Sarah's 2019 Year in Review and a New Direction for 2020 - Black & White Photos

After the narrative below, you will find twenty more of my favorite black and white nature photos that I took or processed during 2019 (if you have a few favorites, I would love to hear which ones you like most in the comments). I am still working on my favorite color photographs from last year and hope to share those in a few weeks, so stay tuned. Being outside is my favorite part of nature photography and is where I devote most of my efforts, so I have always struggled with promptly/ever processing the photos I have taken. Thus, the fact that I am almost through ALL of my 2019 photos feels like a photographic miracle. In addition to my favorites, I will be sharing all of these new photos over the next few weeks and months. In the meantime, here is a quick recap of my 2019.

A New Direction for 2020

Sometime in 2010 or 2011, I remember hearing a line from an Avett Brothers song, “Decide what to be and go be it” and it has eaten away at me ever since. Since around that same time, I have been splitting my focus between a career in the nonprofit/philanthropic sector and an avocation/obsession/almost career in nature photography. This split has worked well in a lot of ways and has been hard in others. After physically moving away from the base of my nonprofit consulting practice in Denver a few years ago, this division of effort, time, and mental energy has made less sense with each intervening month. Not wanting to say goodbye to one particularly meaningful, years-long project served as my constant excuse to keep both lines of work going.

And then came what would be my final consulting project… Years ago, I started my consulting business because I wanted to remain in mission-driven work but never wanted to report to a nonprofit board of directors again. I enjoyed almost a decade of being able to choose projects that allowed me to avoid having to do so while still working on a range of interesting things. This summer, I said yes to a big project because of the money and it became that proverbial last straw – yet another supremely dysfunctional board of directors, a reminder of how I did not want to spend my time, and the final realization that I am just mailing it in for one career and not devoting enough time to the other.

And with that, I finally decided what to be and I am going to be it. In 2020, being a nature photographer, teacher, writer, and guide will be my sole professional focus for the first time in ten years. I am taking this leap with some trepidation that is balanced with a lot of enthusiasm and hope. It is far easier to earn a living through nonprofit consulting than it is through photography. My personality is a better fit for the inherently collaborative nonprofit sector than it is for the comparatively competitive field of landscape photography. I think I have more natural talent for consulting, coaching, and leadership than I do with nature photography, and I certainly have more confidence when it comes to the former than the latter.

But! I love photography, being in wild places, and building my knowledge as a naturalist more than I have enjoyed any other pursuit that I have tried. Our photography business has been successful without it ever being my primary focus so it seems like the right time to try to overcome the challenges I described above and see if I can make it work. And, to keep a bit of the mission-driven nonprofit spirit alive in my nature photography work, I plan to find ways to contribute to the social good through more active involvement in efforts like Nature First and other conservation activities.

2019 In Brief

Aside from this biggest of decisions, 2019 was a roller coaster of a year – full of sadness and anxiety about a family member’s serious health problems; full of joy at being able to be outside most days of the year; gratefulness for being able to live in a place I love and find endlessly inspiring; happiness with being able to spend a lot of time with Ron and friends in wild places; appreciation for the technology and modern work arrangements that allow us to travel and work remotely from our Airstream trailer for a good portion of the year; and challenging because of an injury that kept me from hiking as much as I would have liked and required a few months of physical therapy (thus, ending the year hiking 11,043’ Telescope Peak in Death Valley with no pain felt like a big accomplishment).

Priorities for 2020

For 2020, I hope to fully get through my backlog of unprocessed photos, share those photos more consistently, and be more disciplined and prolific with writing. During our last trip to Death Valley, I repeatedly remarked how my photographic calling card is “find pattern, compose photo, focus stack, repeat.” While I find great joy in finding and photographing these mundane subjects and then presenting them in a way that I find beautiful, I feel like that focus has come at the cost of other approaches to photography. So, I also want to try some new things, especially with composition, in this upcoming year to bring some diversity back to my work.

Thank you and Best Wishes for 2020

Thank you for your ongoing interest in and support of our photographic endeavors. I wish you all a healthy, happy 2020 - hopefully with some time spent outside enjoying wild places.

Note about the photos: You can also see these photos collected into a gallery for easier viewing.

#2: Desert Chronicle: Eroded layers expose the extensive geologic history of this Utah desert.

#3: Dinner Plate Aeonium: A silvery succulent from the San Diego Botanic Garden.

#4: Garden Stars: A fancy plant seen at the San Diego Botanic Garden.

#5: Lashes: A slice of focus reveals a different take on a common salsify plant.

#6: Scoured Mountains: Extensively eroded badlands in Death Valley National Park, California.

#7: Shimmer: Late light hits the edges of shimmering sand dunes. Great Sand Dunes National Park, Colorado.

#8: Geyser’s Edge: Intricate patterns line the edge of a geyser in Yellowstone National Park.

#9: Desert Temple: A slice of light illuminates this massive monolith of Entrada sandstone, which rises more than 500 feet above the surrounding desert.

#10: Bat Signal: Long shadows and upturned edges of mud tiles in Death Valley National Park, California.

#11: Winter Watchman: The iconic Watchman formation enveloped in a winter storm. Zion National Park, Utah.

#12: Two Trees: Two trees stand out during a snowstorm in Mount Rainier National Park, Washington.

#13: Saltscape: A look into the world of Death Valley National Park's tiny salt patterns.

#14: Desert Dust: Early light hits a swirl of dust in Death Valley National Park, California.

#15: Stripes: Early morning shadows reveal the patterns in Death Valley's badlands.

#16: Waiting for Spring: A dormant bush plus some interesting light, found while wandering through a magical canyon on Christmas Day. Death Valley National Park, California.

#17: Almost Twilight: The last light of the day peeks through seastacks at Cannon Beach along the Oregon Coast.

#18: Another World: Heat from the sun hits rain-soaked badlands in Death Valley National Park, California.

#19: Winter Begins: The first heavy snowfall of the year falls in Mount Rainier National Park, Washington.

#20: Glimpse: A window of clouds briefly opened up to reveal this peak before a blizzard quickly moved back in. Mount Rainier National Park, Washington.

#21: Hillocks: Soft hills on the fringe of Grand Teton National Park under a fresh coat of snow.

New Articles on Black & White Nature Photography, Including Before/After Examples

I recently shared a two-part article on creating bold black and white nature photos with Shuttermonkeys, a new photography education website created by Ian Plant and Zac Mills. You can find an excerpt and link to each part below, with the second article going through my processing steps for the two photos in this post (as a sample of what I cover in the articles, see the before and after GIFs at the end of this post).

Creating Bold Black & White Photographs Part I: In the Field

One of my favorite things about black and white landscape photography is the ability to push the boundaries of reality in a way that can be difficult with color photography. From my perspective, color photography is most powerful when it is grounded in what the photographer actually saw and experienced when creating a photograph. Since viewers know that a black and white scene is by its very nature a departure from reality, the medium offers more latitude for interpreting a scene - a creative freedom that I find exhilarating. With black and white photography, the photographer can emphasize or aggressively introduce drama, boldness, and contrast while still achieving an aesthetically pleasing result – things that are much harder to do when working in color.

In this article, I share four lessons for creating bold and dramatic black and white landscape photographs, focusing on steps that you can take while working in the field. In the second part of this article (below), I will share my basic approach to processing black and white photos along with some lessons on how to emphasize boldness and drama in the digital darkroom. Click here to continue reading Part I >>

Creating Bold Black & White Photographs Part II: Photo Processing

As I discussed in my first article in this series, Creating Bold Black and White Landscape Photographs, one of my favorite aspects of black and white photography is the opportunity to depart from reality, especially in terms of emphasizing boldness, drama, and contrast. For my digital black and white photography, photo processing plays a large role in realizing my vision for each scene. In this article, I will share my general approach to processing digital photos in black and white, go over my favorite processing tools, and share two start-to-finish examples.

While my color photography stays fairly close to the scene as I experienced it, the final result for my black and white photographs often represents a significant departure from the initial RAW file as you will see in the examples below. I do not intend for my black and white photos to be a representation of a reality that you might experience but instead want them to be a dramatic, bold interpretation of nature. Click here to continue reading Part II >>

Before and after examples featured in Part II:

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

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

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 >>>

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

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:

1. 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

2. 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)

3. 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

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.