The day before a workshop in Glacier National Park, Jay and I took a short hike out near Logan Pass. It’s an incredibly beautiful place… and at that time of year, the meadows were in full bloom. Trickling streams, waterfalls, and mountain peaks all around you. Breathtaking.

While we were there, a couple of mountain goats were snacking in the fields. We took lots of photos, but this one really had me laughing, so I thought I’d share it with all of you. What do you think it going through his mind right now? Make me laugh!

Happy Friday, everyone! I hope you have a great weekend!

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Notre-Dame By Night

Last year I was able to attend the Diane Arbus exhibition at Jeu de Paume in Paris. While it was interesting and I admired many of the images, I must confess that it wasn’t really my cup of tea. Almost the entire collection was dedicated to portraits of the marginalized, transvestites, intellectually handicapped and deformed. By the time I reached what turned out to be a very lengthy exhibition it had all become a bit too much. There was a quote on printed on a wall which has stuck with me a while.

“A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.” Diane Arbus 1971

I found this quote rather puzzling. Did she make up these words to perplex people? Or because it simply sounds kind of cool? The words have started to make more sense lately. Every photograph can tell truths or lies and sometimes both. The viewer won’t know the difference and it’s all part of the enigma of the art.

I don’t use composites and almost all my work consists of straight shots from a single RAW file processed through a workflow that takes 5-10 minutes. Even though my approach is somewhat more purist than most, I can easily manipulate a situation to tell the story I want.

Take this photo of a lady with her umbrella on a rainy night in front of Notre-Dame. She was talking on her mobile phone and spent about 15 minutes on the quay, mainly with her back turned to the river. She turned around to face the cathedral long enough for me to shoot a few frames. Does knowing this change how you initially felt about the photograph? When you see an image, you don’t really know about the event, the context or how the photographer decided to interpret it. I think this was what Diane Arbus was alluding to. Personally, I feel that sometimes we talk so much about what went on behind the scenes that it takes the intrigue out of our own photography.

Large version of Notre-Dame by Night

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This beautiful place is a tourist hot-spot in Iceland. A steep trail provides access to the mighty Skógafoss waterfall. The view gets better and better as you get closer to the fallsl. If you ever get a chance to visit Skógafoss, don’t forget your camera – and be sure to take some time to climb to the top of the falls. Click on the image above to download the image for your desktop background.

As always, these images are provided for personal use as computer wallpaper or backgrounds ONLY. Copyright belongs to the photographer, and photographs cannot be used, redistributed, or recreated in print or on the web or on any other medium without written permission from the photographer.

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This multicolored heron was in perfect position holding very still to catch his food, when an wandering alligator disturbed its concentration and scared the fish away. I never did get to see him catch a fish.

The usual blue colors you see in this image are all natural… they are not caused by a polarizer or enhanced in photoshop. So why does the water look so blue? All the light reflecting on the water was bouncing away from me. Why? Because I took this shot early in the morning when the angle of the sun was low. So, the only thing I could see on the water was the reflection of the clear blue sky. Additionally, in order to expose the subject properly, the parts of the image that were in shade (along with the reflections on the water) were under exposed. This gave the water an even deeper hue.

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Here’s a shot from Death Valley National Park. I love shooting by moonlight! The soft glow is incredible – and when you are in a place like this, it’s so hard to pack up and go home! Why not stay just a little bit longer and capture the moonlight on the sand? This is a composite shot. I took one shot for the foreground and sky, and a second shot – slightly zoomed in – to capture the moon with the proper exposure. I combined the two images in Photoshop to produce an image that looked as much like the reality of the scene as I remember it as possible.

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Have you ever tried to make the reflections an entire image? This is exactly what Varina did in the image above.

This image of stork was taken in Everglades National Park during our 2011 workshop….Varina was looking for something creative that would set her shot apart from other animal shots.

Often times with reflecting images you get imperfections in the rippling water… like the bending beak in this shot. But these imperfections give the image a bit of character.

Compare this with Jay’s image of another stork (below). In Varina’s shot, the subject is isolated against the reflected blue sky in the water… and the upside-down bird with all its imperfections adds interest and grabs your attention. My shot below is just another bird portrait – full of distractions. And the head of the bird gets lost in all those grasses behind him.

So next time you go out in the field… look for reflections. Maybe you’ll capture something unique!

To learn more about composition and color check out our eBooks below:

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Here’s a shot from Nine Mile Pond in the Everglades. It’s a beautiful place to watch the sunrise – but on this morning, I wasn’t getting any good photos. Although the sunrise was pretty, it wasn’t very photogenic – and the water was a bit choppy. A couple of test shots failed to get me excited.

I wanted to transform the scene. So I pulled out my neutral density filter. The idea was to block some of the light coming into the lens with a grey filter – that would mean I could use a much longer shutter speed. The effect was exactly what I wanted. A 25-second shutter speed (f/8) blurred out the waves, giving the water a smooth, calm surface. The slowly moving clouds blurred just a bit – which left the sky looking dreamy. Most importantly, the reflected light on the water scattered with each wave, producing an opalescent glow.

Simple, in-camera techniques like this one can turn an ordinary scene into something just beyond the usual. Have you used a neutral density filter for a similar effect?

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What is the most important element in your photograph? Can you identify it, or is your eye pulled from one element to another? The next time you go out to shoot, take a moment to consider the scene carefully.
Choose a single interesting element… a leaf, a water droplet, a rock, a tree… and see if you can find a way to make that element stand out in your photograph. There are so many ways to build an image around a single point of interest.

• Remove distracting elements from the frame by moving around to change your composition… or by moving them physically.
• Use a wide aperture to blur out distracting details in front of or behind your point of interest.
• Use color to make one object stand out.
• Use leading lines to direct the viewers attention toward your point of interest.
• Watch for patterns… an element that breaks the pattern will attract attention.

There may be many elements in the scene that interest you. Why not make several images – each showcasing one interesting object – rather than trying to include them all in a single frame?

To learn more about composition and color check out our eBooks below:

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Monello the Jester

Today, Naturescapes.net announced their “Images of the Year”. This means that the two nature photography forums I am currently involved with have now made their selections from the photos submitted over the past year. Special congratulations to Paul Marcellini whose image “Frozen Tempest” took out the 1st place in the landscape category for both Naturescapes and Nature Photographers Network. Just click on the hyperlinks to check out the photos the respective moderating teams thought to be the stand-outs of the year.

I am of course delighted and honoured to have been named winner in the “Travel & Culture” category in the NSN awards. It’s the first time a portrait of mine has been recognised in this way. I don’t often talk about gear on this blog since these days, I find it difficult to get too excited about the newest and latest gadgets. The Canon 5DMkII provides more than enough resolution for my needs and my lenses do well enough to get the job done. My main gripes are the 5DMkII’s poor environmental sealing (it seems to stop working every time it rains) as well as the corner softness and distortion on my 16-35mm 2.8L. The one piece of gear I really love though is my portrait lens, the Canon 85mm 1.2LII. It’s a chunky nugget of a lens, focus is sluggish and it’s difficult to use wide open. But get it right and the images have pop, great contrast and the bokeh is beautiful. Being able to shoot at such wide apertures has allowed me to work without flash. It’s the lens I used to capture this portrait of Monello with the technical details handheld at ISO 400, f2, 1/500. I’ll certainly be packing it when I return to Venice for Carnevale in a couple of weeks.

Wired

“Wired” is an example of going out with the limitations of a fixed lens and seeing what you come back with. I shot this with the 85mm wide open at f1.2. Most monochrome photos of Paris celebrate nostalgia and “golden age”, however I wanted to show something of the city today. Perhaps I should have named this “Wireless” instead since many parks now offer internet connection through wifi. So here is a glimpse of Tuileries in the age of Facebook, Twitter and Lady Gaga.

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Life is beautiful! Here’s a touch of fresh new life to give you a little pleasure as you wait for Spring! I took this photograph in Great Smoky Mountain National Park.

I wanted the flower to stand out, so I blocked all the light except for a little beam that was falling directly on the flower. The light on the flower is completely natural, but there were other spots of light in the scene as well. I had to use my body and my camera bag to block the light that I didn’t want to include in the image. I wanted just one trillium flower in the frame. I chose the title to match the image…Glow of Life!

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