Photographers Jay and Varina Patel have worked hard over the last few years to develop their Visual Wilderness website into an excellent resource for landscape and nature photographers. I started writing as a guest author for Visual Wilderness last year but have not been very good about sharing my articles with our blog audience. So, here is a quick summary of the four articles I have written for Visual Wilderness, with links to the full content over on their site.
Read MoreDeath Valley Wildflower Update: Prelude to a Super Bloom?
Desert Gold and the Black Mountains in late afternoon, Death Valley National Park. (c) Ron Coscorrosa
The last so-called wildflower "Super Bloom" to occur in Death Valley National Park happened in 2005. The next one may very well be this year and is already in progress in parts of the park.
On October 18, 2015, Death Valley suffered a historic flood event. By early January, the first wildflowers started to bloom in the southern part of the park, much earlier and more profusely than typical years. More rain has helped build momentum by keeping the plants healthy and growing. On January 6, 0.2 inches of rain fell and on January 31, another storm brought 0.32 inches of rain, as measured at Furnace Creek. These three rain events, along with the current profusion of wildflowers, make it likely that this wildflower year in Death Valley could be the best since 2005. All photos in this post were taken this year (January and February 2016).
Read More2015 Year in Review (Sarah)
In looking back on my life 6 or 7 years ago, it is still a little hard to believe that 2015 took the form that it did. Back then, after finding myself in a variety of unpleasant personal and professional situations, I started talking about the desire to travel more, with the vague idea of travel representing an opportunity to live a more fulfilling life. While this process took years to fully realize, 2015 feels like the culmination of a lot big decisions and changes that together, feel like a much better path.
Read More2015 Year in Review + Personal Favorites (Ron)
Crescent Twilight, Badwater Basin, Death Valley National Park
As Sarah recapped in her post Our Semi-Nomadic Life: One Year In on our travel blog, 2015 was a very busy year. We were were on the road or traveling about six months of the year and only on vacation from our full time jobs for two of those weeks.
I also managed to do something I haven't been able to do in at least 6 years: keep ahead of my photo backlog! While I still have a few stragglers, I can say with confidence that I have processed 90% of the photos I have taken this year, in addition to fully processing all my older photos from Mt. Rainier.
Read MoreRecommended Reading for Landscape Photographers
A flooded Badwater Basin in Death Valley National Park
This is my third post in an occasional series of recommend reading for landscape and nature photographers. In this list, I share a diverse mix of 13 resources ranging from highly practical to inspirational to thought-provoking. If you have any resources you would like to share (your own or links to others), please include them in the comments. And, as always, please feel free to share this list if you enjoy this post.
Read MoreAlien Conditions in Death Valley
Stormy Sunrise at Badwater Basin, Death Valley National Park. © 2015, Ron Coscorrosa
On the morning of Sunday, October 18, 2015, Sarah, our two cats, our shiny silver trailer and I were at Area 51.
We were not seeking aliens, or, to our knowledge, being sought by them. Other than our cats throwing up, there was very little evidence of any medical experimentation of any kind.
We honestly had no idea we were on the Extra Terrestrial Highway until we saw the road sign. We were doing what we often are doing, driving, leaving the beautiful Cathedral Gorge State Park in Nevada and heading to Mono Lake in the Eastern Sierra. The ET highway was just the fastest route (though extremely remote, with over 150 miles between gas stations).
Read MoreBacking Up Is Hard To Do - Or Is It?
Snake Eyes - Mono Lake, Eastern Sierra, California
Backing up your digital photos is without question the least interesting part of photography. No photographer thinks, “You know, I really don’t like traveling or exploring nature, or exercising my creativity, what I really like is spending time at the computer copying files to multiple places.”
Backing up your photographs is a burden, but the price of not backing up your photos can be, and odds are ultimately will be, catastrophic. I know first-hand of too many horror stories to count, not just entire trips being lost but months and even years of photographs being lost – forever! I have never had to learn the lesson the hard way, and my hope is that you won’t have to either after reading this post.
Read MoreOur Semi-Nomadic Life: One Year In
On October 24, 2014, we departed on a new adventure and new way of life. That day, we headed to Zion National Park for our first journey as semi-nomads. We purchased a used Airstream trailer so we could travel extensively while still being able to return to a home base. With Ron working a fully remote job and me with flexible sources of income, we wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to spend more time visiting special places, spend more time photographing, and ultimately, feel like we are living our lives more fully. One year in, we feel like we made the right decision to take this leap and plan to continue like this indefinitely.
Read MoreLeave No Trace: A Discussion About Our Impact On Wild Places
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).
Read More200+ Women Landscape & Nature Photographers Who Inspire
Why a compilation like this?
I will start out by saying that I am generally not a fan of women-only lists because I want my photography to stand on its own. I don’t want to be known as a woman landscape photographer, just a landscape photographer who happens to be a woman. So, why am I writing this post? For the two reasons described below.
Since I started in landscape photography, this field has noticeably diversified in terms of both race and gender. Significantly more women are pursuing landscape photography (or at least are more visible) and many have developed compelling, top-tier portfolios of work. More women are teaching workshops, running photo tours, writing, showing in galleries, selling prints, and providing leadership within landscape photography. Yet, we continue to be woefully underrepresented at the top levels of this field as evidenced by the overwhelming absence of women in publications, conference/summit/symposia rosters, podcast interviews, portfolio features, brand ambassador line-ups, and other symbols of achievement and relevance in landscape photography. And, when a woman is included, it sometimes feels like little more than a token gesture.
This dynamic seems to be increasingly frustrating to women photographers and I see more people speaking out about this lack of representation more regularly. Some women are responding with women-only workshops, publications, and collaborative groups to offer alternatives to the "business as usual" spaces in this field where few women are represented. And, photographers concerned about this under-representation are being more vocal in calling it out.
Read MoreA Mini-Guide to Photographing the Hawaiian Island of Kauai
Near Shipwreck Beach, Kauai
Most people think of the Hawaiian Islands as a perfect place for a relaxing, tropical vacation but they also provide some excellent opportunities for photography. We recently took a two week trip to the island of Kauai and highly recommend it as a photography destination (for reasons that this post will hopefully make clear!).
Kauai is known as the Garden Isle because of its lushness, with the claim to the “wettest spot on earth” becoming obvious after taking even a passing glance at the waterfalls and lush tropical forests covering much of the island. Kauai also has extensive beaches and strong waves, especially in winter, which together create good opportunities for photographing the ocean. The jagged green cliffs of the Na Pali coast are a frequent stand-in for any movie or TV show that needs a fantasy, dream-like tropical scene. On the drier side of the island, the winding Waimea Canyon offers expansive views of red rock layers dotted with bright green trees and impossibly tall waterfalls.
In this post, we summarize some of our favorite places for photography and share a few travel tips that might be helpful in planning your own trip to Kauai. Our research was aided through some very generous suggestions from our friend Orion some some of the credit for this post goes to him, as well (thanks, Orion!). As a little disclaimer, I will note that this post is meant to be an introduction based on two weeks on the island during the month of January. Conditions at some of these locations will vary quite a bit by season and this mini-guide is not meant to supplement your assessment of on-the-ground conditions. It is also not meant to be comprehensive - just a place to start your own research. If you are looking for local guiding, Aaron Feinberg would be a good place to start.
Read More7 Tips for Photographing Smaller Scenes
If you would like to learn more about this topic, you might find our Beyond the Grand Landscape: A Guide to Photographing Nature’s Smaller Scenes to be a worthwhile investment. You can save 20% on your purchase of this ebook through July 15 with the code NPG20.
A fellow photographer recently contacted me for some tips on how to be more successful in identifying and photographing small scenes in the field. This photographer is very talented at taking photographs of grand landscapes but shared that they could use some help with identifying and photographing smaller scenes. This experience is common since taking photographs of smaller scenes does require the development of some different skills and a shift in mindset when compared to pursuing grand landscapes. And, since we receive similar comments and inquiries fairly often, this seems like a good topic for a blog post.
For the purposes of this post, smaller scenes include intimate landscapes, abstract subjects, patterns, textures, and artistic portraits of plants. Such photographs often, but not always, encompass a narrow field of view, usually lacking the sweeping nature of a grand scenic and focusing instead on the arrangement of the smaller details of a landscape. Such photographs also often rely less on the literal qualities of the subject (like tree bark or a plant) and instead focus on more abstract qualities like lines, curves, patterns, and textures. Photos that fall in these categories are generally crafted to convey a particular mood, emotion, or observation with a degree of intimacy, understanding, or closeness.
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