallow depth of field to render only a small part of your subject in focus. This article focuses on plants and leaves but you can use these lessons on any small subject you encounter in nature.
Use Shallow Depth of Field to Simplify and Create Abstractions
For many landscape photographers, embracing shallow depth of field and the out of focus elements that come with it can be a major shift in mentality. When photographing small subjects like plants or flowers, shallow depth of field can often transform a subject from the literal to the abstract. Generally, using greater depth of field renders a subject more literally with all of its details more obvious to the viewer. Shallow depth of field, on the other hand, often lends a more simple, dreamy, and abstract quality to a photo. Instead of photographing petals or stems or leaves, you are photographing lines and shapes. Additionally, the abstract renditions that can emerge make shallow depth of field an excellent simplifying technique when photographing a chaotic subject.
Read the rest of this article on the Nature Photographers Network >>>
5 Tips on Photographing Abstract Subjects in Nature
When thinking about nature photography, many people instantly think of postcard-style scenes: grand landscapes under colorful skies. From my perspective, however, nature photography can be a much more expansive pursuit when considering the opportunities available with smaller scenes, including abstract renditions of natural subjects. In this article, I share some tips on learning to create abstract photographs along a continuum, from photos with abstract concepts that amplify an obvious subject to fully abstract photographs in which the scale and subject are difficult to discern.
Read MoreGaia GPS App: One of Our Favorite Apps for Nature Photography
We just returned from a long trip to Death Valley National Park, one of my favorite places for photography and exploration. This trip reminded me how much I depend on a single app for my nature and landscape photography: Gaia GPS, which I use on my iPhone 7 Plus. Because Death Valley has so few trails and allows cross-country travel, the park is a great place for exploration and we used our Gaia GPS app for almost every photography outing in the park.
As an example, the Gaia GPS app helped make the photo at the top of this post possible. Since Ron and I have a bit of an obsession with mud and sand patterns, we spent some time on this trip exploring to see if we could find some new areas for this kind of photography. This exploration involved looking at satellite images of Death Valley National Park on Google to identify some potential spots and then heading out cross-country to see what we might find.
For this kind of outing, the Gaia app is helpful for recording a track, marking waypoints, and saving photos of promising spots. When heading out cross country for sunset, we could mark the location of our car to help in getting back after dark. For sunrise, having a point marked in advance - with a high-quality photo for reference - is helpful for returning to a very specific spot in a mostly featureless landscape. While I could do these same things with a handheld GPS, the Gaia app is so much easier to us, and saving photos as waypoints with detailed titles and notes has become an essential tool for my photography.
Read MoreRecent Articles on Landscape Photography & Travel
While we haven't shared many articles on our blog over the last few weeks, we have been busy writing for other websites. You can use these links to get to some of our recent articles published in other places. As always, thanks for reading and supporting our photography endeavors.
A Comprehensive Introduction to Black & White Photography
In this post for Capture Landscapes, Sarah shares information about her approach to black and white photography, along with an overview of her workflow for processing black and white photographs.
40+ Things We Would Change with Our Airstream Trailer
Ron shared this post over on our occasional travel blog. We will be moving into a new house in southwestern Colorado this fall. While we wait for it to be finished, we are living full-time in our 25' Airstream trailer. In this post, Ron shares some of the things we would change about our Airstream based on many months living in it.
Travel Planning Tips for Landscape Photography Trips
In this post for Visual Wilderness, Sarah shares some practical tips for preparing for photography-related travel.
Behind the Scenes: Mojave Desert Mudcracks
In this post for Outdoor Photography Guide, Sarah shares the story behind one of her favorite black and white photographs (below).
5 Steps to Making More Creative Landscape Photographs
In this post for Visual Wilderness, Sarah shares five practices that can help you develop your creativity as a nature and landscape photographer.
Five Steps to Making More Creative Landscape Photographs (via Visual Wilderness)
In my latest article for Jay & Varina Patel's Visual Wilderness website, I write about five ways that I have cultivated creativity and improved my photography as a result:
Think of yourself as a creative person.
Banish expectations.
Develop your observational skills.
Set aside time for practice and experimentation.
Try working within constraints.
You can read the full article and see the example photographs on the Visual Wilderness website. Have you found any of these practices or others to be helpful in your photography? If so, I would be interested to hear about your experience in the comments.
Inside Our Camera Bags: Essential & Helpful Gear for Landscape Photographers
I recently facilitated a wide-ranging discussion about photography for an online photo mentoring club and fielded a few questions about gear and equipment. I used those questions as an opportunity to update the "Inside Our Camera Bags" section of our website, which we share in response to the questions we get about our photo equipment. Beyond the typical laundry list of camera gear, we annotate the list to help explain why we use some of these items. While a lot of these things will seem obvious to experienced photographers, we hope this compilation will be helpful to newer photographers who are trying to establish their photography kit for the first time. In addition to this post, we will maintain an updated list here (for anyone visiting well after the publish date for this post).
Read MoreRecent Writings: Scouting Tips, Seeing Beyond the Literal, and More
Photographers Jay and Varina Patel have worked hard over the last few years to develop their Visual Wilderness website into an excellent resource for landscape and nature photographers. I started writing as a guest author for Visual Wilderness last year but have not been very good about sharing my articles with our blog audience. So, here is a quick summary of the four articles I have written for Visual Wilderness, with links to the full content over on their site.
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