One big kayak trip, no backpacking, much bird photography most often by kayak. A few pika shoots. I only sought landscapes a couple times, pretty dismal really. But I like what I got this year while staying pretty close to home. Washington State has so much to offer photographers. All images were shot with either […]
Milky Way at Palouse Falls 2018_10
Everything was going according to plan. At home, I consulted with www.stellarium.org for the Milky Way location, NOAA for cloud cover and Google Earth for orientation at Palouse Falls, WA. An October Milky Way shoot looked probable. I also checked the Palouse River stream gage, which was flowing above normal, not high but good enough. […]
A Most Important Thing ____ 2014/02
Early on, nature photographers are taught the necessity of using a tripod. The great teacher John Shaw calls the tripod a crucial, best single accessory. Pros use tripods. With a tripod you slow down, take control and become a better photographer. You can better fine tune compositions, pick and choose elements like line and shape, […]
2013 Favorite Images Critique ____ 2014/01
I wasn’t thinking I had many favorites when I created a 2013_best_images Collection in Lightroom from the filtered three-star-or-better images of 2013. But I found many I was quite fond of, and in a couple short sessions whittled those to ten. Often it’s the field experience as much as the composition that yields a favorite, […]
Lightroom 5 HSL Panel: More Pop and Mystery ____ 2013/12
Last year (2012/09 Photo Tip), I wrote about using Lightroom Development tools to create Pop and Mystery in a photo. The gist: darken skies, selectively increase color saturation and increase contrast. Ansel Adams famously said the negative is the score, the print the performance. The RAW file you create in camera is a digital negative; […]
Photo Tip: Foreground Elements _____ 2013/03
In the field, I often stalk through a potential photo op with the viewfinder glued to my eye, seeking just the right composition or perspective. If I plan well, I’m scouting before the light gets good—in the afternoon for a sunset shot, or the day before for the sunrise. What I’m scouting for is foreground. […]
Tilt and Telephoto: Tools for Summer Wildflowers ___ 2010/06
Mt. Rainier National Park. A conventional 24mm could capture this shot (maybe), but seeing it is far easier with the TS-E. With the conventional 24mm, the depth-of-field preview button darkens the viewfinder too much; an alternative, an in-camera (digital) test shot evaluation, is time consuming. Near-to-far focus that’s not attainable with a conventional short telephoto […]
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 […]