Photography tools are not limited to the cameras, lenses, tripods, filters, flashes, lighting accessories, computers, and software, but let’s start there. First of all you don’t really NEED most of that shit. What you NEED to be a photographer is…
On Photography- Part I: An Introduction
Today I begin a series of rants on photography and creativity. I write these posts not as an expert, but as someone who is daily struggling with the artistic process of photography. If you manage to survive the reading of…
There are nights…
There are nights when things just go right, and for two reasons, last night was one of them. Reason #1: After thinking it wouldn’t arrive after all, my brand new Canon 5D Mark III complete with a 14mm f2.8 lens…
From the Archives: Bolivia’s Salar de Uyuni
I’ve recently been spending some time going through old images, processing images that for one reason or another I haven’t ever looked at in detail, discarding images, and generally conducting some house-cleaning in my Lightroom Archive. This is an image…
Aniuk River Stone
This is one of my favorite images from my 17 day trip down the Noatak River in August. We’d paddled through days of bad weater (see my previous posts on the trip here and here), and then we arrived at…
Intentional Blur
So much photography discussion revolves around how to increase the sharpness of your images. It’s an unspoken rule: good images need to be sharp. But like all rules, it is one that should sometimes be broken. Blur can be a…
A Quiet Aurora
Despite a promising forecast for last night, the aurora did not burst to light in the intensity, I and other Alaska photographers and aurora watchers had hoped. I did venture out to make a few images of the subtly shifting lights. Unfortunately…
Winter Light
Winter in Alaska has unquestionably lovely light. The main problem is that there isn’t a lot of it. We are down to a mere six and half hours of sunlight per day and dropping at a rate of 6 minutes…
Pop goes the Polarizer
If you encounter me in the field, you’ll likely find the lens of my camera uncovered by any filter. UV filters just add a layer of unneeded glass, warming filters have limited use, colored filters, in the rare times I’d…
A Prickly Subject- To Gear or Not to Gear
Right now, I’m building up the financial and mental fortitude to invest in a new camera body. Buying an expensive piece of gear is a slow process for me, I hem and haw, justify it one way, then justify the…