We have been down this road before. The last time around, people paid from $60 to $220 for a cheap Chinese lens they could have bought for $12. The lens was touted as a German product and the ads used fake quotes from a fake German engineer. They created fake test results and used fake testimonials. They grabbed professionally created photographs taken with professional photo equipment and passed them off as iPhone photos created with the so called “German engineered lens”.
Moon Over Balanced Rock, Arches National Park, Utah.
Are you planning a spring photography trip to one or more U.S. national parks? Where should you go? Which parks will provide the best photographic opportunities? Which parks are at their best in the spring?
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.
Big Bend National Park is one of my favorite places on the planet. My photography guide to Big Bend is here. March and April are good months to go. You will see more flowers in mid to late April but it will also be hotter. Fall is a prime time also. If you don’t mind the chance of a sudden cold spell and maybe some snow, I like winter in Big Bend too, but most people prefer spring and fall. Summer is ungodly hot.
Digital Photo magazine wrote an article on the top three ring lights for 2021. Ring lights are more flattering since they minimize shadows. And these are reasonably priced.
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 was processing this image of Lyn Marie in Photoshop and the longer I looked at it the more I decided the color of the door frames, carpet, and walls took away from her colorful clothing. It made sense to me to remove all color from the image except Lyn Marie. In this tutorial I will show you how to do that. The simplest approach was to create a black and white layer on top, and remove part of that layer so you can see the color layer of Lyn Marie underneath.
I was aware of some of Peter Lindbergh’s famous images, like “5 Supermodels” but I did not know until recently that Peter Lindbergh is the photographer that created those images. This documentary is about Lindbergh and his work and you see a number of his stunning images.
Georgia O’Keeffe is one of the artists that inspires me. This Sotheby’s video is promoting an upcoming art auction, but it features some nice footage of O’Keeffe and some of her work.
This is one of my all time favorite winter images. On a prior photo shoot, Beth and I went out into the cold and snow to create images. She played her violin while I took pictures. It was her first time shooting in the cold and snow and she was a real trooper. For that shoot she wore her long black concert dress. The snow melted not long after that, but we decide if another day came along with the right conditions we wanted to shoot in the now again.
Thanks to the recent Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC), photographing birds has been my thing lately. On a fine, chilly winter day with slightly diffused sunlight, I found this Cardinal in the snow.
I’ve been waiting for a sunny day for a while to photograph the Purple Finches that started coming to our bird feeders a couple of weeks ago. Yesterday I finally got my chance. This fellow landed on top of our deck umbrella before heading for one of the feeders.
Thanks to the weather and the recommendations from U.S. medical experts that this is not the time to be traveling, I have been doing much more photography than usual of the birds visiting our bird feeders. This male House Finch had just grabbed a black oil sunflower seed and was getting ready to eat it.
This series of articles is devoted to several photographers and one painter that inspire me. Some of them I have known for decades. Others I have discovered in the last few years. Books by and about them line my bookshelves. Each article has examples of my work and their work. That does not mean I am as good as they are. But I keep trying. Their work has somehow become a part of me. We can all learn from people who do such outstanding work.
Northern Lights over Lake Michigan, August 15, 2015.
I was leading a photography workshop in Northern Michigan and we were out on a night sky field trip at Lake Michigan. We started seeing some flickering in the northern sky which developed into this display of the Northern Lights. It was a great night at the lakeshore.
Last Light on El Capitan, Yosemite National Park. December 30, 1990.
Few photographers have had as much of an influence on me for as long a period of time as Galen Rowell. When I became seriously interested in nature photography I read his articles in Outdoor Photographer and his book Mountain Light was one of the most important books in helping me up my game as a nature photographer. I still consider it one of the three most important books any budding nature photographer should read. So my first visit to Yosemite was like a trip to the Promised Land and I felt like I was walking in Galen’s footsteps.
I was working in the studio with the beautiful Lela Rae. This is an example of cross lighting which creates nice contours and shadows. There is one light to her left and one to her right, almost directly opposite each other. I decided to use colored gels over the lights which I thought would enhance the look of the image..
This jumping spider is one of my favorite closeup images. The full story story (with photos) behind this image is here and begins in a garden center and ends in my front yard.
This is one of my all time favorite images. The whole story behind the capture of this image is here. I have several people to thank for providing me with the skills to create this image, one of the most important in terms of bird photography advice being Arthur Morris.
George Lepp is directly responsible for this image and he was standing just a few feet away from me as I clicked the shutter. There is a story leading up to this trip and the capture of this image.
I was walking our dog Sunny and he wanted to go to a nearby park. The park was filled with dandelions and a few puffballs. I was soon down on the ground creating images of dandelions.
It was a beautiful winter morning and Bob (my brother-in-law and photo buddy) and I were up long before sunrise to capture the early morning light at the Grand Canyon. It was our good fortune that it had snowed a bit overnight. The light was beautiful. With the coming of the sun the snow disappeared, as did the magic of the light.
The Maroon Bells is considered to be one of the top scenic photo locations in Colorado, and it certainly one of the most popular. The Maroon Bells and Maroon Lake are a stunning sight by both day and night (photo below).
The windchill was -40° Fahrenheit at Wildlife Prairie Park. It was bone chillingly cold, even with Sorel Pac boots, thermal underwear, and layers. I had to take a break about once an hour or two to warm up. But it was worth it.
My brother-in-law, who is also my photo buddy, were at Brainard Lake in Colorado. It was a cloudy day so we were photographing wildflowers. I was hopeful the clouds would part for a nice sunset but that did not happen.
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Lela Rae, Columbus Ohio, December 13, 2007
A couple of months ago I did not know who Peter Lindbergh is, but I did know some of his famous images, like his famous photo of five super models (see below). I just didn’t know that Lindbergh was the photographer.
I was driving north on Vermont Highway 7A and came to this cemetery and chapel near Shaftsbury Vermont. Dark clouds were quickly coming in from the west and the sun was rising in the east.
Over the last several years I have developed an appreciation and love for the paintings of Andrew Wyeth.
Dorothea Lange, one of my favorite photographers, is famous for several iconic images, “Migrant Mother”, California, 1936, being one of the most famous.