Out on a woods walk one spring, I observed a pair of chickadees holing out a nest in a snag. Significantly, it was five feet off the ground, an eye-level dream that sent my photo-obsessed brain a-buzzing. Would they nest at that elevation in my backyard? What potential! The following spring I tested the idea. […]
Photo Tip: People in Nature ___ 11/2007
A missing element to make many a great scenic saleable can be pretty obvious. It’s an element that’s also ignored, overlooked, forgotten and even belittled by us nature photographers. Yet it’s an element we find endlessly fascinating, an element that grabs the attention in every scene. That element, of course, is people, and there’s no […]
Tutorial: Floral Portrait Conundrum ___ 07/2007
When shooting wildflower or floral portraits — pictures of single flowers or small groups of flowers — it’s often difficult to achieve both sharpness in the flower(s) and pleasing, poster-like, out-of-focus backgrounds. In the past I ususally went for the pleasing background, picking the most important floral part, like the stigma or edge of a […]
Glacier Bay with Alaska On The Home Shore
Aboard the kayak mothership Home Shore, we paddle the kayaker must-do Glacier Bay National Park in Southeast Alaska for the tidewater glaciers, bears, whales and birds. May, 2008. Glacier Bay National Park, SE Alaska. The morning of our departure from Sitka aboard kayak mothership Home Shore (Alaska on the Home Shore), Captain Jim Kyle announced that the […]
Photo Tip: Beat the Gray Sky Blues ___ 04/2007
The Northwest (US) where I live features some of the planet’s grayest skies, a nightmare of gray on gray for sometimes unending weeks at a time. In summer, on the coast, it mostly ruins photography while kayaking, but those same gray sky conditions present opportunities as well. Just ask Ansel Adams. A gray sky provides […]
Photo Tip: Dynamic Diagonals __ 01/2007
Photographers should regularly remind themselves that pictures aren’t reality, but are static, two-dimensional representations. Whether it’s on paper or your monitor, a picture is a frozen world. To thaw the freeze, show action, or re-create movement, look to the diagonal line, among the strongest of compositional elements. Diagonals imply action. Take a tree as an example. […]
Utah Canyonlands
A 4-wheel tour of Canyonlands National Park’s remote Needles District, and a rain-drenched raft trip of Catatract Canyon — with Tag-A-Long Expeditions. October, 2006. Moab, Utah. On a two-night trip sponsored by the Utah Office of Tourism and the Moab Area Travel Council, surprises came early. The first morning we traveled by 4-wheel with Dave Pitzer of Tag-A-Long Expeditions to the […]
Photo Tip: Patience in Bird Photography ___ 09/2006
You’ve found a wildlife shot to match your vision. Getting the shot often requires something more. Call it doggedness, tenacity, perseverance, or simply patience.For the last few August days, I’ve been photographing juvenile Green Herons that migrate through Seattle’s Lake Washington Union Bay each year. Most perches the Herons hunt from are crammed against the […]
Ford’s Terror
Aboard the kayak mothership Home Shore, we travel from Petersburg to Sitka, paddling in Endicott Arm, Ford’s Terror, West Chichagof, Taylor Bay and other Southeast Alaska locations. July, 2006. Petersburg, Alaska. We motored out of Petersburg under gray skies, heading north aboard the Home Shore – my 8th, and, as it turned out, wettest tour aboard the […]
Doing the Splits: Digital vs Glass Graduated (Split) ND Filters _ 08/2006
After hiking to Spray Park at Mt. Rainier NP (August, 2006), I shot a few frames to compare a graduated (split) neutral-density filter with achieving similar results in Photoshop. If you’re not familiar with split filters, they have darkened glass on half of their surface, to hold back the light, with clear glass on the […]