Well, I missed my monthly update for February and lost all momentum with my weekly blog posts. The reasons: ephemeral conditions in Death Valley, finishing the second edition of our significantly expanded and fully revised Beyond the Grand Landscape ebook, getting a nasty cold, and saying yes to social time in the desert whenever an invitation popped up.
Read MoreJanuary 2024 Monthly Review
I’m sharing a wrap-up like this at the end of each month to help with accountability and discipline. The basic format: an inventory of how I spent the last month with regard to nature photography and our photo business, a casual discussion about the things that are on my mind, and a few non-photography recommendations at the end.
This could be a very short update since I focused on two things over the last month: 1) working on the fully revised and significantly expanded second edition of our Beyond the Grand Landscape ebook and 2) photographing, a lot.
Read MoreBackyard Abstracts: Photos From My Ice Farming Operation
Over the last few years, we have occasionally put a tub of water in our backyard during colder weather to see if it might create some opportunities for photographing ice patterns. We never put much effort into this approach to photography because it seemed like we could usually find something more interesting in a natural setting. Enter Adam Gibbs and the preview pages for his new book, Land & Light. In one of the sample spreads, Adam shares a beautiful photo of frost patterns and describes the “ice farming” operation behind its creation.
This story made me decide to put a bit more effort into our own ice farming operation, especially since we were in the middle of a stretch of very cold weather. As I started experimenting with some new ideas, I hoped we might be able to create the conditions for frilly frost to form, like Adam showed in the photo in his book preview. Likely because of the humidity differences between damp Vancouver Island and dry southwestern Colorado, that frost never materialized as I had envisioned. With more experimentation, I eventually found an approach that created some tiny wild patterns.
Read MoreEntering a Photo Competition? Consider This Advice
I have recently served as a judge for a few different photo club competitions (in addition to being a judge for five award seasons with international photo competitions) and continue to see the same issues pop up. Some of the issues are really basic, like dust spots and tilted horizons, while others are far more subjective. With these experiences in mind, I share some advice to consider when you prepare your next competition entry (or magazine submission, gallery show entry, portfolio, or even your next social media post). This article represents the perspective of exactly one judge—me—so don’t consider it a checklist but instead a single point of view on a complex topic.
Read MoreSarah's 2023 Photography Year In Review
In this post, I share some highlights from 2023 along with some reflections on my current creative practices, thoughts about the direction of our photo business, some loose goals for 2024, and a short rumination about AI’s potential impact on my chosen career. If you are mostly here for the photos, you can skip ahead to the middle of the post. Before jumping into the text, I would like to thank you for being part of my photo community. I appreciate each of you and wish you the best for 2024!
Read MoreRon's 2023 Recap
While I am sometimes successful in avoiding cliches in my photographs, I am less successful in avoiding cliches for my blog posts. So here is my version of the yearly recap post!
The beginning of the year is a good time to reflect and ruminate on the past year, but since this is the end of the year, I’m going to skip all that and just share some photographs. These are not necessarily my favorite twenty photographs of the year but they are a diverse selection of the places we photographed and visited in 2023, arranged chronologically.
Read MoreSharing Your Photos in A PDF Ebook Portfolio: Why and How
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 MoreThe Death Valley Landscape and Nature Photography Guide
To the uninitiated, it can seem strange to have a photographic obsession with a place called Death Valley National Park. Yet, after visiting for first time, most nature and landscape photographers quickly come to understand the appeal. The scenery is diverse, vast, surreal, and dynamic, all of which are qualities that make this landscape exciting for nature photography. For us, Death Valley holds the only permanent spot among our favorite places, with the other spots rotating based on recent trips we have enjoyed. It fully deserves this honor!
While visiting remote parts of the park is exciting, the more easily accessible landscape photography locations, like Badwater Basin, the Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes, and Zabriskie Point, are all equally incredible. This makes the park a great option for both short trips and extended explorations. Another benefit: when it is cold and snowy elsewhere, the weather in Death Valley is generally mild, at least at the lower elevations. With Las Vegas only a few hours away, this park is also easy to get to for anyone in North America.
Read MoreNovember 2023 Monthly Review
I’m sharing a wrap-up like this at the end of each month to help with accountability and discipline. The basic format: an inventory of how I spent the last month with regard to nature photography and our photo business, a casual discussion about the things that are on my mind, and a few non-photography recommendations at the end.
NEW PHOTOS AND OTHER THINGS:
Composition webinar: On December 14, I will be teaching Composition and Visual Design for Nature Photographers for the Lehigh Valley Photography Club. I am fully revising this presentation so even if you have seen me talk about composition before, I hope you will get something new out of this talk. It is $10 and you can register here.
Webinar with Ian Plant: I will be joining Ian Plant to talk about the benefits and challenges of trying new types of photography (specifically wildlife photography for me). We will both be sharing some of our recent photographs and talking shop. It should be fun! There is no cost to watch this webinar but you need to register in advance.
Integrating Gratitude Practices Into Nature Photography
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, partially because it involves cooking a large, complicated meal and I always enjoy cooking—and sharing—large, complicated meals. My holiday meal this year was complicated because I did all of the cooking myself, not because I selected any fancy recipes. After integrating more modern dishes over the last few years, the traditional sides—sweet potato casserole, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, biscuits, corn, and stuffing—seemed most appealing as I prepared my grocery list so those are the dishes that ended up on my table (in addition to a less traditional apple cake for dessert).
Another thing I appreciate about Thanksgiving is seeing other people share their gratitude. Amidst so much constantly heavy, negative news, it is lovely to enjoy a day of reading posts that focus on positive things. After seeing these many posts plus some news stories about the mental health benefits of expressing gratitude, I went down a rabbit hole of reading to learn more. This short article from Arthur Brooks at The Atlantic (gift link with no paywall) is a nice summary of the research, historical underpinnings, and practical advice about “Four Ways to Be Grateful—And Happier.” The reason I appreciated this article in particular is how Brooks likens gratefulness to exercise: to the reap the benefits, you have to practice.
Read MoreRon's Recent Work From Alaska (New Portfolio Ebook)
After a very busy fall, I finally had time to process my photos from Alaska. The results can be downloaded here, as a portfolio ebook with about 100 new photographs. There are autumnal landscapes and plants, mountains, glaciers, misty fjords and ocean scenes, and even some wildlife sprinkled in this new collection. I have included a small sampling of the photographs in this blog post but they will look better in the ebook.
As I mention in the ebook, the size, scope, and wildness of Alaska is difficult to articulate. A map provides an intellectual approximation of its size, but the emotional realization of how big a place Alaska is doesn’t really settle in until visiting in person and for several weeks. This is the perspective I have from driving around the very small slice of Alaska that is paved (or well graded) within a reasonable distance of its largest population center. Even that “less wild” part was incredible—imagine the overwhelming majority of the state which is inaccessible except by water or plane. Hopefully in the future we won’t have to imagine, as we plan on making several return visits.
Read MoreQ and A: Naturalist Apps, Connecting with a Landscape, and Photographic Celibacy
In August, a publication invited me to participate in an extended interview and then repeatedly delayed publishing it. Instead of hoping the interview might eventually run someday, I decided to withdraw it and publish it in two parts on my website instead. You will find part one below.
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