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on Jan 17, 2019 in Landscape Photography

Just a Smidge of Color

As I blew the 18″ of snow that fell during the night, my mind started to wonder about all the white. You gotta understand I love living in snow, the white transforms the landscape into shapes, contours and mysterious forms setting the imagination on fire. And as I worked the snow, I was paying attention to what was catching my attention in the all-white world (besides Sadie who is always by my side playing in the new snow with such joy!). The answer was pretty obvious, once I stopped and thought about it. It was just a smidge of color! I then came in from my three-hour fun outside and went to my files to see if my conclusion held true in my photographs. Now I have plenty of photographs where there is a smidge of white to set off the rest of the color in the scene. But with little effort, I found plenty of examples in my own files where just a smidge of color really set...

on Jan 3, 2019 in Landscape Photography

Little Slice of Mood

Mother Nature has many moves bringing a mood to a landscape. Those big mood swings are what bring such grandeur to our landscape photos when it encompasses it all. But more often then not, there is just a small slice in the landscape that has the mood. But we take the large sweeping landscape incorporating that little piece of mood or detail in hopes that its enough for the viewer to feel it. The problem is since we were on scene and our senses took it all in, we “see” and “feel” every little pixel of mood in our photo that our viewers never will. How then do we share with the viewer that little slice of mood? The one tool we have as landscape photographers for those little slices, telephoto lenses. When we think of landscape photography, we often reach for the wide angle. For one reason, because wide angle lenses have been pigeonholed as “the” landscape lens. But they leave us short when it comes to capturing...

on Dec 20, 2018 in Landscape Photography

That Gloomy Day

After my podcast and “polish a turd” comment, a few comments came in asking if there is anything one can do on those days when you show up but not the photograph. Of course, there are but the main issue is image quality. On days like you see below (the scene I saw), making something from nothing you run the real risk of breaking pixels in your attempt of making something from nothing, or, polishing a turd. But I wanted to provide some answer for those wanting some direction. The major of the polishing was done in ACR (working with Raw file, the greatest amount of info) and I like to start with the biggest problem first. To me, the biggest issue is the top half of the photograph that is all in flat gray. It has no character and is pulling down the whole mood. Our fastest and best tool is Dehaze. Dehaze though when cranked brings a blue color cast and creates noise. So I started with...

on Dec 4, 2018 in Landscape Photography

Never The Same Twice

Our wild heritage is a vast treasure we are so fortunate to have been left to explore and photograph! Yosemite Nat’l Park, Yosemite Valley is like no other place on this planet. And it’s never the same twice. That’s why we are there a lot, I mean a lot! We’re real fortunate that when the pass is open, we’re on the valley floor in a couple of hours from our home. We take advantage of that because its granite walls contain a celebration every season of the year. The beauty of the place is extensive, even if you could visit ALL of the park in a day, the next day it would all be different again. A classic example of this was last week when on numerous occasions, we visited one spot over and over again, Tunnel View. Tunnel View is a classic view of the entire valley you see coming in on Hwy 41. It is a breathtaking locale taking in Bridalveil Falls, El Capitan, Half Dome all...

on Nov 14, 2018 in Landscape Photography

Darn People in My Photo! Not!

I’m sure I’m not the only photographer to mumble under their breath as someone enters their landscape photos. I learned long ago though that most folks don’t stay in the same spot for five minutes so simply waiting often takes care of the issue. And then again, there is that thing called Photoshop which is a very effective tool for removing unwanted folks from our photo. But can we turn this negative into a positive in our photography? Especially if you’re in the commercial end of landscape photography, having folks in your photo is a huge plus. We have made a lot of editorial sales of well-known locales because we did have people in the photo. In part because of so many photographers want those photos without folks. Showing our wild heritage being loved is a money maker (and shows those folks for getting in our photos)! But what about including them to give our photo scale, a sense of size? Shooting in Arches last week with the Z7...

on Nov 9, 2018 in Landscape Photography

Arche’s Starie Nights

The heavenly bodies shimmered in the cold crisp skies over Arches Nat’l Park. So every night we’ve been out enjoying them and preserving the memories with our cameras. We kept it real simple so we could stay warm, have fun and be successful. The above photo was taken literally from the side of the road. We positioned ourselves so the oncoming car headlights did all the light painting, we just had to open the shutter and enjoy. The photo of Delicate Arch required a little more, had to make the forty-five minute walk up to it. Otherwise, I set up the D850 / 8-15Fish with ISO 3200, A WB, f5.6, 30secs and shot. The glow on the horizon is … the setting sun, light polution … I’ll let your imagination fill in the blank. We’ve had four great nights under the stars coming back with great memories, in our hearts and...

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