David’s Blog

I have been actively photographing people now for 10 years. Odd for me to think about when I remember actively avoiding people for the first 10 years of my professional career. I've gotten pretty good at getting nice portraits of all kinds of rural people and if the light and the person and the background and the photography gods all align I can even get...

Those of you who have had the misfortune of suffering through one of my workshops have heard me say numerous times- "The most compelling wildlife photography is that which allows you to enter the animals world. You do this by shooting at your subject's eye level." Sounds pretty simple but sometimes it is not quite so easy. This is a leopard tortoise, one...

I thought I would do a bit of teaching for the next few blogs since I have been preening and strutting the last few blogs- time to get back to what I do best. I am going to pick a few of my favorite pics from my Tanzania trip and talk about how I got the shot- a behind the scenes look at what I was thinking and dealing with in order to get the image. While...

  Indulge me just one more time for a few more favs from my trip to Tanzania. This is an odd grouping of images but I do like them. Some a pretty traditional but a few are unlike what I normally shoot. The elephant above is quite a departure for me. All my past workshop participants should be hollering bloody murder right now about the blank white...

I just spent 4 days in Mahale National Park on the shore of Lake Tanganyika on the western border of Tanzania. It is a huge, mountainous, mostly densely forested park with more than 600 resident chimpanzees. One troop of about 60 chimps has been habituated to people. Visitors in groups of 6 or less are allowed one hour of close proximity to the chimps to...

  Turns out that when on safari in Africa there are other things to photograph than lions, leopards and wildebeest. Turns out there are people who live in Africa and they make great subjects for photography. Now I realize that for many of you out there the thought of taking a picture of a person is bordering on absurd. But that is, quite frankly,...

Just got back from a 3 week trip around the national parks of Tanzania. Six friends and I visited Arusha,Serengeti, Mahale, Ruaha, Tarangire and Lake Manyara national parks making a big circle around this beautiful country. There will be a lot of related posts to follow but I wanted to get a few favorite pics up first to whet your appetite. Enjoy!

  Here is a selection of my favorite shots from the Maine Coast photography workshop I just completed for Santa Fe Photography Workshops in Acadia National Park. We had a really good group of people- enthusiastic, excited and very tolerant of the variable weather. I will be doing this workshop again next year, again with my colleague, Brenda Berry so...

This water swirl is a classic photo composition that is really easy to do but hard to get a really nice one. While I like this photo it could be better. I'll critique my own photo for you: Notice that the swirl is a bit ragged looking. This is because the shutter speed was only 6 seconds. I know that sounds like a long time but for this type of shot the...

Duck Brook is a stream that is about a mile long that drains the beaver ponds at Witch's Hole in Acadia National Park and runs steeply down to the coast. The first 200 feet of the stream cascades down gently sloping rocks that are covered in dark moss and algae making access  to any part of the stream fairly easy. On rainy days if you use a polarizing...