Sunset, “The Window”, from the Chisos Basin.
Big Bend National Park was officially established June 12, 1944. Generally I don’t like deserts. I like mountains, high altitude lakes and streams, cool breezes, and pine scented air. So imagine my surprise when I fell in love with Big Bend on my very first visit.
Children flee a napalm attack in Tr?ng Bàng on June 8, 1972. Left to right: Phan Thanh Tam, who lost an eye, Phan Thanh Phouc, Kim Phuc, and Kim’s cousins Ho Van Bon, and Ho Thi Ting. The “Napalm Girl” photograph galvanized an anti-war movement in the United States.
Associated Press/AP
53 years ago today a photographer clicked his shutter and one of the world’s iconic images was created. Officially known as “The Terror of War”, until recently it has been attributed to AP photographer Nick Ut who won a Pulitzer Prize for this image.
Blue Jay, Whitefish Point, Michigan’s U.P.
My Northern Michigan weekend photography workshops are usually in the fall, but this one was on Memorial Day Weekend. At each workshop we take a full day to go on a field trip to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
DaiQing Tana, Columbus Ohio.
The annual Asian Festival in Columbus Ohio falls on Memorial Day Weekend. Daiqing Tana is from Central Asia. She has a beautiful and unique singing voice and she is a talented folk dancer. She mostly sings Mongolian music and does dances that are typical of Central Asia. She performs with the group HAYA. They were in town for the Asian Festival.
Vietnam Women’s Memorial
Nicole in a church foyer.
The Graceland University choir were performing at a church in Grove City Ohio, and I was in the foyer to take casual photos of some of the choir members. The cool colored evening light was streaming in the north facing foyer windows, turning everything blue. I clicked the shutter at 7:08:40 pm. The light is not good. Sometimes I love blue, but not for this image. The image also looks hazy and lacking in contrast.
Motel rooms in Ludington Michigan.
Last summer I went to Michigan on a photo trip. I did not book any rooms in advance. Why? Flexibility. What if the conditions were so good at Trillium Ravine Nature Preserve (SW Michigan) that I wanted to stay another day? What if a photo location didn’t pan out and I wanted to move on much earlier than I had planned? The point is, I often don’t know where I will stay overnight until late in the afternoon.
Top: Original image. Bottom: Optimized version.
This before and after version is one more example. Your best images deserve to be optimized.
Blue-winged Teal
I take our dog for regular walks at our local lakes. I watch the waterfowl come and go with the seasons. I always have my “toy” camera gear with me, just in case (link below). For the last two weeks I watched the number of Blue-winged Teal slowly drop from 54 to 11. I wanted a photograph but they were always way out in the lake and too far away for a good image. And then it happened.
You don’t need a $1,400 camera and a $2,000 lens to take a picture like this. You don’t even need a camera at all. You don’t need any photographic knowledge, skills, and experience either. You don’t even need to go outside. It took me less than 30 seconds to create this image from scratch on my computer.
Loon, Seney National Wildlife Refuge, July 1, 2019.
Seney National Wildlife Refuge is one of my favorite places on the planet. Loons arrive every year in the spring, one of the many reasons to go to Seney. Not only are they fun to watch and photograph, there is nothing quite like hearing the call of a loon. Seney is in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula just north of Germfask. As an added bonus, ABJ has returned once again to Seney this spring. More about him later.
There is no Planet B. Take good care of this one!
John Muir
Today is John Muir’s birthday! He was born April 21, 1838. He had a profound influence on how Americans viewed our wild lands and his influence led to the establishment of many of our National Parks and other protected lands. He was nicknamed “The Father of our National Parks”. Tomorrow, April 22, is also Earth Day, so I am combining the two in this article.
Here are photos from some of my favorite national and state parks along with quotes from John Muir.
Screen Capture. Click to see a larger version.
I walked into the office this morning and this photo on my computer monitor greeted my eyes. This is a favorite memory and a favorite photo. Great job screen saver!
Dancer, Living Art Studios
Light levels on this stage were relatively low so I had to set the ISO on my camera to 6400 to get workable shutter speeds. High ISO settings means images with a lot of digital noise which hurts the quality of the image.
We’ve been down this road before (see the first link at the end). The scam works like this. Pick an inexpensively made product from China, jack up the price, make up ridiculous and false claims about the quality of the product and what it can do, and sell it on dozens of web sites using ads thinly disguised as articles. Go to the internet and grab professional photographs created with high dollar professional camera gear and put the photos in the ads to give the impression the photos were made with the Chinese product. And for good measure, say in the ads that the product was designed by American or German engineers and manufactured in the U.S. or Germany. Create fake customer reviews to go in the ads, and for good measure, create fake reviews sites to endorse the quality of the product.
Ocotillo. Big Bend National Park, Texas.
Which national parks are at their very best in the spring? If I could go on a fabulous spring photography trip to the national parks of my choice, all expenses paid, which ones would I pick? Here are my choices, grouped by state from west to east. This list includes the favorites I have been to and want to go back to again, plus the ones I haven’t seen and most want to photograph.
Camera LCD Display With The Blinkies Turned On. Washed out pixels in the photo are flashing white and black.
Some camera’s come with a highlight overexposure warning, commonly called “the blinkies”. If you have overexposed, blown out pixels, those pixels in your image will flash white and black. A quick look at the LCD image will tell you if part of your image has white, washed out, featureless pixels. If your camera has a highlight overexposure warning, I suggest you turn it on. If you see the blinkies and you don’t want washed out pixels, tone down your exposure until the blinkies go away.
Garmin GPS Map 67i
You need help. You can barely move. You are far enough from the trail that no one can hear your voice. You have no cell phone signal. What do you do?
Every now and then you hear tragic stories about people who lose their lives simply because they didn’t have a cell phone signal and couldn’t call for help in an unexpected emergency. A $300 satellite communicator could have saved their lives.
Lunar eclipse, totality.
Lunar eclipse, March 14, 2025. Click the image to see a larger version.
Exposure Data: Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 100-400mm lens at 400mm, f/8, 1 sec, ISO 3200.
Blood Moon Lunar Eclipse from Lamoni Iowa, May 15, 2022.
Don’t miss it. This total eclipse happens this Thursday-Friday, May 13-14 (depending on your time zone). This article will show you how to photograph it. To see it, just grab a lawn chair, a warm blanket, a cup of hot chocolate, and go outside and enjoy the show. A pair of binoculars adds to the show. Continue reading
Some of my favorite all purpose photography books.
Out of hundreds of books in my photography library, these are my favorite all purpose photography books. This is a list of the books that were the most helpful to me when I took a serious interest in photography, and I continue to refer to them. These books were written back when film was king, but that makes them all the more valuable to today’s digital photographers. Some digital photography books get so bogged down in digital technical information that the heart and soul of photography gets lost. The best film photography books are about the heart and soul of photography. They talk about light and shadow, subjects and form, texture, line and shape, and visual impact – all of which also applies to digital photography.
Deer, Great Sand Dunes National Park, Colorado
I usually prefer to go to Colorado in the fall to create landscape images, but I needed to be in Denver in early March anyway. So I headed south to the Great Sand Dunes and arrived February 28, 2008. The temperature was 44 degrees, so pretty pleasant for photography. It can be much colder in late February.
It was a week and a half after Valentine’s Day and most of the dozen Valentine’s Day roses in a vase on the dining room table were done and had been thrown away, but a few were still looking good. I asked Sami to lay on the floor, handed her a long stemmed rose, and I carefully arranged her hair. Then I stood up and pulled the best looking petals off of more roses and randomly dropped them on her. Some didn’t land quite right so I re-positioned a couple of them.
I recently watched The Devil Wears Prada for the first time. Fascinating and fun movie. In one scene, Amanda (Meryl Streep) the very particular and tough-as-nails editor of RUNWAY magazine says to Andy (Anne Hathaway) her new 2nd assistant, “Did Demarchelier confirm?” Andy is clueless. So Emily (Emily Blunt), Amanda’s 1st assistant, grabs a phone and says, “I have Patrick”. I got the Demarchelier reference instantly. I am a huge fan of Patrick Demarchelier’s work. You may not recognize his name but you have probably seen his work.
Gretag-Macbeth ColorChecker
This has to be one of the best kept photographic secrets: The more accurate your exposures are, the better your colors will be. Why? If your exposures are off, the colors in your photograph will shift in different directions. You can correct the exposure in post processing, but you can’t correct the color shifts. Since the colors shift in different directions, if you try to correct one color (as you will see below), the other colors will get even worse.
Rachel
This is Rembrandt lighting. The best clue is the triangle shaped light on her right cheek.
Camera LCD Display With The Blinkies Turned On. Washed out pixels in the photo are flashing white and black.
Some camera’s come with a highlight overexposure warning, commonly called “the blinkies”. If you have overexposed, blown out pixels, those pixels in your image will flash white and black. A quick look at the LCD image will tell you if part of your image has white, washed out, featureless pixels. If your camera has a highlight overexposure warning, I suggest you turn it on. If you see the blinkies and you don’t want washed out pixels, tone down your exposure until the blinkies go away.
Beth warming up in the car after the incident.
It was January 24, 2020, out in the country in Decatur County Iowa. “The Incident” is etched in my memory!
It was five years ago today at about 4:30 in the afternoon. It was cold and the wind was fierce, but Beth and I were determined to get a portrait of her playing the violin in the snowstorm. Why were we doing that? That story is here.
Beth playing her violin in the snow.
First things first. Yes, she really is a real concert violinist. Yes, she really is playing the violin.
Why is she doing this out in the snow? Good question.