Photography Journal

It’s July, I’m home in Vermont and I am desperate for landscapes. This seems a bit silly, after all, how desperate can a fella be for a landscape shot. All you have to do is go out and find a big attractive lump -mountain, barn, lighthouse – in the background and then find a big attractive lump – flowers, stream, rock – in the foreground, jam them all...

I had spotted him at the Crooked River overlook, a fellow photographer chasing a sunset. He had caught my eye as he cranked through shots, not at all paying attention to what he was doing. He was weathered and bent like an old oak snag and his face, a crush of wrinkles, showed only a faint smile. But he was a gentle man and when he spoke, his words were...

I was out taking pictures in my old sugar woods when I looked up and saw a man walking toward me. He was about my age but worn and walking absentmindedly as if he didn’t have a clue where he was going. It was pretty clear he was a fellow photographer. There was something else though that told me he was a photographer. Perhaps it was his bewildered gaze. Or...

The other side of mastering depth of field is photographing the grand landscape. In part 1 I talked about photographing a portrait where you will need both the appropriate f-stop and subject. The correct f-stop will allow only your subject to be in focus and the correct subject will have enough distance between it and the background to allow an out of...

Depth of field is one of the foundation concepts in photography and yet it is one that many of my students still don’t quite understand. Well, they think they understand it and they mostly do but the practical implications of using depth of field are almost universally poorly executed. Everybody knows that depth of field refers to the amount of the final...

Chapter 4 - American Vision - Amphoto Books Imagine yourself as a participant at a workshop that features John Shaw, Wayne Lynch and David Middleton as teachers. In the late afternoon, you are invited to join them on the terrace of the lodge for a beer and conversation. After the beers arrive and all pretense of formality depart you decide to ask them...

The Nature Photographer's Year The most common question I am asked as a professional nature photographer is “When is the best time to go to ______?”  You fill in the blank - Texas or Tucson to photograph wildflowers; Vermont or Colorado for Fall colors; the Rockies for bugling elk; Alaska or Africa; Churchill for polar bears. As far as I know there...