Mindset: A Comparison of Expectation-Driven and Experience-Driven Photography

April 14, 2021 Sarah Marino

Over the weekend, I participated in the Out of Chicago (OOC) LIVE online conference as one of the instructors. This is the third online conference OOC has offered during the pandemic and they all have been such inspirational weekends. (Although the live conference is over, you can still purchase the recordings through April 16 and then access the sessions for the next year.) The organizers always pull together a great mix of inspiration, motivational storytelling, and practical education. I am usually on the side of practical education since that is what comes most naturally to me but last weekend, I had the chance to speak in one of the full conference keynote spots and give an “inspirational” talk. It felt like a big stretch and I was super-nervous leading up to my session but once it was over, I felt like I could do more on the “inspiring” side with some practice.

I chose “shifting your mindset” as the topic of my talk, with a focus on thinking about how you show up and the positive and negative ramifications of the ideas you bring along with you. The role of expectations in nature photography is one of the three areas I talked about, with the encouragement to set aside expectations and show up with an open mind. Generally, I think of expectations as blinders that you put on before you ever get out of the car, often leading to being laser-focused on a preconceived idea that may or may not materialize. By putting the expectations mindset aside, you can instead show up with an openness to serendipity and the opportunities that are in front of you at the moment instead of the conditions or compositions you hoped for that may never materialize.

Ron's Recent Work from Death Valley 2021

April 13, 2021 Ron Coscorrosa

Sarah and I were fortunate to spend almost three weeks in February in one of our favorite places, Death Valley National Park. Like our other two pandemic trips, we packed the trailer to the brim and avoided the need for having to go to a grocery store or laundromat for the entire trip. We focused mostly on canyons (new and old) but explored a few other new areas of the park and also returned to a few favorite locations. A few of my favorite photos are below, but you may wish to view the entire gallery.

This was my first extensive trip with my new camera, a Canon EOS R5 and also the Canon RF 100-500 lens - both of which are amazing. In addition to the extra 100mm reach over my previous 100-400mm lens, the close focusing distance makes the 100-500mm a pseudo-macro lens and opens up a lot of creative possibilities.

Also, as you may have noticed, our website, photo galleries, and online store (along with a new logo) are now at https://smallscenes.com and no longer Nature Photo Guides (though the old links will still work). We felt a change was needed, and Small Scenes, in addition to being easier to remember, shorter, and more unique, also better represents our photography and philosophy.

Sarah's Recent Black & White Photographs

February 1, 2021 Sarah Marino

I planned for this article to be a collection of my favorite black and white photos from 2020 but a few things intervened with that plan. Although I like all of the photos here and think they are worthy of including in my black and white photo collections, only a few feel like they will qualify as “favorites” as time goes on. I also found time to process some photos from previous years as well, broadening the collection a bit. So, below, you will find some recently taken and recently processed black and white photos, with a few stories about our travels during 2020. I hope you enjoy the photos and the stories - and I hope that 2021 is off to a good start for you, despite the complex circumstances of these times.

Ron's 13 Year Backlog - Completed!

January 26, 2021 Ron Coscorrosa

Like many others we have severely limited our travel during the pandemic. All of this time at home meant I no longer had an excuse for avoiding a large looming project that has been taunting me for many years: processing my entire photo backlog. I am happy to say that project is now complete!

The full gallery of all my new or newly processed work, over 300 photographs, can be viewed here. If you don’t feel like spending an hour looking at 300 photos, you can save some time and just look at my favorites from this project. The photographs are all organized into their respective galleries as well.

In addition there are several new galleries that I created as part of this project: Plants - Black and White, Northern Rockies, Kauai, Panoramas, and Wildlife. My Eastern US and Pacific Northwest galleries were also greatly expanded.

About 80% of the photos are new, and the rest are re-processed versions of photos that I didn’t like the original processing on or photos I never added to our website for whatever reason. I have been doing a good job of keeping up with my backlog for the last few years, but I never spent time going through these (mostly) older photographs until now (the oldest photos are from 2007, the most recent from 2020).

What follows is a selection of some of my favorites from this project, but see the links above for the complete set.

Ron's Recent Work from Colorado and Utah

November 26, 2020 Ron Coscorrosa

Sarah and I recently returned from a trip to Zion National Park. With our self-contained trailer it is remarkably easy to stay away from people, which we managed to do for the entire trip, our only visits up the main canyon were on bike. Prior to Zion we photographed fall colors here and there around our home in southwest Colorado. Here’s a selection of my photographs from that period, you can see the full gallery here, which includes over forty new photographs.

Ron's Recent Work from Yellowstone

September 30, 2020 Ron Coscorrosa

Sarah and I recently returned from Yellowstone National Park, our first extended photography trip since the pandemic began earlier this year. Apparently the rest of the United States also felt it was a good time to visit the park, but despite the crowds (which we could escape easily by getting up earlier or hiking on less popular trails) we had a great time. We were treated to a variety of conditions including an early season snowfall, foggy chilly mornings, and the onset of fall colors. It felt great to be outside photographing again.

Here is a selection of my photos from the trip, you may wish to see the complete gallery which includes over fifty new photographs.

Free Recorded Webinars for Nature Photographers from Nature Photo Guides

June 30, 2020 Sarah Marino

Over the last few months, I have recorded six free webinars for nature photographers in partnership with photography friends (David Kingham, Jennifer Renwick, John Barlcay, Cole Thompson, Alister Benn, Alex Noriega, and TJ Thorne). This post collects all of these recordings in a single place for easy access and viewing. You can access the recordings through the links to our YouTube channel or find the embedded videos below.

Offering these webinars has been a highlight during a difficult time and it was so nice to connect with photographers across the globe through these sessions. After taking a break from offering webinars to finish my 11 Composition Lessons ebook, I will be starting these sessions up again soon in some to-be-determined format. If you have a topic in mind that you would like to see covered in a future webinar, please let me know.

Composition & Photographing Nature’s Small Scenes: 5 Essential Ideas

June 17, 2020 Sarah Marino

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.

Ron's Recent Work From Spring in Colorado

May 31, 2020 Ron Coscorrosa

Like many of you, Sarah and I have spent the last few months at home, keeping to ourselves and limiting our human interactions to the virtual kind. A few months ago - before COVID-19 asserted itself - I deleted my Facebook and Instagram accounts, and have recently deleted my Twitter account as well. I may detail the reasons why in a future post but I don’t think they will be surprising. If you want to contact me email is the best method.

Recently as local travel restrictions lifted, we were able to spend a few mornings and afternoons exploring the forests nearby our home in southwest Colorado. We caught them just as they were coming out of their winter slumber and putting on the fresh green coat of spring. We are extremely fortunate to live so close to so many beautiful areas that are just a short drive from our home.

Managing Expectations and Bringing an Open Mind

April 8, 2020 Sarah Marino

TINY ISLAND: A tiny island sits off the Vancouver Island coast, seen here under a very soft sunset. — **TINY ISLAND:** A tiny island sits off the Vancouver Island coast, seen here under a very soft sunset.

When I talk about my photography, I often try to emphasize the importance of minimizing expectations and being open to what the landscape has to offer during your visit - be present for the opportunities that exist, not the opportunities you wish existed. I emphasize this lesson both because I think it can be vitally important to creating expressive photographs but also because it is a lesson that I need to learn over and over again. Below, I share how this played out during a photography trip to Vancouver Island, British Columbia and some practical advice if you find yourself in a similar situation.

Before I took up photography, a 2007 article in Sunset Magazine about Port Hardy, one of the area’s northernmost towns, sparked my interest in visiting Vancouver Island. The photos that accompanied the essay were haunting – almost monochrome because such a thick fog enveloped the massive monolithic seastacks, leaving just a faint hint of the dense vegetation that characterizes this landscape visible. I had never seen such a landscape in person and almost couldn’t believe it exists.

15+ Free and Low Cost Photo Education Resources You Can Access from Home

March 23, 2020 Sarah Marino

Colorful badlands in Death Valley National Park

In about an hour from now, I was supposed to start teaching a photo workshop in Zion National Park. Instead, like most of you reading this, I am sitting in my home trying to figure out what life looks like going forward. Last week, I spent far too much time obsessing over the news and feeling anxious about all the suffering that is happening across the world because of the coronavirus. This week, I am trying to focus on more productive things. Since I am assuming that may of you are going through the same evolution and might be looking for ways to occupy your mind and build your knowledge, I have pulled together a list of some of the resources I turn to to improve my photography skills and stretch my thinking. I know that many of you are likely facing financial uncertainty, so everything I include below is free or affordable. If you find post this helpful, you are welcome to share it widely.

If you do have more to spend and are looking for an online learning opportunity, I would encourage you to consider Out of Chicago LIVE, which is a new interactive photography conference that will be be held April 24-26, 2020. I, along with 60 other inspiring photographers, will be teaching on a variety of topics related to nature and landscape photography. You can learn more here: https://www.outofchicago.com/live/.

Finally, if you have a favorite photographer who makes their income through workshops and speaking, please consider supporting them right now by doing things like buying tutorials, ebooks, or online teaching sessions. Since many working nature photographers are self-employed, this is going to be an especially difficult time for our profession (example: most of my income for the year disappeared overnight). Self-employed people typically cannot access programs like unemployment compensation, so the loss of income from in-person workshops or speaking engagements is going to create a dire situation for some photographers who are your biggest sources of inspiration.

Ron's Recent Work from Death Valley

March 15, 2020 Ron Coscorrosa

Sarah and I spent most of February in Death Valley in our Airstream until eventually the busy weekend crowds drove us away. Despite Death Valley’s increasing popularity it is still possible to avoid the crowds if you explore lesser known areas of the park, including the numerous canyons which have been the focus of our last few trips to Death Valley, and feature prominently in this collection.

This is only a small selection of my photos from our last trip, please see my recent work Death Valley gallery for the complete fifty photograph collection.

“Curves” - Shadow and light and blowing sand mingle.

“Proud Pygmy” - A Pygmy Cedar against a glowing canyon wall.

“Sand Waves” - Sand patterns that are revealed for a few moments when the sun is low in the horizon.

“Spray Paint” - Natural graffiti adorns this rock in the Panamint Mountains.

“Ghosts” - Drifts of sand blowing in the howling wind

“Beamed” - A sunbeam briefly lights up an alluvial fan.

“Winding Canyon” - Reflected light in a remote canyon.

“Sand Storm” - Dust and sand from high winds revealed this layers of the Panamint Mountains.

“Tortured” - A gnarled and twisted remote canyon wall more resembling driftwood than rock.

“Rock Candy” - A potpourri of colors and shapes

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