About a year ago, I was searching for a personal photography project to work on. I chose trees. Not just any tree, but solo trees that had interesting branches and twigs. I didn’t care what time of day or what kind of lighting conditions. I wasn’t that specific. Like many New Year’s resolutions, I let…
Role Reversal
If you have followed our photography travels at all, you know that the best time (and our favorite time) for landscape photography is late in the day or early morning, called the golden hours. White Sands National Monument has been on our photography bucket list for a few years, ever since we photographed our first…
Trust Your Gut!
Just like in most things, sometimes you do best when you trust your gut. Here’s my story: We’ve been up since 4:45am and driving for over 8 hours through winding mountain roads, and finally, we arrived at Badlands National Park. It is hot with not a cloud in the sky. Somehow, 96 degrees here in…
We Discovered a New Animal Species
A goal of our visit to the Grand Tetons, Yellowstone, Custer, and Badlands is to photograph critters. Whenever we visit places such as these we start our animal hunt, trying to add as many species as possible to our trophy case (aka, photo collection) . It’s not good enough to just see a species, we…
Castles in the Sky
Our tour of Yellowstone included a visit to Mammoth Springs. I had thought that all the geyser basins and hot springs in Yellowstone were similar [see Jeff’s post, “Old Faithful“], just with different shapes and some color variations. How wrong I was! As we drove into the town of Mammoth Springs, I saw a mountain…
Old Faithful
We visited the Old Faithful area of Yellowstone National Park with the intent of photographing a famous spring, a famous pool, and a famous geyser. The Grand Prismatic, Morning Glory, and Old Faithful were in our sights. Oh well, one out of three ain’t bad. The best time to photograph these geothermic phenomena is in…
Tetons: Puzzle Perfect?
As a child, I loved puzzles. It didn’t matter what type of puzzle (a wooden cube, a plastic maze, entwined metal pieces or a jigsaw puzzle), I was always thrilled to receive one as a gift. It was my goal to figure it out as soon as possible, even if that meant staring a pieces…
The Barns of Mormon Row
Photographing old barns is a fascination of many photographers. We see an old barn or dilapidated building, we want to shoot it. While we were in Palouse, WA, we traveled the county, dirt roads and all, photographing buildings and barns left for dead. If we see a building in ruin on the side of a…
The Most Dangerous Place
From a distance, the thick cactus needles shimmer in the light giving a halo effect and the illusion of softness. I’ve seen children go up and want to pet them, and even adults are tempted to check out the softness of the needles. I guess this why they are named “Teddybear Cholla”. The appearance is…
Hidden Valley
For landscape photography, online research only gets you so far. Sometimes you have to talk to the locals, and sometimes you just need to experience the area to identify the location to capture the best images. Joshua Tree National Park was no exception. Research indicated the best locations to shoot were (1) the “Hidden Valley” area…
