Earlier this week, I saw a post on a nature photography forum about how a forum member had just returned from a trip and as part of his culling process was deleting everything he didn’t immediately like. My reaction was NOOOOOOOOO! DO NOT DELETE! Unless a file has a clear technical issue (extreme under exposure or is out of focus in a bad way) or was a clear mistake (tripping the shutter while carrying my camera around and creating a series of blurry photos of my feet), I have learned to save nearly all of my photography files for future me. Below, I’ll share four examples of why I am glad to ..read more

In early June, we headed to Iceland for an 18-day photo trip. If you have visited Iceland yourself, you will not be surprised to hear that the weather was quite challenging and we had to completely change our plans in response. While we hoped to take our rental 4x4 campervan into the interior highlands, we ended up mostly sticking to the Ring Road because of rain, relentless wind, and quite a bit of late-season snow. Despite these challenges, we still had a lot of fun experiences, including visiting a puffin colony in the snow, photographing Iceland's incredible river deltas, and seeing a perf ..read more

This is the third in a series of three posts featuring my photographs from Death Valley National Park taken over the 2023-2024 winter season (first part here, second part here). Death Valley is known for many things: the salt flats and polygons at Badwater Basin, the various sand dunes scattered across the park, and the impressive and colorful badlands. Perhaps less appreciated are the mountains, alluvial fans, and canyons spread across the park—and the rocks that comprise them. Death Valley is geologically diverse and chaotic, qualities that are obvious with even a single afternoon in the pa ..read more

This is the second in a three part series of photos from Death Valley taken this winter (see first post here). This post is about Lake Manly. Lake Manly was a permanent feature in Death Valley until it evaporated about 10,000 years ago and now only forms during periods of heavy rainfall. During Hurricane Hilary in August 2023, heavy rains repopulated the ephemeral lake, and atmospheric river events in January actually raised the water level. During a few wind events in late February, the lake blew to the north before resettling back south and finally fully evaporating by May 2024. Watching th ..read more

Sarah and I spent almost ten weeks in and around Death Valley this winter in our trailer. Our first trip was a quick (for us) week-long visit in December to see the ephemeral Lake Manly before it evaporated. We followed that up with a longer eight-week trip starting in late January, during which our “ephemeral” lake refilled with several atmospheric river events in California. The winter weather was wet, providing many opportunities (lakes, wildflowers, and even fog), but it also closed the roads to many of the park’s further reaches. I have processed almost 250 photographs from these two tri ..read more

Soft mist rises below a row of spring trees at Virgil Point Campground on the morning of the 2024 total eclipse. In 2017, photo friends invited us to camp with them in Wyoming to view that year’s total solar eclipse. We accepted the invitation, mostly expecting some fun social time and an interesting life experience. By the time the eclipse ended, Ron and I both felt like it was a truly transcendent moment—one of the most special occurrences a person can experience in nature—and we decided we would put extra effort into seeing eclipses in the future. As nature photographers, we contemplate th ..read more

Ripples form after a flash flood, with the milky flood water filling the depressions. Death Valley National Park. QUICK NOTE: I will be joining Nic Stover's Speaker Series on Wednesday, April 3 at 4:00 pm PT to teach a new class on photographing abstract subjects in nature (like those shown in this post). After my presentation, I will be doing a processing demonstration, too. If you cannot attend the live session, Nic will be sending out a full recording to anyone who registers. You can learn more here. I hope to see you there! Review of February + March Well, I missed my monthly update ..read more

Light beams shine through heavy storm clouds, illuminating the Panamint Mountains. Death Valley National Park. I’m sharing a wrap-up like this at the end of each month to help with accountability and discipline. The basic format: an inventory of how I spent the last month with regard to nature photography and our photo business, a casual discussion about the things that are on my mind, and a few non-photography recommendations at the end. This could be a very short update since I focused on two things over the last month: 1) working on the fully revised and significantly expanded second editi ..read more

Over the last few years, we have occasionally put a tub of water in our backyard during colder weather to see if it might create some opportunities for photographing ice patterns. We never put much effort into this approach to photography because it seemed like we could usually find something more interesting in a natural setting. Enter Adam Gibbs and the preview pages for his new book, Land & Light. In one of the sample spreads, Adam shares a beautiful photo of frost patterns and describes the “ice farming” operation behind its creation. This story made me decide to put a bit more effort ..read more

A lovely spiral aloe, referenced in the text below. I have recently served as a judge for a few different photo club competitions (in addition to being a judge for five award seasons with international photo competitions) and continue to see the same issues pop up. Some of the issues are really basic, like dust spots and tilted horizons, while others are far more subjective. With these experiences in mind, I share some advice to consider when you prepare your next competition entry (or magazine submission, gallery show entry, portfolio, or even your next social media post). This article repre ..read more