(Photographic) Happiness = Reality - Expectations: February + March 2024 Monthly Review

April 2, 2024 Sarah Marino

Ripples form after a flash flood, with the milky flood water filling the depressions. Death Valley National Park.

Well, I missed my monthly update for February and lost all momentum with my weekly blog posts. The reasons: ephemeral conditions in Death Valley, finishing the second edition of our significantly expanded and fully revised Beyond the Grand Landscape ebook, getting a nasty cold, and saying yes to social time in the desert whenever an invitation popped up.

Entering a Photo Competition? Consider This Advice

January 7, 2024 Sarah Marino

A lovely spiral aloe, referenced in the text below.

I have recently served as a judge for a few different photo club competitions (in addition to being a judge for five award seasons with international photo competitions) and continue to see the same issues pop up. Some of the issues are really basic, like dust spots and tilted horizons, while others are far more subjective. With these experiences in mind, I share some advice to consider when you prepare your next competition entry (or magazine submission, gallery show entry, portfolio, or even your next social media post). This article represents the perspective of exactly one judge—me—so don’t consider it a checklist but instead a single point of view on a complex topic.

Integrating Gratitude Practices Into Nature Photography

November 26, 2023 Sarah Marino

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, partially because it involves cooking a large, complicated meal and I always enjoy cooking—and sharing—large, complicated meals. My holiday meal this year was complicated because I did all of the cooking myself, not because I selected any fancy recipes. After integrating more modern dishes over the last few years, the traditional sides—sweet potato casserole, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, biscuits, corn, and stuffing—seemed most appealing as I prepared my grocery list so those are the dishes that ended up on my table (in addition to a less traditional apple cake for dessert).

Another thing I appreciate about Thanksgiving is seeing other people share their gratitude. Amidst so much constantly heavy, negative news, it is lovely to enjoy a day of reading posts that focus on positive things. After seeing these many posts plus some news stories about the mental health benefits of expressing gratitude, I went down a rabbit hole of reading to learn more. This short article from Arthur Brooks at The Atlantic (gift link with no paywall) is a nice summary of the research, historical underpinnings, and practical advice about “Four Ways to Be Grateful—And Happier.” The reason I appreciated this article in particular is how Brooks likens gratefulness to exercise: to the reap the benefits, you have to practice.

Q and A: Naturalist Apps, Connecting with a Landscape, and Photographic Celibacy

November 10, 2023 Sarah Marino

Using the iNaturalist app plus field guides helped me identify some locations where this plant might grow within Death Valley National Park. iNaturalist’s companion app, Seek, is one of my favorite apps for the reasons I explain below.

In August, a publication invited me to participate in an extended interview and then repeatedly delayed publishing it. Instead of hoping the interview might eventually run someday, I decided to withdraw it and publish it in two parts on my website instead. You will find part one below.

Look For Beauty All Around You: A Lesson from Female Birds and Arctic Ground Squirrels

October 19, 2023 Sarah Marino

In many ways, our modern society conditions us to find excitement and joy only at the pinnacle of experience. With nature photography, this looks like the epic sunset, the perfect swath of autumn color, or being in the presence of especially dramatic scenery. While I still seek out such experiences, I try to balance them with finding equal satisfaction and happiness with more common everyday experiences out in nature. A recent example: feeling full of joy and excitement when I saw a thriving four o-clock wildflower and its glowing magenta petals, with white-lined sphinx moths actively feeding on its nectar, in late October while on a casual evening walk in the Utah desert.

A few days ago, upon the recommendation of fellow photographer Dario Perizzolo, I listened to an episode of the Hidden Brain podcast, “How Your Beliefs Shape Your Reality.” Near the end, the psychologist being interviewed, Jer Clifton, suggested a simple mental exercise to help cultivate curiosity and promote this kind of connection with the natural world. Pick up a leaf from a tree and contemplate its beauty: the shape, the colors, the intricacy of the veins. If this leaf was rare, it would be considered a work of art but because it is so commonplace, it doesn’t command any special attention—or any attention at all.

Notes From an Over-Photographed Landscape

September 22, 2022 Sarah Marino

Afternoon shadows fall across the Grapevine Mountains in Death Valley National Park.

PREFACE: This is the introductory essay for ebook portfolios covering my extended 2021-22 trip to Death Valley National Park. You can download these ebooks, for free, here to see the full collection of photographs.

With our Airstream RV trailer, we are able to work remotely for long stretches, so we packed up for the desert and arrived in Death Valley National Park right before Christmas, 2021. We stayed through late February, 2022, giving us about eight weeks in the park. Aside from two weeks of formal work (teaching workshops), I photographed, hiked, or both almost every day. This portfolio is the result of those efforts.

By the time we left to return home, the list of Death Valley canyons I have visited had many new entries, for a total of fifty-four. I can now say I have backpacked across Death Valley’s floor, an experience that makes the incredible vastness of the park feel much more profound than contemplating those same distances from the roadside. The scenery, as always, was endlessly enchanting. Solitude was easy to find. With photography friends coming and going, the trip felt a little like summer camp. As with every trip to this park, the list of new things I want to see is much longer than the list I had when I arrived. With the weather getting increasingly warm in late February, I knew it was time to head home but still tried to convince Ron that we should stay for just one more week. Just one more.

New Ebook - Lessons from the Landscape: Yellowstone National Park

September 13, 2021 Sarah Marino

I am happy to announce my newest ebook, Lessons from the Landscape: Yellowstone National Park, which includes an almost entirely new portfolio of photographs, eleven personal essays, and six practical case studies. This is my most personal project yet, and I am excited to share it with you.

You can get the ebook for the discounted price of $19.95 through Tuesday, September 14. See below for more details.

Badlands from Above: New Photos and Thoughts on Drone Photography

April 27, 2021 Sarah Marino

A few years ago, we added a drone (a DJI Mavic Pro 2) to our photography kit and I have come to have a love/hate relationship with it. To begin with the love, it is an incredible piece of technology - a flying camera that can take sharp photos with exposure times of more than a second in calm conditions. This is worth saying again so we can spend a few seconds marveling together: a flying camera that is affordable enough to add to a nature photography kit! Wow! And it is about the size of a Nalgene water bottle when folded up. Wow again!

One of the things I enjoy most about aerial photography with a drone is how the resulting photos tell a totally different story than the one you experience when walking across the same landscape (if you can, in fact, walk across it). For example, in the photos below, you will see many tiny channels. These channels feel individually consequential when you walk up one of them but then become an extensive sea of branching watercourses when seen from the air. One individual channel becomes only a tiny part of a massive network from this alternative perspective. Every time we use a drone for aerial photography in addition to our typical land-based photography, I walk away with a much greater appreciation for the area and have more context for how different parts of a landscape fit and flow together.

Mindset: A Comparison of Expectation-Driven and Experience-Driven Photography

April 14, 2021 Sarah Marino

Over the weekend, I participated in the Out of Chicago (OOC) LIVE online conference as one of the instructors. This is the third online conference OOC has offered during the pandemic and they all have been such inspirational weekends. (Although the live conference is over, you can still purchase the recordings through April 16 and then access the sessions for the next year.) The organizers always pull together a great mix of inspiration, motivational storytelling, and practical education. I am usually on the side of practical education since that is what comes most naturally to me but last weekend, I had the chance to speak in one of the full conference keynote spots and give an “inspirational” talk. It felt like a big stretch and I was super-nervous leading up to my session but once it was over, I felt like I could do more on the “inspiring” side with some practice.

I chose “shifting your mindset” as the topic of my talk, with a focus on thinking about how you show up and the positive and negative ramifications of the ideas you bring along with you. The role of expectations in nature photography is one of the three areas I talked about, with the encouragement to set aside expectations and show up with an open mind. Generally, I think of expectations as blinders that you put on before you ever get out of the car, often leading to being laser-focused on a preconceived idea that may or may not materialize. By putting the expectations mindset aside, you can instead show up with an openness to serendipity and the opportunities that are in front of you at the moment instead of the conditions or compositions you hoped for that may never materialize.

Nature First - 7 Principles for Minimizing the Impact of Your Photography

April 22, 2019 Sarah Marino

Sensitive mosses growing at a remote lava field in Iceland. Moss at more popular stops has been completely worn away by visitors and photographers traveling off the established trails.

Historically, nature photography has been a force for good. Conservation photographers have promoted the preservation of many ecologically sensitive and magnificently beautiful places. Nature photographs have motivated scores of people to experience nature for themselves, and in many cases become advocates for the preservation of wild places. Photography also offers a personally meaningful way for many of us to engage much more deeply with the natural world and then share those experiences with others through our photos.

In recent years, this positive legacy has been upended. It is now easy to make the case that pursuing and sharing photographs of nature has much darker consequences. Nature photography has undergone a dramatic transformation in the last five years with the rise of platforms like Instagram, easy access to detailed location information online, and technology advancements that make photo-taking much easier. These trends are leading to the irreparable destruction of some special places, overcrowding in places that can’t handle the volume of visitors, and a sharp increase in injuries and deaths from people seeking to “get the shot” or see the view they saw featured in a super-popular Instagram post.

Thoughts on Cole Thompson's Practice of Photographic Celibacy

April 14, 2016 Sarah Marino

A clearing thunderstorm at Valley of Fire State Park in Nevada.

About a year or two into taking up landscape photography as a hobby, I went with a few friends to hear Cole Thompson, a Colorado-based black and white photographer, speak about his photographs, methods and finding his personal vision. At the time, I found his talk to be interesting and thought-provoking but not terribly relevant to my own photographic path. I was busy pursuing iconic landscapes and chasing dramatic weather so his messages about personal expression didn’t resonate much at the time.

Years later, now with different goals for my photography, I see significantly more relevance in many of the points from his talk, with his views on what he calls “photographic celibacy” constantly coming to mind. While Cole describes this practice and his reasons in more detail on his website, these few sentences from him sum it up well:

Leave No Trace: A Discussion About Our Impact On Wild Places

September 9, 2015 Sarah Marino

White Sands National Monument. Footprints will remain in these areas of hardened sand (so I didn't walk on them), but will disappear from the dunes themselves during the next wind storm.

I came to photography well after I started hiking and backpacking. Thus, my early sources of information about wild places all prominently featured advice about outdoor ethics, especially practices like Leave No Trace. If you are not familiar, the basic idea behind Leave No Trace is that travelers in the backcountry should strive to leave no evidence of their visit, minimize their impact, and if possible, improve the condition of the places they visit (leaving a campsite in better condition than you found it, for example). With many wild places experiencing increased visitation, human impacts can cause significant damage if visitors do not show this kind of respect and care during their visits.

Increasingly, it seems like some landscape photographers do not view these principles for outdoor ethics as applicable to our kind of outdoor pursuit and the damage left behind is becoming obvious in an increasing number of spots. I have recently engaged in a few online discussions on this topic and have found some of the responses disheartening, with some portraying the attitude that they are entitled to a photograph regardless of their impact. Other arguments favor a dismissive tone, downplaying any specific example as an exaggeration for nothing more than making a point or so minor that it doesn't matter (trampling some plants is no big deal). All this seems to be a sign of the times, with daily stories about how the forces of willful disregard, ignorance, entitlement, and narcissism combine to do a lot of damage to special places (click on the links for a sampling: national parks in general, the Appalachian Trail, Sedona, Death Valley, and Joshua Tree).

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