Bryce Canyon After An Overnight Snowstorm
Cold and snow can cause a lot of damage to your camera gear. Something as simple as shooting outside and taking your camera inside your house or car can cause hidden damage that won’t show up until days or weeks later. The simple steps in this article could save you hundreds of dollars in repair bills.
Twilight, Rocky Mountain National Park. Sirius, Canis Major, Orion, Taurus, the Hyades star cluster, and the Pleiades star cluster are all visible in the fading light. Click for a larger version.
You can photograph the night sky year around, but winter brings an added bonus: SNOW! When you don’t have the benefit of moonlight, most of the year land forms a dark to black silhouetted skyline against the night sky. In winter you have the possibility of including the highly reflective snow. You can see both in this photo. Any place not covered with snow is very dark to black. Having reflective snow is why winter is the favorite time of year for a lot of photographers to go out and photograph the night sky.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
The video quality of some of these links is iffy.
I Have a Dream – short version with still photos
I have a Dream – short version with video
Martin Luther King Jr.
Today is Martin Luther King Day in the United States. Martin Luther King, Jr. was born January 15, 1929. He was a Baptist minister and a prominent civil rights advocate. King was the youngest person to receive a Nobel Peace Prize when it awarded to him in 1964. He was assassinated April 4, 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee.
One of his most famous speeches was delivered at the Lincoln Memorial August 28, 1963. Often referred to as the “I have a dream” speech, it is one of the most significant and powerful speeches of the 20th century. A portion of the speech follows. Links to the full speech and an audio file are at the end of this post.
Snow Hummocks, Merced River
Just like metering daytime winter scenes, the key to metering evening winter scenes is knowing what to meter and deciding how much exposure compensation to use.
Cougar
Most wildlife are medium to dark in tone, making them a challenge to meter properly in the bright, white tones of winter. If you trust one of your camera’s automatic exposure modes, the odds are good you won’t get the best exposure. If you switch over to manual exposure and make the right decisions, you can get great exposures and better quality photos (more about that later).
Elk in the Snow, Horseshoe Park, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado
Metering dark toned wildlife in the snow is a major exposure challenge. It is usually best to avoid large “burned out” areas (washed out, featureless white) in a nature or landscape photograph, but with properly exposed snow, the wildlife can be so dark as to lose all texture. On other hand, metering for the wildlife can burn out the snow. So what do you do? And what about the complications of metering white animals?
Sunset, Corn Field, Lamoni Iowa. 4:47 PM.
Four years ago this afternoon my wife sent me on a quick errand to the grocery store. As I got close to the store I looked at the sun. I ended up laying down in a corn field instead.
Kristina in the Snow
The white snow in a winter scene can and often does fool a camera meter into underexposing a portrait, so here are the steps to take to get the right exposure. I throw in a few portrait suggestions too.
Mount Hunter from a Bush Plane. Denali National Park. Alaska.
Metering for scenes with a lot of snow can be tricky since the bright snow fools the camera meter. I see a lot of winter photos with gray snow, which means the camera meter did exactly what it was designed to do. The solution is quite simple provided you know what to do.
Last Light on El Capitan, Yosemite National Park
In addition to all of the usual photographic challenges, winter provides some extra complications, especially in terms of metering. So I began this series of articles on winter photography. Check out the links below. The articles will help you meet the unique challenges of winter photography. So get out there, have fun, and create some great winter images!
Adobe Bridge, partial screen capture. Click to see a larger version.
For a project I am working on, I opened my “favorite photos” folder with Adobe Bridge to look for my favorite portraits created in Michigan. I did a search for “Michigan” + “portraits” and in less than a second Bridge showed me all of my favorite portraits taken in Michigan. This is a partial screen capture of some the results. (Bridge found a total of 154 favorite portraits taken in Michigan.) As I looked at the stars under the portraits of Anoush, it gave me an idea that became this article. My camera can rate photos with one to five stars. when I download the photos and open them in Bridge I see those star ratings. Sometimes that can be very important.
Sunset Light on El Capitan
We spent most of the Christmas holiday in the Bay Area visiting family. When we left the Bay Area the morning of December 30, 1990, we decided to make a side trip to Yosemite before making the long drive home.
Kristin, December 29, 2014.
Kristin wanted to know if we could squeeze in a photo shoot while she was home for the holidays. “Of course”, I said. December 29 was the day that worked for both of us. We went to downtown Columbus Ohio to create images. Thanks to the sunshine and the clothes she chose to wear, you would never guess the windchill was 26° during our shoot. We were texting Christmas greetings to each other and I reminded her how cold it was for this photo shoot. She didn’t realize it was that cold. She was caught up in the memory of the photo shoot.
Have a joyous holiday season!
Silent Night, Moraine Park, Colorado
Snow glistens in the last light of dusk.
Distant clouds glow with the fading light from the sun, long since set.
Kristina at Christmas
On Christmas eve I found myself doing Christmas portraits for Kristina’s portfolio. She is a friend of mine who is a model and actress in L.A. I had to improvise a bit with the lighting and I needed to get the right mix of flash and ambient light for the look I wanted.
Lamoni Schools Jazz Band. December 11, 2025.
Under the direction of Mackenzie Stotts, the Lamoni bands put on a fun and varied winter band concert with a mix of traditional music and holiday favorites. Lamoni has four bands that played in this order: the High School Jazz Band, the 5th and 6th grade band, the 7th grade band, and the 8th – 12th grade band. Each of the bands played several numbers with classics like “Winter Wonderland”, TV special music, like “You’re A Mean One Mister Grinch”, and music from “The Polar Express”. A delightful surprise was “Carol of the Boombuckets” featuring boombuckets and boomwhackers. Boomwhackers look like swimming pool noodles, but they are made of plastic and cut to length to make different pitches as you swing them to hit the floor. It was a happy evening for the big and appreciative crowd at the Shaw Auditorium.
Christmas Lights, Easton Shopping Center, Columbus, OH
‘Tis the season and there are a lot of Christmas lights out there to photograph. It is fun and easy, and with a few tricks up your sleeve there are creative things you can do. Many of these techniques can be used on other lights throughout the year, so this is a good time to practice your skills for photographing lights.
Aspen grove, Marshall Pass, Colorado.
Autumn is by far my favorite nature photography season. I take more pictures in the fall than any other season of the year.
Autumn leaves, Columbus Ohio. December 17, 2016.
Nine years ago today I was out walking our dog when I found this pile of leaves with some ice pellets. Unless I am surprised in the days to come by some unexpected fall color, this is the end of my “fall color series” for this year.
I have a folder with my favorite fall color trees and leaves arranged by date (without regard to the year). Back in September I got the idea of posting my favorite fall color photos arranged by date. I began this series September 23 with a photo of aspen trees and the Maroon Bells in Colorado. December 17 is currently the photo with fall color. Some time in the future I may have to plan a trip to look for fall color somewhere farther south.
I created this for an art exhibit and posted it today as a result of a special request.
Autumn Leaves, Columbus Ohio. December 15, 2015.
My fall color series continues. In Ohio, Autumn was working overtime to create fall colors. These maple leaves were in our yard. I was surprised there were colorful leaves so late in the fall.
Spanish Peaks and La Veta Colorado. March 8, 1993.
Yesterday, December 11, was International Mountain Day, and I missed it. I didn’t even know there is such a day. I love mountains!
Cougar, Wildlife Prairie Park, December 9, 1995.
It was 30 years ago today and I was face to face with a cougar. The windchill was -40° Fahrenheit at Wildlife Prairie Park. It was bone chillingly cold, even with Sorel Pac boots, thermal underwear, layers of clothes, and a winter parka. I had to take a break every hour or two to warm up. But it was worth it.
Frost on Autumn Leaves, Columbus Ohio. December 9, 2016.
It was a frosty morning and our dog Sunny and I went out for a walk. It was my good fortune to find these colorful autumn leaves. Autumn was not done yet in Ohio.
Graceland Gadets. Dance Recital, Living Art Studios
Parents and other family members can order event photos at my Zenfolio site (link below). Most digital cameras create “long aspect ratio” files which print out at 4×6 inches, 8×12 inches, 12×18 inches and larger. But for artistic reasons some images look best as “standard aspect ratio” prints: 4×5 inches, 8×10 inches, 11×14 inches, and larger. Prices are also determined by the aspect ratio. An 8×10 print is $5.99 and an 8×12 print is $6.99.
Tap 1 Class, “Like It’s Christmas”, Dance Recital, Living Art Studios
“Twas the Night Before Christmas” Dance Recital
As the parking lot filled up and people swarmed into the Shaw Center Auditorium, it was clear once again that this is one of the most popular events of the year. It was a visual and musical feast as 55 dancers from the classes at Living Art Studios, along with the Graceland Gadets, provided 16 dance numbers that told a story. Narrators between the dance numbers wove it all together by telling a fanciful story of “Twas the Night Before Christmas” right here in Lamoni. An incredible amount of work by the dancers and the dance instructors goes into this production, plus the people that work on the music, lighting, sound, costumes in a riot of Christmas colors, plus the crew helping out backstage. It is one of the best nights of the year!
Screen Capture of Adobe Bridge. Click the image to see a larger version.
As a photo editor said long ago, “Take lots of photos and send me the very best.”
The “Living Art Studios” dance recital was Saturday night. It is one of the biggest events of the year in our little town. Yesterday I sent a small selection of images from the recital to the local newspaper which is published weekly on Thursday. I usually send 6 to 10 images and they usually publish from 3 to 6 and on really slow news week they post even more. Today I am taking one last look at all the dance images for any additional favorites for this event. Here in this screen capture from Adobe Bridge are the first 20 shutter clicks (one RAW and one JPEG image for each click) with one of my cameras.