One day, a woman and her friend walked into my gallery to look at some images. My wife chatted with them during their visit and learned that they were truck drivers from Texas. They saw a lot of country in their travels but always from the road, at 65 mph and at the wheel of a semi-truck while a...
Last holiday season, we took a quick trip up to the La Sal Mountains. Because this was designated as a “family” trip I took only my trusty Canon S95 point and shoot camera to ensure that photography didn’t accidentally take a front seat to the great Christmas tree expedition of...
I’ve lead or assisted at a lot of photography workshops over the last six years and in that time I’ve noted several issues that seem to be common among novice landscape photographers. As I think back to my own early photographic escapades I must admit that I made several of these sam...
Way back in the days of old, I’d head out on a road trip to an iconic national park with a couple dozen rolls of Velvia triple bagged in Ziplocs in the cooler. Images of Delicate Arch framing the snowcapped La Sal Mountains, wildflowers dancing in alpine meadows below Mount Rainier or the rugg...
I’m a professional photographer and I have a confession to make: I use my iPhone camera more often than my 5D Mark II. It’s true! My iPhone is with me about 100% of the time, the 5DII not so much. It just isn’t practical to lug around a bulky, three pound camera everywhere I go...
Standing along the shoreline of String Lake, whose placid waters offer a mirror image of the imposing Tetons, I catch an erratic flicker of movement in the trees to my left. This is grizzly country. They may appear brutish, but grizzly bears are quite capable of deft movement, especially when th...
The Grand Circle encompasses the largest concentration of spectacular national parks and monuments found anywhere in America. It is a region of diverse landscapes and extreme beauty, all connected by a network of scenic backroads. Arches National Park isn’t the largest park in this region...
Generally speaking, nature photographers aren’t known for traveling light. We’ve got tripods, ballheads, lenses, cameras, filters, flashes and reflectors, not to mention backpacks, headlamps, tents, sleeping bags and the myriad items required to hike into the backcountry. If you spen...
Pick up most any coffee table book featuring landscape photography and you’ll likely be confronted with image after image of sweeping vistas and vast panoramas. Most of the images are probably photographed using a wide angle to moderate focal length lens. What you won’t see are a bun...
While assisting at a photo workshop in Arches National Park, the leader called it quits when warm sunset light failed to materialize. We all packed up our camera gear and loaded into cars for the trek back to Moab. No sooner had we hit the main park road than a faint wash of color started spread...
With memories of alpine wildflowers in the not-too-distant past it’s almost impossible to believe that autumn is right around the corner. And yet, all the signs point to exactly that. Temperatures are trending lower, bears are focused on getting fatter and sunset is arriving earlier every...
Wouldn’t it be grand if every photo vacation involved puffy clouds filling an azure sky above rugged peaks, deep canyons or vast deserts awash in alpenglow every morning and every evening of our trip? Perhaps some photographers are so lucky. I am not one of them. Twice now I’ve spent...
I’m a serial planner. In the weeks leading up to a trip I obsess over maps and guidebooks, and I spend inordinate amounts of time on Google searching for photos and information about my chosen destination. Some call it a sickness. I call it, well…a sickness. But if anything good may...
Most nature photographers enjoy the ephemeral escape afforded by wandering through wilderness areas near and far, away from the chaos of the city. We peer through viewfinders, absorbed in perfecting a composition and unaware of what is happening around us. We haul around hundreds or even thousan...