Articles about Photography
Visit the Image Gallery
The New Piece of Gear that’s reinventing my photography
I want to introduce you to a new piece of photography gear that is reinventing my photography. It's a box This is going to require some explanation, and that requires a few digressions. You might want to grab a nice beverage and a comfy chair for this one. it's a...
Bandon Lighthouse print
As we've been slowly sorting out how we want the family room to look now that we have the new carpet in it, I've been thinking about the art to put up on the wall. There was an obvious space over the TV where just asking for a good-sized print. So, in the last week,...
Macro Photography experiments
I've been mucking around with getting the tabletop photography setup in the office the way I like it, and so I've been trying things and generally just experimenting. This is a fairly small space, and I found some of my early setups a bit awkward in trying to get set...
Gear Kit: What to carry when you go out and bird
I've been getting questions about what people should bring with them on a birding trip, and while I've written about this in the past, it makes sense to do an update and share what I'm carrying now, and to make some suggestions on options and alternatives for those...
When birding goes magical
On Sunday, April 8, five of us assembled at Coyote Valley Open Space Preserve in South Santa Clara County for a Big Sit in support of the Santa Clara Valley Audubon Birdathon event, which raises funds every year for the chapter activities. This preserve is fairly new...
Getting back on the horse
It’s April. That means the first quarter of 2018 is finished. Does that thought freak you out? Time is flying by, it seems to me. At the end of December I started my new job, I took on responsibility for the Birdathon committee for SCVAS, and things rapidly became a...
Thoughts on Jim Goldstein’s Best of 2017 project
I decided to once again look at all of the submissions to Jim Goldstein’s Best of the Year list to see what I could about trends in the images and in site design for displaying them. I’ve done this two times before, but not for a couple of years. You can take a look...
2017 Best Photos of the Year
2017 was a strange year for me photographically. I started out feeling like I was turning out crap, unmotivated, a bit burned out. I did very little photography early in the year and didn't really miss it. As we headed into fall, however, I started thinking about...
My Favorite Youtube Channels 2017
I really fell into a rabbit hole with Youtube this year after not really paying much attention to it before. What I found was a great diversity of interesting voices and people and a place (unlike blogs where you really can’t compete anymore with the big sites for...
New Work: Colusa and Sacramento NWR; learning lessons
(You can see all of the photos from this trip on Flickr) With the new job starting -- today, as you read this -- I've been trying to compress some things I'd planned on doing into the time left before it starts, so it's been busy as I've tried to clear the decks for...
why processing images for print is a smart thing to do — and a first look at Luminar 2018
When I got back from Morro Bay I posted a number of images from the trip including this one of a sea otter at dawn. it's an image similar to one I took back in 2009 that I've been trying to reproduce ever since so I could get a higher quality version of it -- and I...
Some final thoughts on the Morro Bay trip
(Note: All of the images from this trip are available for viewing over on Flickr) A short trip, basically 2 and a half days of shooting. Some nice food, a comfortable room, an area I knew fairly well so I didn't have to spend a lot of time scouting, and a chance to...
Morro Bay Day 3: Another Sunrise, another walk, and then…
(Note: All of the images from this trip are available for viewing over Flickr) Second night in the field, I got to sleep earlier and slept better, plus I knew I could set the alarm a bit later and still get out to my shoot without rushing, so I was in a much better...
Morro Bay Day 2 (continued): Otters (you knew there’d be otters)
(Note: All of the images from this trip are available for viewing Flickr) The glamorous life of a nature photographer on the road: the alarm goes off at way too early in the morning so you can shoot a pre-scouted location when the sun rises, breakfast at McDonalds,...
Morro Bay Day 2 (continued): I go walkies
(Note: All of the images from this trip are available for viewing Flickr) I have to admit that the lack of sleep left me feeling a big groggy and not even a hefty dose of caffeine really fixed it, so my first full day in Morro Bay was one of grinding it out despite...
Morro Bay Day 2: Dawn Patrol
(Note: All of the images from this trip are available for viewing over Flickr) As usual, the first night on the road it took a long time to get to sleep and I didn't sleep particularly well. Also as usual, my brain gets into the "OH MY GOD CAN'T SLEEP THROUGH THE...
Morro Bay Day 1: Rediscovering Landscape Photography
(Note: All of the images from this trip are available for viewing over Flickr) As I’ve talked about before, I’ve been struggling to get my photography on track, and while I’m pretty happy with my bird/wildlife work these days, my landscape work has continued to mostly...
Oh no! Adobe changed things on me!
While I was in Morro Bay, Adobe made a bunch of announcements about Lightroom and Photoshop, and I first heard about them when Twitter exploded. I’ve been digging into this to try to make sense of it and how it impacts me, and let me try to summarize what I think...
