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

In this post, I share some highlights from 2023 along with some reflections on my current creative practices, thoughts about the direction of our photo business, some loose goals for 2024, and a short rumination about AI’s potential impact on my chosen career. If you are mostly here for the photos, you can skip ahead to the middle of the post. Before jumping into the text, I would like to thank you for being part of my photo community. I appreciate each of you and wish you the best for 2024! 2023 Highlights I spent a lot of time photographing, including both my typical nature subjects and a ..read more

While I am sometimes successful in avoiding cliches in my photographs, I am less successful in avoiding cliches for my blog posts. So here is my version of the yearly recap post! The beginning of the year is a good time to reflect and ruminate on the past year, but since this is the end of the year, I’m going to skip all that and just share some photographs. These are not necessarily my favorite twenty photographs of the year but they are a diverse selection of the places we photographed and visited in 2023, arranged chronologically. The locations include: Death Valley National Park, Anza-B ..read more

A screenshot showing our current offering of ebook portfoliios Ron is sharing a new portfolio of his autumn photography from Colorado and Zion National Park today. Like most of our recent work, he is sharing the photos in a PDF portfolio ebook (you can download it here, no email address or sign-up required). Each time we share one of these new ebooks, we receive a lot of questions that fall into two categories: why do you share your work this way and how can I create a similar PDF portfolio of my own work? We will answer both questions in this article. Our Reasons for Sharing New Photos in Po ..read more

The Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes in the late afternoon on a clear day. When we pulled into our driveway in November after our autumn trips, I thought my photography for the year had mostly wrapped up. Aside from an afternoon of local photography here and there, my camera would be getting a long rest for the winter. That was the plan until we started chatting about Death Valley and the ephemeral lake filling Badwater Basin right now. We really should go see it, right? Well, yes, we should. A day later, our trailer was packed and we were on the road. To the uninitiated, it can seem strange to have ..read more

A rare mix of ponderosa pines, Gambel oak, and aspen trees. Southwestern Colorado, 2023. 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. NEW PHOTOS AND OTHER THINGS: Composition webinar: On December 14, I will be teaching Composition and Visual Design for Nature Photographers for the Lehigh Valley Photography Cl ..read more

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, partially because it involves cooking a large, complicated meal and I always enjoy cooking—and sharing—large, complicated meals. My holiday meal this year was complicated because I did all of the cooking myself, not because I selected any fancy recipes. After integrating more modern dishes over the last few years, the traditional sides—sweet potato casserole, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, biscuits, corn, and stuffing—seemed most appealing as I prepared my grocery list so those are the dishes that ended up on my table (in addition to a less traditi ..read more