When practicing nature photography in a new place, making a connection with the landscape sometimes feels effortless and instantaneous. With my first footsteps in such a place, many composition ideas spring to mind and a range of subjects are immediately compelling. Other places require more work, more time, better timing, a different mindset—and sometimes all of the above.
Read MoreIceland in Spring: New Portfolio Ebook From Ron
In early June, we headed to Iceland for an 18-day photo trip. If you have visited Iceland yourself, you will not be surprised to hear that the weather was quite challenging and we had to completely change our plans in response. While we hoped to take our rental 4x4 campervan into the interior highlands, we ended up mostly sticking to the Ring Road because of rain, relentless wind, and quite a bit of late-season snow. Despite these challenges, we still had a lot of fun experiences, including visiting a puffin colony in the snow, photographing Iceland's incredible river deltas, and seeing a perfectly peak lupine bloom across the southern portion of the country (this non-native lupine is invasive but still quite beautiful to see).
I have collected my photos from the trip into a 129-page PDF ebook portfolio, which you can download for free without any sign-up or checkout required. Below is the brief essay I include at the beginning of the ebook, along with a handful of the 100+ photos from the book.
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 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 MoreNew Ebook - Lessons from the Landscape: Yellowstone National Park
I am happy to announce my newest ebook, Lessons from the Landscape: Yellowstone National Park, which includes an almost entirely new portfolio of photographs, eleven personal essays, and six practical case studies. This is my most personal project yet, and I am excited to share it with you.
You can get the ebook for the discounted price of $19.95 through Tuesday, September 14. See below for more details.
Composition & Photographing Nature’s Small Scenes: 5 Essential Ideas
With composition, we are able to take the elements of nature that we connect with the most and arrange them in a manner that communicates our visual preferences and the stories we want to tell about our subjects. In this way, composition serves as an intensely personal window into how we see the natural world and choose to present it through our photography. In writing my most recent ebook, 11 Composition Lessons for Photographing Nature’s Small Scenes, I spent a lot of time thinking about the themes in my composition habits and find that these five ideas are most essential:
#1: Abstraction: See Beyond the Literal Qualities of Your Subject
#2: Simplification: Compose Around a Core Concept
#3: Exclusion: Elevate Your Subject by Eliminating Context
#4: Structure: Seek Out Scaffolding for Your Composition
#5: Details: Pay Attention to the Small Stuff
These ideas are the versatile, practical composition concepts that I return to again and again. Instead of relying on rigid rules (like the rule of thirds) that do not necessarily align with every photographer’s goals for personal expression or every scene we will come across, these ideas are instead tools for the toolbox that we can apply in a wide variety of scenarios to a broad range of subjects.
Read MoreNew Ebook + Video Course: Black & White Nature Photography
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.
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.”
“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!”
“I just bought the ebook and it is terrific - clear instructions, thorough subject coverage, and filled with gorgeous, inspiring images. Really tremendous work!”
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. :)
Beyond the Grand Landscape
Autumn in Vermont, Photo by Sarah Marino
One of the most prevalent pieces of advice offered to landscape photographers is also one of the most limiting: “Shoot during the golden hour.” And, if you observe a mass of photographers at some popular locations, the advice actually seems to be put in practice as “Shoot during the golden fifteen minutes and only if there are colorful clouds filling the sky.” For photographers living by this golden hour mantra, you may be missing a lot of what nature has to offer.
While I thoroughly enjoy photographing grand landscapes under beautiful light, I have come to enjoy photographing small scenes – abstracts, intimate landscapes, and macro photographs – even more. Years ago, one of the main reasons that I took up landscape photography was because it offered one of the only times I could quiet my mind. At the time, I was in graduate school and working a stressful, full-time job. I was almost always working through a long to-do list or thinking about working through a long to-do list. During the brief periods of time I could get out for photography, the act of focusing enough to create a photograph was an escape from that stressful and busy life I had created for myself. Photographing smaller scenes in nature – like finding a beautiful patch of corn lilies or exploring a set of sand dunes to photograph the light and shadows at the end of the day – was so rejuvenating.
Read MorePhotographing the Awe-Inspiring Aurora Borealis in Iceland
Aurora borealis display over Jökulsárlón glacial lagoon, southern Iceland
It is past one o’clock in the morning and we are sitting at a Walgreens waiting on a prescription that an urgent care doctor was supposed to phone in for me more than an hour ago. I am still hoping to get in a few hours of sleep before heading to the airport for our flight to Reykjavík, but it never really happens. I spend the seven-hour flight playing Tetris and Solitaire on my phone, unable to sleep and feeling miserable overall. Once we arrive in Reykjavík, we pick up our campervan, stop to get a few days of groceries, and head out for the five hour drive to the Jökulsárlón glacial lagoon. We stop to take a two hour nap along the way, arriving in time for sunset. We photograph sunset, heat up a dehydrated meal for dinner, and get ready for a long night. We are now approaching a day and a half with almost no sleep and, not surprisingly, all this traveling has only made me feel even worse.
It is March and we are going to be in Iceland for three weeks. Our primary goal is to see and photograph the aurora borealis (also known as the Northern Lights). Based on advice from some friends who traveled to Norway for the aurora and only saw it once, on the last day of their trip, we decide that we cannot miss an opportunity (opportunity = clear skies+interesting landscape+good aurora forecast+right amount of moonlight). Starting a long trip sick with a growing sleep deficit is a less than brilliant plan, but at about 11:00 pm, we see a faint green glow on the horizon. This is what we had come thousands of miles to see! It all instantly feels worth it.
Read MoreDesert Paradise: Photographing Death Valley National Park
Desert Paradise: The Landscape Photographer's Guide to Death Valley National Park
Ron and I are thrilled to announce the publication of our second e-book, Desert Paradise: The Landscape Photographer’s Guide to Death Valley National Park. Coming in at more than 130 pages with over 150 portfolio-quality photographs, we hope this guide will serve as an excellent reference for landscape photographers of all skill levels who are interested in visiting Death Valley.
I am often asked by both photographers and non-photographers about my favorite place to photograph. I cannot offer a single answer but can say that Death Valley National Park and Colorado’s San Juan Mountains get to share that top spot on my list. The San Juan Mountains are understandable to most people, but Death Valley? Really?! Yes, really!
Read MoreIceland's Iconic Icebergs: Jökulsárlón Glacial Lagoon & Black Sand Beach
Waves and Ice at Jökulsárlón's black sand beach, southern Iceland
In visiting Iceland for the first time, I most wanted to see and photograph Jökulsárlón (which translates to glacial lagoon in Icelandic) and the nearby black sand beach. With iconic places, the reality is sometimes terribly disappointing compared to the hype and I assumed that Jökulsárlón might be one of these places. I arrived with measured expectations but was instantly surprised at the size of the lagoon (much, much bigger than I expected) and the overall beauty of the area. The lagoon is surrounded on two sides by impressive mountains and the icebergs - the first I had ever seen - were much more interesting in person than in photos. And, the landscape turned out to be surprisingly dynamic, making for challenging photography. After spending about a week over two separate trips photographing the lagoon and its neighboring beach under all kinds of different conditions, I consider it my favorite place in Iceland and a must-visit in a country that is truly a landscape photographer’s paradise.
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