A Slice of Focus: Lessons for Photographing Plants Using Shallow Depth of Field

June 14, 2019 Sarah Marino

Below, you will find a snippet of this recent article published on the Nature Photographers Network - click here to read the full post >>>

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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 >>>

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.

2018 Wrap-Up & A Few Favorite Photographs (Sarah)

December 21, 2018 Sarah Marino

Below, you will find some photographs that I like from 2018 (I wouldn’t call them favorites yet as many of the photos that I think might end up as favorites from this year still remain unprocessed). This year, our time spent in natural and wild places started in Death Valley National Park and also included an extended visit to some lesser-known locations in Utah, a few weeks around Moab, a lot of summer hiking in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains, a visit to the Pacific Northwest (Vancouver Island, Mount Rainier National Park, and Craters of the Moon National Monument on the way home), fall colors in Colorado and Zion National Park, and another trip back to Death Valley. With these travels, I am getting closer to having robust photo portfolios of Death Valley, Zion, and Colorado fall colors, each of which I hope to fully share in 2019.

Beyond a lot of wonderful time spent outside, this year felt quietly consequential for my photography. For almost ten years, nature photography has taken up an immense amount of time and space in my mind. When I first picked up a camera, I squeezed photography into tiny slices of time around an intense job and full-time graduate school. Now, years later, my life revolves around nature and photography – the people with whom we spend the most time, the place we choose to live, the places we choose to visit, and how we spend our time outdoors. During all these years with this pursuit at the core of my life, photography has brought some happiness plus a lot of angst, frustration, and even a bit of despair.

This last year felt like a turning point in which my happiness and satisfaction with photography has for the first time outweighed those other negative emotions. I actually like and feel proud of some of my work. I feel like I am finally on a path that reflects my adoration for and personal interests in the natural world. For the first time, I feel comfortable with who I am becoming as a photographer and feel like I am able to consistently realize my goals through the photos I take. I am also having a lot more fun and caring a lot less about what other people think about my work (see: the selection of photos below, none of which will make much of a ripple on social media). I still find it challenging to process and share my photos, choosing instead to spend my photo time outside taking new photos. Beyond those persistent challenges, it feels good to finally feel like I am making some positive progress on one of the most important things in my life after years of fits and starts.

Autumn in Southwest Colorado

October 22, 2018 Ron Coscorrosa

Nothing gets a nature photographer as excited as the arrival of autumn. Sarah and I are very lucky to live in southwest Colorado, among the San Juan Mountains, one of the prime locations for fall colors in the US.

Despite the inevitable doomsday predictions that the colors would be bad or super early, the colors were fantastic and right on time (late September and early October), as they usually are every year. In addition to the color we had some interesting weather especially late in the season.

Here’s a small selection of my photos from the fall this year, for the full set, see my 2018 Colorado Autumn Gallery.

Leave No Trace Releases New Social Media Guidelines for Photo Location Sharing

June 12, 2018 Sarah Marino

A pond filled with colorful leaves, found somewhere in North America.

Leave No Trace, a national outdoor stewardship organization that is best known for its 7 Principles, recently released new guidance related to sharing location information about natural and wild places on social media (you can see the full post here).

Based on my reading of this new guidance, three of the points are especially relevant to nature photographers:

Be thoughtful about and consider the consequences of sharing location information (including hashtags) beyond a state or region if you share location information at all
Be mindful of what your images portray (for example, if a photo – like the ubiquitous tent by lake theme - might encourage another person to do something that is in opposition of Leave No Trace principles, maybe you shouldn’t take or post the photo in the first place)
Encourage and inspire good stewardship practices when sharing photographs on social media.

In a discussion about this topic on Facebook, our photography colleague Phill Monson made another important point. With the number of people visiting wild places, Leave No Trace is more of a place to start. In addition, Phill is advocating the framework of "Leave it better than you found it." Since the photography community has played a major role in increasing visitation and bringing along the associated impact on special places, I agree with Phill that we as individual photographers have a responsibility to play a more proactive role rather than the more neutral (but still incredibly important) role suggested by the Leave No Trace principles.

I have experienced a lot of sadness and guilt over my own decision to share sensitive location information in the past. I was completely naïve about how people would use the information I was sharing and that decision possibly led to some special places being damaged by photographers whose top concern was getting the shot. As the co-author of two location guides, I am still trying to figure all this out for myself but am overall happy to see Leave No Trace advocating these positions since the impact of sharing location information is obvious to anyone who has seen some places before social media and after social media.

If you have thoughts on this topic, I would be interested in hearing them… For example, does this kind of guidance from a major stewardship organization change your thinking about sharing location information with your photographs?

F-Stop Collaborate and Listen Podcast Interview

May 14, 2018 Sarah Marino

We enjoyed being guests on Episode 52 of Matt Payne's F-Stop Collaborate and Listen podcast. It was a fun discussion, especially since we were able to record the episode in-person, which made for a more natural conversation than some other podcast interviews we have done. We talked about a broad range of topics, including photographing small scenes, some of the ethical issues involved with sharing location information, building a photography business that aligns with our skills and values, and women in photography. You can find the podcast in iTunes, on Stitcher, or on Podbean.

For the bonus episode, we joined our friends David Kingham and Jennifer Renwick to discuss being nature photographers while traveling full-time in an RV. You can find that discussion on Patreon.

Interview: QT Luong and His "Treasured Lands" Book

April 17, 2018 Sarah Marino

Today’s interview is with QT (Tuan) Luong, the author of Treasured Lands: A Photographic Odyssey Through America’s National Parks. Without physically seeing the Treasured Lands book for yourself, it is difficult to characterize how much of an accomplishment it is to visit all of these places, photograph them well and in diverse ways, write about each park, and pull everything together into a coherent narrative and visual celebration of America’s Best Idea.

Treasured Lands is a truly impressive and inspirational representation of a life’s work (the book is 456 pages long, with more than 130,000 words and 500 photographs). The book contains a helpful narrative section on each park, covering information about the area's ecosystems, geology, seasons, a map, and notes about each photograph. The photographs themselves go far beyond the typical icons featured in many photography books. Instead, QT sets out to share a more nuanced view of each place, displaying a diversity of views from across each park. I especially appreciate that the book includes both expansive grand landscapes and smaller scenes, an approach that helps showcase a fuller picture of each of the places featured in the book.

5 Tips on Photographing Abstract Subjects in Nature

January 25, 2018 Sarah Marino

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.

Gaia GPS App: One of Our Favorite Apps for Nature Photography

January 22, 2018 Sarah Marino

Cracked mud, Death Valley National Park. This small patch of cracked mud is located in a very expansive area with few navigational aids. Saving the GPS coordinates for this spot as a Gaia waypoint, along with a photo, makes returning to this exact l… — Cracked mud, Death Valley National Park. This small patch of cracked mud is located in a very expansive area with few navigational aids. Saving the GPS coordinates for this spot as a Gaia waypoint, along with a photo, makes returning to this exact location easy.

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.

Inspiration, Resources, and Recommended Reading for Nature Photographers (2018 Edition)

January 5, 2018 Sarah Marino

Over the last few years, we have sporadically shared links to inspirational/thought-provoking articles, good resources, and other recommendations for nature photographers. Instead of sharing this information in a bunch of separate posts, we are going to collect everything in this single post and keep it updated over the course of 2018. If you have recommended additions, please share them in the comments.

January 2018

Articles on Originality and Personal Expression: These three articles each take a different view of some of the current issues facing photographers in the areas of personal expression, originality, giving credit, and copying.

The Value of Originality by Guy Tal
Instagrammers are Sucking the Life & Soul Out of Travel in The Guardian
Photographic Plagiarism by Eric Bennett

Michael Kenna Interview with Light & Land: In this interview, the highly-respected black and white photographer Michael Kenna shares some insights about his life as a photographer and his creative process.

The New Publishing Landscape: If you have any interest in publishing a hard-copy book of your photography, this interview with Iain Sargeent is a must-read. Sargeant is a photographer who has created his own publishing business, publishing nine books so far. This article is an in-depth look at his experience and advice.

Josh Cripps at Nikon Live: Our friend Josh Cripps recently gave a 30-minute talk on his wilderness photography, sharing inspiring stories about his backpacking trips and the resulting photographs. The talk will be available through June and you can view it by clicking the link and selecting "Nikon Live from CES Day 4."

North American Nature Photography Association Showcase: Each year, NANPA publishes a collection of wildlife, nature, landscape, and macro photography that includes many inspiring photographs. You can see this year's collection using this link. I do wish that NANPA would upgrade the viewing experience with larger photos and a slideshow option, as the current presentation is quite cumbersome.

Adapting to Light by Eric Bennett: In this post, Eric shares what we consider to be an essential lesson: all lighting conditions can create opportunities for photography. By moving beyond the confining box of colorful light at sunrise and sunset, nature photography can become a much more expansive pursuit.

Tired of Perfection by David duChemin: This post was on fire on Facebook and it seemed to resonate with many readers. In sharing it, I will add one small quibble. I do not think the issue is so much perfection as it is creating soulless photographs. For my own photography practice, seeking some kinds of perfection can be a positive habit (for example, being precise with composition and technique while in the field). Otherwise, the message in this post is certainly worth considering as you pursue photography in 2018.

Relevance by Zachary Bright: In this brief post, Zachary Bright continues in a similar thread to David duChemin's post. Here, Zachary discusses what he sees as some of the pitfalls of seeking to stay relevant with the quickly changing whims of social media audiences.

Ron's 2017 Year in Review: In case you missed it, Ron shared his favorite photos (a quite diverse collection!) and a quick wrap-up of 2017 in this post.

Top 25 Photographers of the Year By Christian Hoiberg of Capture Landscapes: Christian's Capture Landscape's site has become an excellent resource for photographers over the last year. He shares a lot of inspirational interviews and practical advice for nature photographers. In this specific post, Christian shares his list of 25 favorite photographers during 2017 (including me - thank you, Christian!). This list included quite a few photographers who are new to me so I hope it might also help our readers find some new sources of inspiration.

From our Archives: Ten Tips for Creating Better Black & White Nature Photographs: In our most-read post from 2017, Sarah shares an in-depth list of ten tips for black and white nature photography - covering everything from field practices to photo processing.

Ron's 2017 Year in Review

January 1, 2018 Ron Coscorrosa

Sarah and I started and finished 2017 in Death Valley National Park. In between we also visited the Mojave Preserve in California, the Huntington Gardens near Pasadena, the Sonoran Desert in Arizona, Grand Teton National Park (twice), witnessed the total solar eclipse in Wyoming, and photographed fall colors in Zion National Park. We also photographed wildflowers and fall colors near our home in southwest Colorado, and finally moved into our house in October after living fourteen months full time in our Airstream trailer.

My complete processed work - so far - from 2017 can be viewed on my 2017 gallery, which includes:

Elements Collection - A collection abstract scenes in nature, many captured in 2017
Huntington Gardens - An incredible botanical garden near Pasadena, California
Mojave Desert and Death Valley National Park
Sonoran Desert
Grand Teton National Park
Colorado Wildflowers
Colorado Fall Colors
Zion Fall Colors

I also created a gallery of my favorite photos of 2017, a dozen of which I will share in this post below.

"Sun Dance" - The sun momentarily breaks through a thick fog layer in a Joshua Tree forest.

"Mojave Garden" - Lush desert flora in the Mojave Preserve

"Warm Fuzzies" - Teddy Bear cholla and ocotillo glow in the rapidly setting sun

"Organized Mess" - Cactus from a garden near Tucson, Arizona

"Pastel Grasses" - Papyrus in soft light at the Huntington Garden near Pasadena

"Gildy's Gift" - An incredible sunrise at Grand Teton National Park which we would have missed had our cat Gildersleeve not woken us up for food at 4 AM.

"Circles and Lines" - Lily pads in a small pond near Grand Teton National Park

"Sticks and Cones" - No further description necessary :)

"Who Needs Vermont?" - A colorful hillside of oaks and cottonwoods in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado.

"Fogged" - Fall aspens in a layer of ephemeral fog

"Last to Leave" - A few persistent leaves cling to a tree in Zion Canyon

"Autumn Sky" - Fall foliage contrasts against a blue sky

More Than Pretty Pictures

July 5, 2017 Ron Coscorrosa

"Morning Glory" - A memorable sunrise at Grand Teton National Park

This photo was taken recently at Grand Teton National Park and was one of the most incredible sunrises I have witnessed in person. It has a rainbow, colorful clouds, and warm light on rolling hills in addition to perhaps the most iconic mountain range in the United States.

It also says nothing at all about me as a photographer.