Photography Blog
Trust Your Inner Voice
Listen to the Inner Voice
The influence of social media can have a significant effect on our work as landscape photographers. We are told about popular and easy to photograph destinations, what subject matter we should be looking for, proper times of day, how to compose, and which special effects are cool and hip...
Great Photographers are Rare
The landscape photography community has more great marketers than it has great photographers
How to Evaluate a Photography Contest
Contests have become an integral part of fundraising for many photography-related galleries, institutions, or groups. These contests, while not a definitive evaluation of quality, skill, or talent, can play in important role in providing photographers both inspiration and recognition...
Unconfudled
Unlike many of the landscape photographers I know, and many I don’t, I don’t have a close relationship with nature . . . photographically, anyway. I love nature, mind you, and find being inside her ever-diminishing confines relaxing and rejuvenating, but when we meet with a camera between us, I get what I like to call confuddled...
America's Photographer
I am old school. I feel it should be the work, and the meaning of that work, which defines the quality and success of a photographer. After all, without photographs our portfolio would be full of blank paper, and we all know how expensive fine-art printing paper can be...
Teaching is an Honor
A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure, and the honor, of speaking to photography students at the robust and thriving photography program at Black Hills State University in South Dakota. The enthusiasm of the students, as well as the collection of their photographs displayed in the hallways, was inspiring...
Finding Our Photographic Style
While talking with photography students recently, I was asked by one hopeful attendee about how one finds their style. I get the question a lot from photographers. When I was younger, I asked that question a lot...
The Value of Critiques
I recently worked with a friend on a portfolio for a possible magazine submission. He asked for some thoughts and, while some of it was not as positive as he might have hoped, I think it helped offer some clarity and possibility...
What is Vision
A couple of posts ago I wrote about photographic style. In a simplistic nutshell, style is how our photographs, as a whole, look. It is the tangible or digital manifestation of work. Style helps to give identity to our work and connect it to us, as the artist...
Oops, I Did it Again
I have a pretty good system for keeping my digital files safe. All of RAW files are saved to the cloud as a last resort backup (the TIFFS are just too large). Locally, I have four backup copies of my files, including one which resides off-site and gets regular updates (when I remember)...
National Park Artist Residencies
In the spring of 2011, on a lark, I applied for and subsequently received an artist residency at Zion National Park. For 28 days I lived in a small cabin within the park (the former visitor’s center and the oldest structure in the canyon) where I spent each and every day photographing the park, editing my work, or reading one of the many monographs or photographer biographies I brought along...
Old Dogs, New Tricks
We are never too old to learn. Learning is growth. And to grow is good. But that doesn't always happen. Often, and I know this is often true with me, we allow arrogance and insecurity to stifle our growth...
Cavaet Emptor
Photography contests, fed by our desire for attention and validation, have sprung up like dandelions over the past few years. Not only do they act as marketing materials for the hosts, but can be lucrative fundraisers for them...