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.
Read MoreDeath Valley Wildflower Update: Prelude to a Super Bloom?
Desert Gold and the Black Mountains in late afternoon, Death Valley National Park. (c) Ron Coscorrosa
The last so-called wildflower "Super Bloom" to occur in Death Valley National Park happened in 2005. The next one may very well be this year and is already in progress in parts of the park.
On October 18, 2015, Death Valley suffered a historic flood event. By early January, the first wildflowers started to bloom in the southern part of the park, much earlier and more profusely than typical years. More rain has helped build momentum by keeping the plants healthy and growing. On January 6, 0.2 inches of rain fell and on January 31, another storm brought 0.32 inches of rain, as measured at Furnace Creek. These three rain events, along with the current profusion of wildflowers, make it likely that this wildflower year in Death Valley could be the best since 2005. All photos in this post were taken this year (January and February 2016).
Read More2015 Year in Review (Sarah)
In looking back on my life 6 or 7 years ago, it is still a little hard to believe that 2015 took the form that it did. Back then, after finding myself in a variety of unpleasant personal and professional situations, I started talking about the desire to travel more, with the vague idea of travel representing an opportunity to live a more fulfilling life. While this process took years to fully realize, 2015 feels like the culmination of a lot big decisions and changes that together, feel like a much better path.
Read More2015 Year in Review + Personal Favorites (Ron)
Crescent Twilight, Badwater Basin, Death Valley National Park
As Sarah recapped in her post Our Semi-Nomadic Life: One Year In on our travel blog, 2015 was a very busy year. We were were on the road or traveling about six months of the year and only on vacation from our full time jobs for two of those weeks.
I also managed to do something I haven't been able to do in at least 6 years: keep ahead of my photo backlog! While I still have a few stragglers, I can say with confidence that I have processed 90% of the photos I have taken this year, in addition to fully processing all my older photos from Mt. Rainier.
Read MoreAlien Conditions in Death Valley
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).
Read MoreLeave No Trace: A Discussion About Our Impact On Wild Places
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).
Read More200+ Women Landscape & Nature Photographers Who Inspire
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.
Read MoreChase the Light. Or Maybe Not...
A few years ago, a typical photography trip for us looked like this… Ron leaves Colorado, driving toward the Canadian Rockies. A few days later, he stops by the Edmonton, Alberta airport to pick up me and our friend Koveh. In a day, we are heading out on a 40-mile, 4-night backpacking trip into the heart of the Canadian Rockies (with Ron and Koveh both recovering from illnesses on the day we depart for the hike). After returning from our backpack, we spend two days driving all around the Canadian Rockies, chasing the light, following the weather, and seeing as many places as we can. Ron and I drop Koveh off at the Calgary Airport and drive to Vermont (yes, Vermont – 2,411 miles away), intent on chasing fall colors and foggy conditions.
We end up spending about a week in Vermont, Maine, and New Hampshire before clear skies come into the forecast. Following the clouds, we end up at Rickett’s Glen in Pennsylvania (383 miles away) for less than 24 hours, hiking along the 6-mile trail featuring 20+ waterfalls twice in one day, and leaving at an absurd time early the next morning so that Ron can drop me off at the Boston Airport for my flight home. Ron drives down to West Virginia and with clear skies in the long-term forecast, heads home as well after about three and a half weeks away.
Chasing the light… Chasing the weather… This is just what landscape photographers do.
Or maybe not.
Read MorePhotographer Interview: Candace Bartlett
We are excited to be featuring landscape and nature photographer Candace Bartlett on our blog today. I really enjoy and find inspiration in Candace's photography and wanted to learn more about her and her work, so Candace has been kind enough to pull together some really thoughtful answers to my questions. We hope you enjoy the interview and Candace's wonderful selection of photographs below.
You can learn more about Candace and her photography at her website and you can also find her on Facebook and 500px.
Read MoreCall of the Desert
Resting Rocks, Joshua Tree National Park
“The Desert is calling, and I must go” John Muir didn’t say, but I will.
The desert isn’t as easily loved as other landscapes, like the mountains in Muir’s famous quote. Its beauty is often more subtle, rewarding only those who are willing to slow down and fully immerse themselves in it.
To those who have learned to love desert, who have smelled the creosote or sage brush after a fresh rain, who have admired the way an ecosystem often inhospitable to humans is still thriving with life perfectly adapted to it, who have appreciated the often strange and surreal geological features that call the desert home, who have an inclination to solitude and open spaces, the appeal of the desert is undeniable.
Photo Consumption, Conformity, and Copying in Landscape Photography
I will start out this post with an important note. This is not a rant due to sour grapes or feeling left out of the clique of popular kids. When I was posting regularly on 500px, my images often made it to the front page and even filled the top slot on the site on a few occasions. I am also not intending to criticize or offend any individual photographers who are active on 500px but am instead commenting on the negative culture that the site promotes and feeds. I am somewhat hesitant to post something filled with a lot of negativity but decided to go ahead since I think a dialogue on this topic is important.
Landscape photographers have been engaging in a lot of dialogue about the 500px photo-sharing site lately and for good reason (many of the discussions have been on private Facebook pages about individual photographers and photographs, but here is a link to a recent post on the topic and one from Ron from a few years ago). 500px is having a strong influence on the landscape photography community and in the views of some, including me, this is not a positive development. I am weighing in and discussing some of the arguments that others have made on this topic because I find 500px's influence to be damaging to the direction of landscape photography overall and harmful for individual photographers who feel the strong pull to conform because of the site’s dominance. And even though I use 500px as the example, the points also serve to illustrate much larger trends in photography overall.
As a fellow photographer reminded me in an email dialogue on this topic, the 500px culture isn’t going to change. So why bother even talking about this? Because photography and the sharing of photography should be a positive, constructive, and enriching experience. I have heard from enough new photographers to know that the culture of the 500px website can be highly demoralizing and a single website should not have the power to stop budding photographers before they even get started or discourage talented photographers who cannot get traction on the site.
Read MoreFavorite Photographs of 2014
I really enjoy looking through the retrospective collections that photographers share each year. I always find it interesting to see where people have traveled, how a photographer interprets the places they visit, how a person’s work has evolved, and what images rise to the top of individual lists. Although I have been inconsistent with participating in this activity in the past and am a little late this time around, I feel like I have a bit more to share this year than in previous years, as I can look at my collection of photos and at least say I like them instead of seeing nothing more than flaws and imperfections as in previous years.
I am finally starting to feel more comfortable in my skin as a photographer and am happier with the overall direction of my work. While I think that most of my best images are still sitting on my hard drives ready to become something once I feel motivated or make the time, this group of photos makes me happier than similar groups in years’ past – not completely happy, but at least somewhat satisfied.
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