Beth is a concert violinist, who, in her own words “lives for art”. Our first outdoor photo shoot was in a cold and windy snowstorm with her playing her violin. Our second shoot was also in the snow (links below). For this autumn shoot we went with water.
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This is one of my all time favorite images of Sarah in the landscape. I love the pose, the light, and her rippled reflection in the water.
A photographer wrote to me and asked me how I put Sarah’s image out in the water and created such realistic looking ripples. I wrote back and told him this image is not a Photoshop composite. Sarah was actually out in the lake and the ripples are real. All of my images of models in the landscape are real.
This happy group of photographers is on a multi-day photo safari in western Colorado. The photographer in the foreground is using his hat to cast a shadow on the front of his lens. Why is he doing that?
Seriously, do you really believe you can see something “miles away like you’re standing next to it� We’ve been down this road before (see the first link at the end of this article). A $47 monocular is not better than a $3,000 telescope, but thousands of people who know nothing about optics fall for scams like this. This screen capture is from the top of a long ad on the internet.
What are your favorite portrait photography months? Whether you are a professional or amateur, when do you create most of your portrait images? Do they cluster around a particular time of year? For many wedding photographers the busiest times of the year are June and before Christmas. People who do senior pictures do most of their work in the late summer or fall, depending on when the photos need to go to the yearbook editor. My portrait photography is much less specialized, so I decided to check out my busiest months.
Long’s Peak and Bear Lake, Rocky Mountain National Park
Fall is a fabulous time of year to visit the national parks. Crowds are usually smaller than in the summer, temperatures are cooler, and some of our national parks have glorious fall colors. With so many to choose from, where should you go? Which national parks will provide the best photographic opportunities in the fall?
Hallett Peak and Flattop Mountain, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado
What are the best national parks to photograph in the fall? Here are my choices, grouped by state and province from west to east. This list includes the favorites I have been to, plus the ones I most want to see based on the recommendations of the photographers I trust, like Tim Fitzharris and QT Luong. More about them later.
Marshall Pass is a beautiful fall color drive in southern Colorado, and still pretty much a secret. It does not turn up on most lists of the most beautiful fall color drives in Colorado. It is a beautiful drive with a lot of fall color photo opportunities.
Maroon Bells and Maroon Lake. Mid-morning. September 24, 2015.
Headed for Colorado this fall? Welcome to my Colorado fall color photography and travel guide with 131 photos, 18 maps, and over 100 pages of information (if you print it all out). I cover some of the best known fall color locations in Colorado, and one real gem of a road that is mostly unknown to photographers and leaf peepers. Spend anywhere from a few days to two weeks exploring the beautiful Colorado Rockies at a gorgeous time of year.
Autumn, Tahquamenon Falls, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
Fall color will soon be sweeping the country (and already is up in Alaska). To make the most of it, you want to be at the right place at the right time. With some help from the internet, I will help you find the best fall color locations at the peak of the season.
I remember it like it was yesterday.
I was working in my office. The family/TV room was right around the corner. The phone rang and I picked it up.
“Stop whatever you are doing and turn on the TV.” I walked around the corner and turned it on.
LET US PRAY
On the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001, four planes were hijacked and ultimately crashed. Two crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City and one crashed into the Pentagon. The fourth crashed in Pennsylvania.
Dozens of people in each of four airplanes living in terror as their hijacked planes are flown to destinations unknown to them. Each ends in a terrible fiery crash.
Photographer Chip East was staring intensely at his laptop screen.
It was two weeks after two jetliners had plowed into the towers of the World Trade Center. His good friend, photojournalist Bill Biggart’s body had been recovered from the rubble. His personal effects, including his cameras had been released by authorities to his widow, Wendy.
Bill Biggart’s final photograph. He was killed when the second World Trade Center tower collapsed on top of him. He was 53 years old.
This compilation of news reports captures the essence of that morning better than almost any other video on YouTube.
Photo by James Nachtwey for TIME magazine.
I will never forget staring at the screen. I was stunned. It was just a few moments after I got the phone call to turn on the TV. Then the second plane hit.
On this date, nineteen years ago, we experienced a great national tragedy in the United States. 2,977 lives that were lost in the terrorist attacks. So many families were torn asunder. The way we view ourselves and our world changed. Emergency responders continue to suffer terrible health problems as a result of working at the scene. The way we view ourselves and our world changed too. Over 2,000 first responders have died of health issues related to 9/11.
In remembrance of that day, and to honor the lives that were lost, I am posting some tributes.
The original of this photo was a mistake. A throw away. Anoush and I were doing soft light portraits, thanks to the canopy of leaves overhead. I had carefully metered for the existing shady light conditions. But when I clicked the shutter, thanks to a breeze or something, the sun broke through the leaves and a beam of sunlight hit Anoush’s face and washed over some of the rest of the scene. The result was most of the image ended up somewhere between properly to overexposed, and her face was the most overexposed. It looked bad. The kind of photo most people would discard. But I didn’t throw it away. I learned from one of my photo guru’s years ago never to throw away a photograph, even a bad one.
Like a lot of other photographers, I do “outtakes” in between shooting sessions. I was looking through some travel outtakes recently and realized a lot of them were taken in between shooting locations while sitting at traffic lights, stuck in traffic jams, waiting for the rain to stop, waiting for the cold winter winds to die down, or just waiting for the quality of the light to get better. Each of these outtakes is connected in my memory with some of my favorite images. Take for example the right center image of Vassanta asleep in the car.
Last night I was looking at the folder with some of my “favorite photos” for August 23 (screen capture 1, below) and something did not look right. I knew I created the sunflower photo late in the afternoon on the way home from a retreat in Northern Michigan. I also knew I created the image of our grandson Drew in our front yard in central Ohio. So how could I have gotten home from the retreat in time to take a picture of Drew on the same date?
Perseid Meteor photographed from Rose Hill Cemetery west of Lamoni, Iowa. 4:55 am CDT, August 13, 2018. Cropped from the original image.
Tonight, August 11-12, is the predicted peak night of the Perseid Meteor Shower this year. But you can also look for the next few nights. This article will tell you what you need to know to see and photograph the most popular meteor shower of the year.
I had a great time on a recent photo shoot with Tabitha. I will take you through the shoot and make some suggestions that you can use in your own portrait photography. As is my custom before doing a photo shoot with someone for the first time, I asked Tabitha to go through my online portraits and any other online portraits she could find and let me know what she liked. She picked outdoor portraits, some of them among flowers, some of them in soft light, and some of them backlit by the sun. In some of the photos the subject was standing or kneeling, and in some the subject was laying in a bed of flowers. So that is what we planned on doing. The day before the photo shoot I scouted several locations to see which ones had flowers currently in bloom.
Soft light is the most flattering all purpose light for most portraits. It enhances good features and minimizes flaws in the skin. Some of the best soft light is outside on “cloudy bright” days. Those are the days that there is enough cloud cover that you don’t cast a shadow but not so many clouds that it is dark and gloomy. Another test of a good cloudy bright day is to see if you can look at the sky without squinting. If you squint there aren’t enough clouds.
I was standing on the sidelines taking pictures at a high school football game. I was there just for the fun of taking pictures of my son and our home town team. Little did I realize that what happened next would dramatically improve my photography.
Marshall Pass is a beautiful fall color drive in southern Colorado, and still pretty much a secret. It does not turn up on most lists of the most beautiful fall color drives in Colorado. It is a beautiful drive with a lot of fall color photo opportunities.
Maroon Bells and Maroon Lake. Mid-morning. September 24, 2015.
Headed for Colorado this fall? Welcome to my Colorado fall color photography and travel guide with 131 photos, 18 maps, and over 100 pages of information (if you print it all out). I cover some of the best known fall color locations in Colorado, and one real gem of a road that is mostly unknown to photographers and leaf peepers. Spend anywhere from a few days to two weeks (or more) exploring the beautiful Colorado Rockies at a gorgeous time of year.
Richard Duane Klug (the name just above the rose) was born January 26, 1946. He died in Darlac Province, Vietnam, November 14, 1967 at the age of 21. He is one of over 58,000 American soldiers that died in Vietnam, and one of over 1.1 million American soldiers that have died in all American wars (almost half of them in the Civil War).
U.S. Flags at Sunset, Rose Hill Cemetery, Lamoni, Iowa
From Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865.