A lone tree sits at the bottom of a lakebed in the face of an oncoming storm Black and White Landscape Tree Photo Clouds. Clouds are catnip to a black and white photographer. Clear, blue skies are just pure evil. Well, not evil, but they’re just so damn boring. Whenever I’m out shooting in clear skies, I have to make sure the foreground is extra special because I have to compose the image with as little sky involved as possible. On this day, however, there were clouds. Glorious, ominous, pre-storm clouds that made me giddy with anticipation. I don’t like to talk about my gear often, because i ..read more

Lone tree amongst the fog Black and White Landscape Photo of a Tree Amongst the Fog I woke up groggy at around 7:30 in the morning. I had one of those nights where I couldn’t sleep from 3:30am to 5:00am. After stumbling downstairs, feeding the cats their morning treats, and putting the coffee on, I plopped down on the sofa and made the mistake of looking out the front window. Shit. It was foggy. The fog. It makes for such wonderful photographs but it comes rarely in the area where I live. So when it happens, I have no choice but to get dressed and drive to a ravine close to our house to take ..read more

Return to Film I’m going to make a lengthier post in my newsletter about returning to shoot film, but I wanted to show a set of pics I recently took on Kodak Portra 400 film using my Leica M6 Classic ..read more

It’s easy to go down the perfection rabbit hole in photography. The camera manufacturers constantly hype the clarity and megabytes of their latest cameras. YouTube is filled with reviews reiterating how sharp and perfect pictures are coming out of the newest gear. One can easily be led to think that the goal in photography is flawlessness. But that is far from the truth. Great photographs aren’t great because of their technical prowess, but how they make one feel upon their viewing. Photography, at least for me, is supposed to be fun. You know what’s not fun? Stressing over whether the light ..read more

Driving Down I-5 During the Holidays The family decided to spend Christmas in Disneyland this year. Ever since my father passed in 2020, and my mom has been lost to dementia—not too mention all the kids are adults now—the cohesion has been broken for a larger get together with the extended families. So instead of spending the holiday alone at home, we opted for going to Disneyland. To change things up, I decided to bring along my Leica M10 Monochrom and 28mm lens for the trip. The fog covering most of the Central Valley on I-5 We got up at 5:00 am on Saturday morning before Christmas and drov ..read more

A Mixed Bag for 2023 Things got a little crazy for me in 2023 photography-wise, and that is reflected in my top ten pictures from this year. Last year, my top ten were all black and white landscape or street photographs. This year, my pictures are all over the place, but the pictures are also a bit more personal, which is a net positive. It’s been a year of struggles for me to maintain any kind of consistency with my photography. At the end of 2022, I made a list of commandments that I was going to follow for 2023. I’ll list them below, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t follow a single on ..read more

Gus Powell Shortly after the 4th of July, an email arrived from the Leica Store in San Francisco announcing a day of street photography with Gus Powell. To tell you the truth, I had never heard of Gus up until that moment in time. Looking back on that now causes me to shake my head back and forth. The man is a talented New York City street photographer and was tutored by the legendary Joel Meyerowitz. I guess I shouldn’t be too hard on myself for not knowing all the major NYC shooters out there. My incredulousness comes after the fact, after spending the day with a man who has fundamentally c ..read more

Discovering Macro Flower Photography I’ve always been drawn to macro photography. I think most beginners end up taking close ups of flowers in or around their house as they learn the ins and outs of photography. But taking closeups with an entry level camera and kit lens is not the same thing as taking them using a professional-grade macro lens. Having been inspired by a video on minimalist photography by Judy Hancock Holland, I went ahead and purchased a used Sony A7RIV and the Sony 90mm f/2.8 macro lens. As with any new genre of photography, I dove head first into learning. Before long, hal ..read more

I recently acquired a Leica Q2 Monochrom to see how I like it compared to my M10 Monochrom. As I'm getting older, autofocus is something I'm becoming more interested in having, especially for candid and travel photography ..read more

A behind the scenes look at my post-processing techniques for Leica Monochrom image files using Lightroom, Silver Efex Pro, and Photoshop ..read more