The Importance of Photographing With Peers

October 25, 2019

After a few days back in civilization, I received an invite to go photograph sunset with a group of local photographers from the Salt Lake City area. I have been a solo shooter for many years now and haven’t developed lasting relationships with many creative individuals. This recently came to my attention and I decided I needed to do something about it. So, I stepped out of my comfort zone and contacted a few local photographers to see about a weekend trip to a beautiful area earlier this spring. The interest was outstanding, and one of the local photographers took control of planning the details since I was new to the area and hadn’t the slightest clue when the best time was for that area. The weekend went off with great success, and we all decided we wanted to make these trips a regularity. Busy schedules and separate shooting agendas kept us apart as a whole for a few months, and this jaunt into the Wasatch mountains for sunset was the first real gathering we made since the spring. The forecast looked incredible and everyone was in high spirits as we met at the car lot at the base of Big Cottonwood Canyon. We loaded into one vehicle after a few hellos and made our way to the trailhead. The hike up is a doozy with camera gear at just over under 3000ft of elevation change in 3.2 miles.

We arrived at our destination about 10 minutes before the sun set and quickly scouted some photographic locations. I found a wonderful composition on the side of a rock face that still had a flower bloom clinging to the rocky soil. I decided to go for the shot, given the majority of images I’ve seen from the area are at lake level. We sat and waited as the light slowly got better and better. With the fire smoke and amount of cloud cover we were all surprised the light was turning out as good as it was. I captured the following shot before the sun turned the sky into a blaze of glory that encompassed the entire scene around us.

I moved from this location to attempt a shot of a tree on the edge of a cliff that overlooked the valley we had just hiked up. I and one other photographer (Quinn Calder) had spotted this tree on the way up and discussed how it could create a nice composition. The sky in that area was particularly colorful. I took two images in those next moments and couldn’t believe what I was experiencing.

With the light racing across the sky, I thought it best to get back to the original image I had intended for the evening. John Haymore, and Emily Jeppson were in the area photographing a roughly similar composition. John hadn’t moved to chase the clouds as I did and he put together a wonderful time blended image that I thought was pure gold. My image was good, however, it lacked light in the clouds which happened while I was returning to set up my composition. I learned a new technique that evening through John. I’ve known about time blending for some time but had never tried it or seen it put into practice first hand. In a future post I will attempt to show you how to time blend successfully and go through the steps to help you create your own.

The light ended in a much less dramatic fashion than when it started, and we packed up to begin the trek back down the mountain in the dark. We were all super excited about the image potential we had on our cameras and couldn’t wait to process the images. We talked composition, light, location, and all things photo related on the way back down and it was nice to talk to other photographers. Every time you go out and shoot with a group, you will learn something. The collective knowledge in such a group can be astounding and if you know how to listen and pay attention, little snippets of wisdom float past your ears on the evening breeze quite frequently.

Next week winter hits before fall and I scramble to capture it. Be sure to check back in for that read. Its fall here in Utah and my blog posts will soon be filled with aspen photos and fall colors in the mountains.

Back Blogged

September 27, 2019

I’ve been busy, real busy, and I’ve created a back log of images that need to be shared with the world. So over the next few weeks, I’ll be releasing a blog post each Friday to catch up!

When it comes to photography, I get excited easily. So when we made plans to visit Grand Teton National Park it was no surprise that I could barely contain that excitement. What feels like very long ago, when I was in my first year of college, my family and I made a trip to Grand Teton National Park. It was the first trip out west I had ever made, and it really helped shaped me into who I am today. I fell in love with the mountains and the landscape of the American West and the ruggedness of the terrain. Since then I have sought out places in this country that evoke that sense of awe and tried to memorialize them.

On our first day in the area, we managed to snag the last available campsite anywhere near the location I wanted to photograph the following morning ( A good omen). The next morning came and we hustled our way down an old gravel road to a well documented barn that I was expecting to be brimming with photographers. However, upon arrival I had the area virtually to myself. One other photographer was off to my left a ways. I set up my composition and waited for sunrise.

The thing that makes the Tetons so special to me is how flat the landscape around them is. They dominate the landscape for miles and miles, and create such a stark contrast to the valleys below. I captured my version of the usual barn scene, and moved on to another image I had envisioned. The image at the beginning of this blog represents how I feel about the Tetons. Bathed in golden light, the Grand Teton rises above the trees and fills the frame of this image creating a sense of majesty that captivates your attention while you travel through the area. To me, that image symbolizes the strength and beauty of nature. It is tender and inviting, yet ultimately rugged in the same moment.

The weather was forecasting thunderstorms by mid afternoon, so we hiked the rest of the morning before we had to hunker down and wait out the storm. I managed to capture one image from the trunk of our vehicle while the winds were howling and throwing rain every which way.

With lightning striking nearby, we didn’t venture out far from the vehicle, but as the last light of the day was disappearing, I managed one more image down near Jackson Lake.

Mt. Moran makes the perfect backdrop to this image, and while a perfect sunset would have been nice, the moodiness of this image works nicely for this scene. The brownish rock in the foreground that is glistening a golden color makes me think of the gold rush and it’s influence it had in shaping the West.

Wet and all, we made our way back to the tent excited to do it all again the next day. The following morning was a wash as we awoke to rain pounding the sides of the tent. We opted to stay in our bags and enjoy rising slowly that morning. As midday came around, the weather had slightly improved, so we headed out hiking.

Well after the sun disappeared behind the mountains and the valley fell into darkness, the sky remained a beautiful shade of orange that faded into the purple dark of the evening. I created a silhouette of the Teton range and then went to bed excited to see what sunrise would bring to this location. The next morning I arose to a view of the entire range in view and knew it would be a special sunrise. Sitting in the calm morning air waiting for the sun to warm the valley I reflected on how lucky I was to be experiencing these locations with my wife.

We spent the morning enjoying the moment and after we had packed up and headed away from our campsite to head back to civilization, I turned around and noticed one more composition. So naturally I unpacked my camera, set up the tripod and took one final image. Much like the first image in this post, I like how the forest framed the mountains in the distance, and gave them a sense of enormous scale.

4 Days and 9 images later it was time to say goodbye to the Tetons. I hope one day I will return to this incredible place and show my children the awe inspiring peaks of Grand Teton National Park.

Check back on Friday to see where we traveled to next!

Life Is A Blur

June 25, 2019

SO…. SLOW DOWN AND LIVE A LITTLE.

One day, before you know it, you will reach the time of reckoning. You will sit at the edge of your bed and you will think about your life; whether it was fulfilling, lackluster, or somewhere in between. In today’s world it is easy to get lost in the endless feeds of content creation we call social media. A long list of stories that only a small handful of your “followers” actually give a damn about. We forget to be present, we forget to be ourselves, we attempt to create “content” that will resonate with the masses and get us a momentary spot of recognition before we are swallowed up by the endless tide of incoming posts.

I used to chase followers, thinking that they were important to build my career, until I had a small epiphany. They are called “followers” for a reason, to follow. If they controlled my path in life and photography, they would be called leaders… and I would be a slave to their demands.

I remember a time when I would spend hours in a dark room creating a tangible photographic print that could be held and viewed as a 3 dimensional piece of art. Nowadays, a vast majority of my images never leave the computer screen. They sit in a catalog of a thousand images on a hard drive in a place weirdly reminiscent of the island of forgotten toys from the classic Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer tale. Those images had their moment on the endless social media train, some of which received momentary glory before being tossed aside for the next new image. Now they collect digital dust and may never be seen again.

What does this all have to do with a photography blog post and reaching the inevitable end of the road?

Last week, as I sat in Yellowstone National Park staring at a sunset that was so beautiful it practically rendered me speechless, I had an epiphany. I realized I was constantly trying to create content for the next social media post instead of creating work for myself, work that resonated with me. Because I had been creating work for the momentary pleasure of strangers, I had stopped seeing and enjoying for myself. It had become a wash, rinse, repeat cycle form of creation and I wasn’t getting any joy from the incredibly beautiful scene playing out in front of me. The pungent smell of the sulphuric gases fuming from the geysers, the interaction of steam and cloud, of light and shadow; I was viewing the scene as if I were behind a screen. I wasn’t present in the moment. I was too focused on “content creation”, and that is a travesty.

So in that moment I stopped shooting wildly, walked away from a mediocre composition, took a deep breath and studied the interactions occurring in front of me. I felt the warm steam as the south eastwardly blowing wind pushed the water vapors towards me and up over the hillside behind. I watched the light dance across the shallow pools of water on the delicate surface of the geyser basin. I listened to the water as it bubbled up through the geyser pools, steadily releasing sulphuric gases into the atmosphere. I reminded myself I was standing on the worlds largest volcanic hotspot, and of the power it held beneath the surface.

I set my camera back up and took one photograph. Just one.

As a photographer I made the decision that I want my images to resonate with me first, with the experience and feeling I had within that moment. I want my images to speak to me, to make me feel, to wonder. Like the artists’ work I adorned my walls with as a budding adult, I want my images to inspire me. If I can create images that provoke those feelings within me, then those same images are bound to provoke the same sense of wonder in others.

Let’s tie this all back into this posts title.

Life is a blur, so slow down, be present, and experience the subtle nuances of the many places you will find yourself as you write your life story. If you are an artist, create for yourself first, your creations will speak louder, and in turn get noticed by those that matter. You will feel more fulfilled at the end of the day and when your judgement day comes you can say, “ I experienced my life, and in doing so, created something meaningful, something lasting. I was present each and every day and made true connections with others, and with the planet around me. I lived.”

In that moment, I reignited the fire of exploration, discovery, and creation within me and am excited to slow down and experience the many, many events and places that will shape me as I continue to get older.

The Lowest and Highest Place In The Contiguous United States

April 09, 2019

Over the last month I’ve dealt with fog so thick you can stir it, cold that would make Jack Frost shiver, and enough rain to make Noah start building another Ark.

Mastery, at its root, is the ability to overcome excessive failure.

September 03, 2018

Research, Logistics, Gear, Creativity, Camera Settings, Composition, Timing, Light, and Luck.

There is a lot going on behind the scenes of a good photograph, and it is easy to mess it up if you're not paying attention.

From encountering new scenarios, lacking the proper equipment, forgetting to charge batteries, to hitting that metaphorical wall we have all grown to despise called Creativity Block. These are just some of the things that can go wrong when photographing the perfect landscape. In this week's post I am going to touch on some of my massive failures on the road to mastery. Every day I am making mistakes; learning and growing as a photographer. Even the greatest photographers alive will attest that making mistakes, missing the shot, and ultimately failing has gotten them to where they are today.

I call the above image veiled perfection. I got to my location early, composed this image well in advance, set my ISO, aperture, and shutter speed, and focused correctly, then waited for the sun to set over the distant mountain.... What I didn't do was adjust my shutter speed as the light faded and got darker. You see, I got my exposure reading in broad daylight with the sun directly overhead, and in my excitement forgot to adjust my shutter speed to compensate for the change in available light. In todays world digital cameras save our butts 90% of the time and we can still get the shot if heaven forbid something like this happens.

Here's a fun one! The ever common image stack to get everything in focus. In layman terms, when your subject matters are too spread out and your camera cannot compensate to get the entire image in focus, it is sometimes necessary to "focus stack". This is taking images at different focusing distances then combining them later in post to get uniform sharpness across the image. When you screw this up it is the most frustrating thing in the world because it can be easily overlooked while shooting. In the image below look closely across the first hillside. The entirety of it is out of focus. This is because I only shot two images to stack and focused too close on my initial image. Ideally a tilt shift lens would be the best solution, but a costly one. So, focus stacking is a necessity at times to get the best image. I stopped editing this image when I noticed the error because there is only one way to fix this: Buy a new camera that allows you to change focus later. Thankfully I wasn't satisfied with the image 100% to begin with as the flowers were beginning to wilt. I found a different composition that I was more pleased with.

Here is an awesome picture of a blurry moose.

When photographing wildlife its oftentimes smart to turn on your autofocus, especially for beginners. I am not a beginner (nor am I an expert), but I try to do things as close to old school film shooting as possible and sometimes it bites me in the @$$. Here I attempted to manually focus on the moose with a semi fast aperture of ƒ4.5, while slowly moving backward since we walked up on each other. As I walked backward so did my point of focus, effectively focusing perfectly on the pine tree in front of my subject causing my moose friend to look velvety smooth and extremely blurry ... Chance missed!

Thankfully for all the times I've royally screwed up or done something goofy, there has been countless times when I've done something right. The below image is the most popular image I've ever taken. With 300+ more instagram likes than any other image, multiple reposts, over 60 combined comments, and multiple personal offline congratulations; it's safe to say I did something right when taking this image.

I'm no master, but you can be darn sure that I will continue making mistakes until I am. After all, failure is what drives success.