Nature First - 7 Principles for Minimizing the Impact of Your Photography

April 22, 2019 Sarah Marino

Sensitive mosses growing at a remote lava field in Iceland. Moss at more popular stops has been completely worn away by visitors and photographers traveling off the established trails.

Historically, nature photography has been a force for good. Conservation photographers have promoted the preservation of many ecologically sensitive and magnificently beautiful places. Nature photographs have motivated scores of people to experience nature for themselves, and in many cases become advocates for the preservation of wild places. Photography also offers a personally meaningful way for many of us to engage much more deeply with the natural world and then share those experiences with others through our photos.

In recent years, this positive legacy has been upended. It is now easy to make the case that pursuing and sharing photographs of nature has much darker consequences. Nature photography has undergone a dramatic transformation in the last five years with the rise of platforms like Instagram, easy access to detailed location information online, and technology advancements that make photo-taking much easier. These trends are leading to the irreparable destruction of some special places, overcrowding in places that can’t handle the volume of visitors, and a sharp increase in injuries and deaths from people seeking to “get the shot” or see the view they saw featured in a super-popular Instagram post.

Recent Articles on Landscape Photography & Travel

May 17, 2017 Sarah Marino

The Three Amigos - Sonoran Desert in Spring by Ron Coscorrosa

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.

Mojave Mud Cracks - Death Valley National Park by Sarah Marino

Five Steps to Making More Creative Landscape Photographs (via Visual Wilderness)

March 30, 2017 Sarah Marino

Most people photograph this waterfall from an entirely different angle. Wanting to get something a little different, I experimented with different compositional options to come away with something more unique to me.

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.

New Ebook + Video Course: Black & White Nature Photography

March 23, 2017 Sarah Marino

I hope you have enjoyed all of my recent posts about black and white photography. These posts have been the ramp-up to launching our newest educational product for nature and landscape photographers. Thus, we are excited to announce our new ebook + video course, Black & White Photography: A Complete Guide for Nature Photographers.

This course is designed to help you create compelling, personally expressive black and white photographs. It is highly practical, teaching you tools that can be immediately integrated into your field practices and processing workflow. The course includes the following modules:

183-page PDF ebook - $15.95. Topics include creativity, field practices, and the digital darkroom. Includes more than 80 photos and many more illustrations. Two practice files are included.
Adobe Lightroom video course - $39.95, which includes 5 videos (2 hours) on how to use Lightroom to process black and white photos, including essential concepts, workflow recommendations, an overview of Lightroom's key tools, and a full start-to-finish example. Two practice files are included.
Adobe Photoshop video course - $39.95, which includes 5 videos (2.5 hours) on how to use Photoshop to process black and white photos, including essential concepts, workflow recommendations, an overview of Photoshop's key tools, and a full start-to-finish example. Five practice files are included.
Silver Efex Pro mini-course - $7.95, which includes one video (36 minutes) on how to use this software to process black and white photos, including a review of the presets panel, an overview of key tools, and a full start-to-finish example.

With the coupon code BW20, you can purchase the full course for $79 (almost 40% off the full price) or the individual modules at a 20% discount (prices above include the discount). This introductory pricing ends on March 31, so don't wait to make your purchase.

Learn More or Buy The Course Now

Customer Feedback for Black & White Photography: A Complete Guide for Nature Photographers

“I have to say I’m incredibly pleased with the quality of this series. Most tutorials don’t lay the ground work for the full walk-through edit. Your [tutorials are] laid out so precisely and are so well thought out and organized. Things like a PDF with time stamps that relate to the video are INCREDIBLY helpful when I’m trying to look back at how something was done. The price point for the quality is one of the best on the tutorial market (I own at least 10 landscape tutorials). I can’t wait to up my B&W game!!! Thank you Sarah, truly impressive video series.”

— Jesse

“This is an excellent course with many concepts and examples well organized and presented for others to learn the making of compelling black and white images and improve their own photography. I’ve already picked up a number of ideas from what I’ve gone through so far that will help me enhance my photographs beyond what I am doing now and know there will be much more as I continue to work through the course. Thank you!”

— Martin

“I just bought the ebook and it is terrific - clear instructions, thorough subject coverage, and filled with gorgeous, inspiring images. Really tremendous work!”

— Charles

Note: You must enter the coupon code BW20 to get the savings reflected in the prices above!

Thank you for your continued support of our photography. We are very grateful for all of our readers and customers. :)

Field to Finished: Free Video Tutorial on Creating a Black & White Photograph

March 22, 2017 Sarah Marino

In sharing my recent black and white photos, I have received a lot of questions about my approach to photo processing. I typically start in Lightroom and finish in Photoshop, using tools like levels, curves, and luminosity masks (a workflow I discuss in detail in my ebook + video course, Black & White Photography: A Complete Guide for Nature Photographers).

Even though I prefer to use Photoshop, it isn't necessary to get good results for less complex photos like this one. I just posted this 32-minute video tutorial on YouTube about taking and processing this photo from Medicine Lake in Jasper National Park. The video includes these topics: field techniques, composition, camera settings, and an overview of the processing steps I took to finish the photo, primarily using Adobe Lightroom.

If you have any questions about the content of the video, please let me know!

A Few Favorite Photos from 2016 (Sarah)

January 3, 2017 Sarah Marino

Every year, Jim Goldstein publishes an extensive collection of “best photos of the year” posts from photographers. I always enjoy looking through the entries and finding inspiration from photographers who are new to me. This year, I have been struggling a bit to pull together my own collection of photos to submit for Jim’s blog project. As is my tradition, I am nowhere near finished with processing my photos from this year, which makes it difficult to pull together a collection of favorites. Still, I felt motivated by Jim's submission deadline to pull together this post.

This post includes only a small collection of the photos I took or processed in 2016. If you would like a see a more complete collection representing our year of travels and photography, you should view Ron’s photos here. He is much better about keeping up with his processing than I am, so his collection includes photos from all of the places we visited this year plus a little update about our travels.

Since I spent a good portion of 2016 working on my new black and white photography ebook + video course, most of the photos I processed this year are in black and white. Thus, it seems appropriate to start this post with some of my recent black and white photos. You will also see Death Valley National Park well respresented in this collection. We both started and ended 2016 in this park, which is one of our favorite places to visit.

Thank you for your continued support of our photography! Happy New Year and best wishes for 2017.

An incoming storm over large mud tiles in Death Valley National Park.

Patterns in seaweed in a tidal flat on the Snaefellsnes Peninsula in Iceland.

The setting sun illuminates these cactus from behind, making them appear to be glowing. Organ Pipe National Monument in Arizona, near the Mexican border.

The last light of the day illuminates a ridge on remote sand dunes in Death Valley National Park.

One of Death Valley National Park's many surreal landscapes.

I took most of these photos in 2015 but assembled them as a collection in 2016, so I am sharing them here. All of these photos were taken in Oregon.

A clearing storm allowed a bit of light to peek through and illuminate these colorful mountains in Iceland's remote Landmannalaugar region.

Pastel badlands at twilight in Death Valley National Park.

Iceland's characteristic green mountains reflect in a large lake in the Landmannalaugar region.

A colorful mix of fall foliage in Colorado's San Juan Mountains.

Alien Conditions in Death Valley

December 1, 2015 Ron Coscorrosa

Stormy Sunrise at Badwater Basin, Death Valley National Park. © 2015, Ron Coscorrosa

On the morning of Sunday, October 18, 2015, Sarah, our two cats, our shiny silver trailer and I were at Area 51.

We were not seeking aliens, or, to our knowledge, being sought by them. Other than our cats throwing up, there was very little evidence of any medical experimentation of any kind.

We honestly had no idea we were on the Extra Terrestrial Highway until we saw the road sign. We were doing what we often are doing, driving, leaving the beautiful Cathedral Gorge State Park in Nevada and heading to Mono Lake in the Eastern Sierra. The ET highway was just the fastest route (though extremely remote, with over 150 miles between gas stations).

Leave No Trace: A Discussion About Our Impact On Wild Places

September 9, 2015 Sarah Marino

White Sands National Monument. Footprints will remain in these areas of hardened sand (so I didn't walk on them), but will disappear from the dunes themselves during the next wind storm.

I came to photography well after I started hiking and backpacking. Thus, my early sources of information about wild places all prominently featured advice about outdoor ethics, especially practices like Leave No Trace. If you are not familiar, the basic idea behind Leave No Trace is that travelers in the backcountry should strive to leave no evidence of their visit, minimize their impact, and if possible, improve the condition of the places they visit (leaving a campsite in better condition than you found it, for example). With many wild places experiencing increased visitation, human impacts can cause significant damage if visitors do not show this kind of respect and care during their visits.

Increasingly, it seems like some landscape photographers do not view these principles for outdoor ethics as applicable to our kind of outdoor pursuit and the damage left behind is becoming obvious in an increasing number of spots. I have recently engaged in a few online discussions on this topic and have found some of the responses disheartening, with some portraying the attitude that they are entitled to a photograph regardless of their impact. Other arguments favor a dismissive tone, downplaying any specific example as an exaggeration for nothing more than making a point or so minor that it doesn't matter (trampling some plants is no big deal). All this seems to be a sign of the times, with daily stories about how the forces of willful disregard, ignorance, entitlement, and narcissism combine to do a lot of damage to special places (click on the links for a sampling: national parks in general, the Appalachian Trail, Sedona, Death Valley, and Joshua Tree).

200+ Women Landscape & Nature Photographers Who Inspire

August 25, 2015 Sarah Marino

Why a compilation like this?

I will start out by saying that I am generally not a fan of women-only lists because I want my photography to stand on its own. I don’t want to be known as a woman landscape photographer, just a landscape photographer who happens to be a woman. So, why am I writing this post? For the two reasons described below.

Since I started in landscape photography, this field has noticeably diversified in terms of both race and gender. Significantly more women are pursuing landscape photography (or at least are more visible) and many have developed compelling, top-tier portfolios of work. More women are teaching workshops, running photo tours, writing, showing in galleries, selling prints, and providing leadership within landscape photography. Yet, we continue to be woefully underrepresented at the top levels of this field as evidenced by the overwhelming absence of women in publications, conference/summit/symposia rosters, podcast interviews, portfolio features, brand ambassador line-ups, and other symbols of achievement and relevance in landscape photography. And, when a woman is included, it sometimes feels like little more than a token gesture.

This dynamic seems to be increasingly frustrating to women photographers and I see more people speaking out about this lack of representation more regularly. Some women are responding with women-only workshops, publications, and collaborative groups to offer alternatives to the "business as usual" spaces in this field where few women are represented. And, photographers concerned about this under-representation are being more vocal in calling it out.

A Mini-Guide to Photographing the Hawaiian Island of Kauai

July 15, 2015 Sarah Marino

Most people think of the Hawaiian Islands as a perfect place for a relaxing, tropical vacation but they also provide some excellent opportunities for photography. We recently took a two week trip to the island of Kauai and highly recommend it as a photography destination (for reasons that this post will hopefully make clear!).

Kauai is known as the Garden Isle because of its lushness, with the claim to the “wettest spot on earth” becoming obvious after taking even a passing glance at the waterfalls and lush tropical forests covering much of the island. Kauai also has extensive beaches and strong waves, especially in winter, which together create good opportunities for photographing the ocean. The jagged green cliffs of the Na Pali coast are a frequent stand-in for any movie or TV show that needs a fantasy, dream-like tropical scene. On the drier side of the island, the winding Waimea Canyon offers expansive views of red rock layers dotted with bright green trees and impossibly tall waterfalls.

In this post, we summarize some of our favorite places for photography and share a few travel tips that might be helpful in planning your own trip to Kauai. Our research was aided through some very generous suggestions from our friend Orion some some of the credit for this post goes to him, as well (thanks, Orion!). As a little disclaimer, I will note that this post is meant to be an introduction based on two weeks on the island during the month of January. Conditions at some of these locations will vary quite a bit by season and this mini-guide is not meant to supplement your assessment of on-the-ground conditions. It is also not meant to be comprehensive - just a place to start your own research. If you are looking for local guiding, Aaron Feinberg would be a good place to start.