May 15, 2018 | Landscape Photography
The Black Hills experienced a pretty big wildfire this past November. And while it was devasting, Mother Nature has turned it around this spring with the most amazing green carpet of spring grass I’ve ever seen!
One of the magic ingredients to the green is the rain like what we had this afternoon. The past few days of heavy fog soaked the grasses and with the bit of warmth we had today, a spectacular thunderstorm belted us with pea size hail and gorgeous skies.
It was one of those afternoons you could point your camera anywhere and come away with a sweet click. Capturing all the detail was easy with the D850 with the 8-15Fish, 18-35AFS and 70-200f4 attached. I did create a hole in the ground with the circles I made constantly turning to capture the show. Simply gorgeous spring thunder!
May 11, 2018 | Wildlife Photography
It’s calving time on the plains. These orange bundles of cuteness look nothing like what they are going to grow up to be. But they don’t know that. And calves typically hang with their moms, never even knowing their dads. So when this curious calf wondered far from its mom to check out the bulls, well, my imagination took over my biological knowledge to simply ask, “Are you my daddy?!”
May 11, 2018 | Landscape Photography
I know one thing I won’t accomplish in my life, going into space. The earth though holds a humungous hold on my visual imagination after growing up with the images from Apollo. Getting a photograph of our planet from earth, I depend on my vivid imagination and the 8-15Fish. I point it up towards the heavens, trying to not tip over backward in the process, staring at the skies with their clouds looking for the “earth” in my viewfinder. I got one of my better ones yesterday. Just another split second of my imagination.
May 8, 2018 | Wildlife Photography
Angry?
Can just ONE word change the entire meaning of a sentence? We all know it can. What do you think ONE word can do to change the meaning of your photograph?
Bad?
When are often distracted from the visual communication, storytelling in our photography with little things and miss that ONE word that makes or breaks the story we’re trying to tell.
Love?
However you want to think of it, gesture, lens, f/stop, background, DoF, whatever that ONE thing is, you have to THINK of it, see it, feel it, incorporate it into your photograph. Because we all know the power of just, one word.
Note: DO NOT attempt this with a wild griz. This is a scientific griz used to understand more about griz biology and has limited, very limited association with humans. Jake still lives, his website is here.
Apr 30, 2018 | Landscape Photography
Have you ever made plans to go shoot at a location, months in advance and then once you arrive on location, you can’t get to that spot? We ventured to The Palouse Falls last fall, it was gorgeous! I was soooo looking forward to photographing it with the winter runoff but sadly because of a tragedy, it was closed to the public. That meant finding something else to shoot and with a week of gorgeous, rolling hills and red barns, it was time for a change. I was told about a ghost town, Elberton, so decided to check it out.
We all conjure up different mental images of a ghost town. With my decades at Bodie, that’s what came to my mind. Elberton is nothing like Bodie and certainly not The Palouse Falls. So when I parked, disappointment instantly set in. And with disappointment comes, yep, no desire to take photographs. This is especially true when you aren’t as a friend of mine would say, “Not feeling the love.” SO what do I do in these situations?
There are a couple of things I do personally when this scenario happens. The first is to pull out a lens that is the least likely to be the natural for the location. In this case, I started with the 8-15Fish on the D850. With that, I went looking for a subject. The light on the hoop caught my attention (there were only 4 subjects to pick from so not really difficult). OK, that first click was passable so the funk started to fade. After some time walking, the light mellowed and looking back at the hoops, I got out the next unlikely lens, the 105 f1.4 so the background business would disappear somewhat and the hoop would pop. Then as the light faded, even more, I saw the last shot that I really like. I always surprise myself when I successfully work through a photographic funk. Next time when I’m in one, I’ll remind myself of the time with the ghost hoop.
Apr 27, 2018 | Landscape Photography
One of my favorites places on The Palouse is the Cordelia Church founded back in 1883 and is still in use. With the bald skies, there was no clouds to help bring drama to the “church on the knoll” so I turned to the D850 / 8-15Fish.
The first two photos are strictly to provide you a sense of the walk up the hill to the church. It’s the last two photos here that tell the story I wanted to present on this incredibly beautiful, peaceful and tranquil place. And the gorgeous 8-15Fish did a marvelous job in the telling.
