2015 Favorite Images

2015 was a productive year for my photography with travel to Montana, California, Nevada , Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico and Arizona  as well as  lots of Colorado trips. It is always hard to pick  10-12 favorites. Hope you enjoy these!

Mammatus Clouds

Springtime on the White River Plateau

Swainson Hawk

Green River Valley Storm

Hayden Valley Bison

Summer Sunset Storm

Two Mountain Goat Kids

McDonald Creek Rapidss

Medano Ranch Storm

Sandstone & Trees

Autumn Mountain Meadow

Two Young Deer

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Best of 2013

As we  rapidly approach the end of 2013 and look toward 2014 I have been reviewing the photographs I made to choose a 10 best list. This is always a  difficult choice and since I did a fair amount of traveling this year I have a variety of images to choose from. From the Canadian Rockies and the plains of Kansas, to Florida and the Blue Ridge of North Carolina, I experienced some great light and artful compositions!   Enjoy!

2012 Favorite Images

It has been too long since I have posted to this blog, The past year has been busy and challenging with ups and down including the passing of my father. I managed to get a reasonable amount of photography done with several trips. Reviewing my images I have picked out 12 of my favorites from the year. Enjoy! I am resolving to post more in this new year.

Missouri River floodplain grass, Charles Russell NWR

Eureka Dunes, Death Valley NP

Grass and Willows, San Luis Valley

Cotton Lake Marsh, Medano Ranch

Tall Grass Prairie Sunrise, Oklahoma

Wind River Aspens, Wyoming

Kebler Pass aspen boles

Blanca Peak Clouds, Colorado

Kansas Prairie Sky, Quivira NWR

Prairie Storm Rainbow, Chico Basin Ranch

Running Horses, Zapata Ranch

Kebler Pass Aspen and Ferns, Colorado

High Falls, Rocks and Water: Dealing with the conditions at hand and having back-up equipment!

I made this image of High Falls in Tettegouche State Park on a trip to the North Shore Region of Minnesota. I had hoped to photograph some spectacular fall colors, but as it turned out I was late by about a week as a large wind storm had brought down most of the leaves. I traveled to Minnesota primarily to attend the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America that was held in Minneapolis this year, so I wanted to take advantage of the travel and do some photography after the meeting. The North Shore region along Lake Superior north of Duluth is spectacular, and I headed first to Gooseberry Fall State Park where I previously had photographed a Summer solstice sunrise over Lake Superior. As I prepared for a sunrise from the rocky shore and was setting up my tripod low in front a pool I had hoped to get a nice reflection of color in, a moment of in-attention resulted in a bit of a disaster! As I turned to get my cable release from my pack, my tripod with my Nikon D700 and 14-24 lens tipped over and crashed into the shallow pool. Not a good feeling as I quickly pulled it out, but the damage was done. The result was a large scratch in the middle of the front element of the lens and a wet camera body. Not good,and I thought well there goes the trip!. Fortunately I had my D300 along as a backup, but my only other wide angle I had with me with was a 24mm TS-E that has a 36mm field of view on the D300. With this combination I would not be able to photograph the real wide angle shots with prominent elements large in the foreground I love to compose. Oh well, sometimes photographers have to just deal with the situations and conditions they are presented with. So traveled a bit farther north to Tettegouche SP, and ended up a having a great couple of days concentrating on images and compositions that worked with the equipment I had and did not lament the real wide angle compositions I could not make.
This image of High Falls (the highest waterfall in Minnesota) was made using the 24mm Tilt -Shift, which given the composition I extracted actually worked well. The moral of this story for all photographers is 1: pay attention to the stability of your tripod; 2, have a second camera body as a back-up; and 3 see and extract the compositions that can be made with the equipment you have!

High Falls in Tettegouche State park, Minnesota

June Print of the Month: Spring Aspen Grove

The June 2011 Print of the Month will be Spring Aspen Grove, an image I made in the Kebler Pass Aspen forest last Spring:

Dawn light filters into a Spring aspen grove, Colorado

Soft Light: Wonderful for the Intimate Landscape: New Tapestries of Grass

I spent last weekend photographing down on the Medano-Zapata Ranch looking for signs of Spring! As is often the case in Colorado, the weather was very variable and ranged from rain and snow to bright sunshine. Saturday afternoon I found myself wandering in one of the meadows near the Zapata lodge looking for intimate compositions of grass and sedges. The soft cloudy light was perfect and I captured a number of images that I am including in my on-going series of Tapestries of Grass Images.

If you are interested in photographing and exploring the Medano-Zapata Ranch I will be offering a Photography Workshop there this Summer on August 25-28. Please Contact Tess (tess@zranch.org) or 719-378-2356 (x 110) for more information and to register.

Print of the Month

To celebrate the coming of Spring I have decided to start a Print of the Month feature and offer a discount price on a matted signed print in two sizes, 11×14 and 16×20. Each month I will offer a new image selected from old and new releases. For the first image in honor of Spring I have selected my Spring Corn Lilies image , made last year near Kebler Pass in Colorado. Check it out and order here on my Print of the Month page

Corn Lilies grow in a mountain meadow in Colorado

Winter Colors,Textures and Patterns: Frosty Trees and Grass

This gallery contains 6 photos.

On a recent trip returning from Kansas I had a very  productive day photographing frosty grass and trees. The earth toned colors of the grasses combined with heavy frost and ice on the grass and bare tees made for some … Continue reading →

My top ten “best” images from 2010

As the year comes to a close it is always nice to to reflect on and review images I have made during the year. I was very blessed this  year with many photographic trips and opportunities, foremost being the amazing experience  I had in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Spurred on by Jim Goldstein’s call to photographers to  submit a ” top 10 best list” for a blog project, I have been scouring my files to narrow it down. Trust me this is not easy as I have added several hundred images to my worthy of printing category, and I seem to have an attachment to all of them.  So here is what I came up with in no particular order. Every one of them spoke to me. Some I have blogged about during the year and some are new ones you have not seen. I hope you enjoy them!

A Winter lenticular cloud forming over the Sangre de Cristo Range, CO

Corn Lillies grow in a mountain meadow in Colorado

Dawn light filters into a Spring aspen grove, Colorado

Caribou antlers on the tundra, ANWR

Peaks of the Brooks Range reflect in a tundra pond, ANWR

A bull Musk ox and a cloud of mosquitoes,ANWR

Midnight light at the edge of the Arctic Ocean, ANWR

Early morning light on Denali, “the high one” , Denali NP, AK

Flint, a wild stallion runs in the Pryor Mountains, MT

sedge meadows take on Fall colors along a stream flowing into Antero Reservoir, CO

Dawn glow on the horizon over the lake at Cheyenne Bottoms Wildlife Area, KS

If you want to see more you can check my top 20 favorites on my Flickr site

Finding an Image: Chico Cottonwoods Sunset

I know I have not been posting much lately but I hope to remedy that in the coming weeks. With lots of activity and work at CC, attending the GSA meeting in Denver, and installing and getting to know  my new Epson Stylus Pro 7900 printer I have not been able to get out  much in the last month to do much shooting. This afternoon I decided I needed some fresh air and field time so I headed down to the Chico Basin Ranch, one of my favorite local prairie hot-spots,  to  see if I could catch some autumn  grass and perhaps some last bits of color in the cottonwood trees along Chico Creek. When I arrived in mid afternoon,  conditions were less than ideal with not a cloud in the sky and very harsh bright light and I was resigned to not making any new images. Not to worry, it was just nice to get out and hike a bit in the warm afternoon sun.. A couple hours later as I was driving along one of the rough ranch roads  looking for potential future compositions I passed by a row of cottonwood trees that had already lost all of their leaves. Looking almost due west toward the sun, they were strongly back-lit and silhouetted, and  I was immediately struck by the strong graphic lines of the bare branches and the way they formed a striking pattern together. The light was unworkable at the moment, but I envisioned an image with the orange glow of the setting sun on the horizon providing color to the bare silhouetted trees. The clear sky suggested that at sunset  that glow might just  happen. And so I waited. Here is the result:

The thought process that went into making this image centers on observation of the environment  with the recognition and extraction of a  composition coupled with the anticipation of  some vibrant light. So if you find yourself in a similar situation it pays to wait. Sometimes it works.!

Extracting good compositions from the chaos of nature takes time and practice . “Seeing” is the goal of all photographers and on that note I need to give a strong recommendation to  my good friend and fellow photographer Guy Tal’s new e-book on Creative Landscape Photography.  Not only is Guy an amazing photographer, but he is also a gifted writer, and in Creative Landscape Photography he has created a true gem that will get you focused and thinking about the thought processes and techniques for making  great nature photographs. Check it out!