For the first time in decades, herds of wild buffalo might be fostered and protected in areas outside Yellowstone National Park.

Buffalo from America's oldest National Park habitually migrate outside the park boundaries every winter in search of food. This concerns cattle ranchers as buffalo sometimes carry the disease brucellosis, a bacterial infection that can cause spontaneous abortions in cattle. For years, wildlife officials have carried out systemic slaughter of migrating buffalo to protect livestock. But now there's a plan in the works that may save the only remaining wild gene pool of buffalo in the world.

The Department of the Interior has proposed moving Yellowstone bison captured outside the park to management ranges in the Badlands of South Dakota or Great Sand Dunes in Colorado. Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer seems to support this plan on the condition that roaming bison will only be captured after the annual bison hunt, and remaining animals will be quarantined in a Montana facility to be tested for brucellosis. Disease-free animals will be relocated by the DOI while those that test positive will be slaughtered.

No proposals have yet been approved, and much remains to be decided before anything is done, but if everything goes forward as this sounds, then wild bison will roam in other parts of their ancestral ranges once again.

Have questions or comments? Send me an email.

Technical Data

Buffalo, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming was photographed with a Nikon D700 camera and a Nikkor 80-200mm ƒ/2.8 AF-S lens. The exposure was 1/125 second at ƒ/4.

Here is my latest film project, a short documentary on the University of Vermont's Morgan Horse Farm in Weybridge, Vermont. Special thanks go out to Steve Davis and Nicole Grainger for their help with this project, and to musician Nate Gusakov for providing the soundtrack.

Enjoy, and I'd love to hear your feedback.

Elk in Yellowstone National Park are dwindling.

According to an aerial survey completed in December 2010, elk within the park dropped 24% from the previous year and have fallen 70% since 1995, the year when wolves were reintroduced to the park. Wolf and grizzly predation, combined with hunting and an ongoing drought that began in 2000, have reduced the elk population from 16,791 in 1995 to 4,635 in 2010.

It's tough to be an elk in Yellowstone, but the wolves aren't exactly on Easy Street: from 2007 to 2010, their numbers eroded from 94 to 37. Fewer prey = fewer predators.

We've been meddling with the delicate balance of Yellowstone's ecosystem ever since it was established as a National Park back in 1872. In the early days of the twentieth century, wolves were considered a threat by cattle ranchers, so the U.S. Government undertook the systemic elimination of canis lupus under the name "Predator Damage Control". By 1926 wolves had vanished from Yellowstone's boundaries. But ecosystems are like Jengas, remove one piece and it's no longer whole. Remove more pieces, and it's likely to crumble.

Today, biologists believe that it's on the mend, but cyclical fluctuations in population numbers are to be expected. It's all part of re-establishing that delicate balance.

Technical Data

Elk skeleton on the banks of the Madison River, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming was photographed with a Nikon D700 camera and a Nikkor 17-35mm ƒ/2.8 AF-S lens. The exposure was 1/1.3 second at ƒ/10. I used a Singh-Ray 2-stop hard Graduated Neutral Density Filter to maintain the darkness of the storm clouds on the horizon while exposing correctly for the foreground grass and skeleton.

I'm usually a glass-half-empty kind of person, so you can imagine that New England winters really take the wind out of my sails. Short days. Gray skies. Several feet of old, dirty snow on the ground. Skin-stinging temperatures. Of course to the optimist within me, winter means something else entirely. Winter sports. Warm fires. Several feet of new, beautiful snow on the ground. Brisk days. The pessimist side usually wins, and I spend a lot of time cruising the travel websites looking for destinations in southerly latitudes once the snow begins to fall.

But every so often, my two halves come together and allow me to produce imagery that depicts the austere beauty of the winter landscape.

Have questions or comments? Send me an email.

Technical Data

I photographed Winter Sun, Middlebury, Vermont with a Hasselblad 500CM and a Carl Zeiss 80mm ƒ/2.8 T* lens on Kodak Tmax 100 (TMX). The exposure was 1/15s at ƒ/11. I developed the film in D-76 1:1.

Special Print Offer

Winter Sun, Middlebury, Vermont is available as an 7.5"x7.5" Silver Gelatin print on 11"x14" paper for the special price of $125.00. Each print is protected in an archival sleeve, signed on the verso, and is accompanied by a display, care, and conservation document detailing the process behind the photograph.

Recently, I shot a portrait assignment for a German engineering magazine of construction supervisor Mike Kennard on site at the new Champlain Bridge.

More often than not, these portrait assignments are under enormous time pressure. You're out on an industrial site where the phrase "Time is Money" really means something -- every minute counts. You can't futz around with a pelican case of lighting gear or hem and haw about what scene you want to shoot. You have 10 minutes to scout the location, make a decision, and set up the photograph. Maybe 10 more for the actual shooting, including chatting with the subject to make them comfortable in front of the camera, then 5 minutes to pack it all up and hightail it out of there because the people kindly giving you their time have to get back to work.

This shoot was no different. In fact, things were more hectic because at the time, Vermont was undergoing heavy flooding and that had put the bridge project somewhat behind schedule. Time was precious, and as accommodating as Mike was, his talents were sorely needed elsewhere.

This is when the one-light setup, a Speedlight, and couple of Pocketwizard transceivers really make sense.

If you face a situation like this, I recommend you keep it simple and use the ambient light as your foundation, filling in the spaces with a Speedlight mounted on a lightstand. The base exposure was around 1/125 at ƒ/5.6, which gave me correctly exposed clouds and bridge, but a dark Mike. The Speedlight on the lightstand was dialed to 1/2 power and zoomed in to just cover Mike's body. In this image, it's located far camera right and about at Mike's eye level -- I didn't want to go higher and create a shadow under the brim of his hard hat. I've got a 1/4 CTO gel on that flash to warm it up a bit and I manually adjusted the camera's color balance to slightly warmer than ambient to counteract the bluish tint from the storm clouds overhead. I dialed the camera exposure down 1/3 stop to darken the bridge and clouds subtly.

Have questions or comments? Send me an email.

Technical Data

I photographed Mike Kennard and the Lake Champlain Bridge, Chimney Point, Vermont with a Nikon D700 and a Nikon 17-35mm ƒ/2.8 AF-S lens. The exposure was 1/160s at ƒ/5.6. I had a Nikon SB-900, with a 1/4 CTO (color temperature orange) gel, on a lightstand triggered by two Pocketwizard Plus II radio transceivers. The flash was set at 1/2 power.

I'm a big fan of the one-light setup. It's lightweight, fast, and extremely versatile with the right touch. I can pack a big Photek Softlighter II 60" umbrella, a compact Manfrotto lightstand, and an umbrella mount into a small quiver-sized shoulder bag. That, coupled with a hotshoe flash that I carry in my camera bag, I can produce studio-quality light just about anywhere.

I photographed Nora during a recent assignment where I was tasked with creating a collection of environmental portraits of international students. The scheduling was tight, so we had little time to experiment -- it was a "run-and-gun" situation. We came across this room where two colors met in the corner, and I knew we had the makings of a great background.

Have questions or comments? Send me an email.

Technical Data

I photographed Nora, Plattsburgh, New York with a Nikon D700 and an 80-200mm ƒ/2.8 AF-S lens. I used one Nikon SB-900 mounted to a light stand and bounced into a Photek Softlighter II 60" softbox to camera left at 90° to Nora, triggered with a PocketWizard Plus II radio.

When you call something "The Badlands", it conjures visions of an inhospitable wasteland, a desert dune sea littered with the bleached bones of hapless animals, devoid of water, scrubbed by dry winds, and baked under an unforgiving sun. It's the rare traveler that looks at that name on a map and thinks, "The Badlands -- sounds nice."

And maybe that's just fine, because it keeps the casual visitors away. But those who do take the time (and enough extra water) to visit will be rewarded with a unique and beautiful experience.

Have questions or comments? Send me an email.

Technical Data

I photographed Carrizo Badlands Sunset, Anza-Borrego State Park, California with a Nikon D300 camera and an Nikkor 50mm ƒ/1.8 lens lens. I shot three images with the camera oriented vertically, panning horizontally, and stitched them together in Adobe Photoshop.

Starting June 3rd and running through June 26th, the Vermont Center for Photography in Brattleboro, Vermont will be showing FRESH: New Work by VCP Photographers, an eclectic selection of recent photographic work from VCP members. There will be an opening reception on the evening of June 3rd during the Brattleboro Gallery Walk.

Two of my images -- a silver gelatin print of Ocotillo Shadow on Abandoned Cabin, Anza-Borrego Desert, California and a palladium print of Nicole Grainger riding Oxford, Middlebury, Vermont -- will be on display. Fine art prints of each image are available for purchase from the links above.

There's nothing like sunrise in the desert. The air is cool, breezy, and the smoldering predawn light lends the landscape a radiant glow. It's the warm spark that precedes the midday furnace of the desert. I love getting out for walks in the mornings, because there's a quality of light that occurs nowhere else but the dry barrens of the American West.

I photographed this image on exactly such a morning, though the breeze then was more of a punctuated gale. After setting up the camera and loading the film holder, I waited...and waited...and waited for the wind to subside so that the Ocotillo in the photo (and the tripod) would stop shaking.

Have questions or comments? Send me an email.

Technical Data

I photographed Ocotillo Shadow on Abandoned Cabin, Anza-Borrego Desert, California, silver gelatin print with a with a Tachihara 4x5 wood field camera fitted with a Schneider 210mm ƒ/5.6 Symmar-S lens on Kodak TMax 400 film (TMY2). The exposure was unrecorded, but was fairly fast at around ƒ/16 because of the bright, early-morning desert sun.

I developed the film in HC-110 Dilution H (1:63) and printed it on Fotokemika Varycon fiber-based silver gelatin paper, grade 3 contrast, with a modicum of burning on the edges and the center to maintain detail in the brightly-lit adobe wall. I toned the print in Rapid Selenium Toner, diluted 1:5, for a slight color change and to insure print longevity.

"The best camera is the one you have with you." - Borrowed and paraphrased from Chase Jarvis, Joe McNally, and many others

On the same trip that I photographed Sunset and Moonrise at Table Mountain (you know, the trip where I accidentally packed a 50 instead of a 35mm lens?) I came across this scene at one of the best campsites I've ever stayed in. It was on the South Fork of Cascade Creek on our descent from Avalanche Divide in Grand Teton National Park, and the morning was one of those crisp, cool, clear summer dawns that make you realize why you go to so much trouble to get to remote wilderness areas.

For a scene like this, I would love to use my 4x5 large format camera and a slightly wide lens, like a 125mm. But there's no way I was going to lug that big camera, mammoth tripod, and a stack of film holders up to 10,000' and back down. All I had was my Nikon D700 and a fast 50mm prime lens. What to do?

Stitch it, vertically.

Starting with the boulder at the bottom all the way to "The Wall" the top of the frame, I shot a series of four images, maintaining white balance and exposure settings between each one. To narrow the gap in the wide exposure range between the sunlit slope in the background and the shaded stream in the foreground I used a Singh-Ray three-stop neutral density graduated filter, primarily in the middle and top frames. Back in the office after the trip, I imported the images into Lightroom, adjusted each so that the color balance and tonality matched perfectly, and seamlessly stitched them together using the open source program Hugin.

Would it have been great to use my large format camera on this scene? Certainly. If I ever get the chance, I'd love to go back and haul that big camera and associated gear up Paintbrush Canyon and spend a week photographing inside those valleys. But all I had was my D700 and a fast 50, so that was the best camera to use for the situation.

Have questions or comments? Send me an email.

Technical Data

I photographed with a with a Nikon D700 and a 50mm ƒ/1.4 AF-D Nikkor lens, fitted with a Singh-Ray three-stop neutral density graduated filter in a Cokin P holder. The exposure 1/8 second at ƒ/16 for each of the four images. I imported the images into Adobe Lightroom and made small corrections to match color and tone between each image, and then merged them into a vertical panorama using the application Hugin.

Little breakthroughs can mean a lot, and sometimes those breakthoughs come by reading the manual.

Whenever I can steal a couple of hours from assignments or taking care of our 18-month-old son, I head into the darkroom to work on my Palladium printing technique. It's a tedious process that involves time and precision to get repeatable results. Just when I think I have everything dialed in correctly, one of the variables up and changes, leaving me with a print that isn't quite what I envisioned. I scrap the print and head back to the drawing board in hopes that next time, next time, I'll be even more meticulous and get it right.

Since I began printing in Palladium, I've worked under the assumption that to get the rich blacks I wanted from my paper of choice -- Arches Platine, a 100% cotton rag paper purportedly designed for Platinum/Palladium printing -- I had to double-coat the paper. That is, I had to apply two coats of expensive Palladium emulsion to the paper, letting the first partially dry before brushing on the second coat. This was time-consuming and becoming prohibitively expensive, but it was giving me the results I wanted. With only a single coat, the blacks on my prints were weak and bronzed.

I acquired a copy Dick Arentz' Platinum and Pallidium Printing, the de facto manual of this arcane art. It's out of print, and used copies are damned pricey. But, if you're foolhardy enough to toss money away printing your photographs using precious metals like Platinum and Palladium, then the price of this book is a drop in the bucket. After only a few minutes with the book, I learned about Acidification, and how it can be used to make many papers compatible with Pt/Pd printing.

You see, this printing process requires an acidic environment to work, and most papers these days are neutral (pH 7) or buffered to be basic (pH > 7) in order to meet archival permanence guidelines. The buffering prevents lignins present in most paper from degrading into acids over time, which will yellow and eventually destroy the paper. It's great for archival permanence, but these buffers neutralize the acidic Pt/Pd emulsion and inhibit its action, producing prints with weak tones.

To acidify, you simply soak the paper in a weak acid bath for a few minutes. I use a solution of 5% Oxalic Acid. Once soaked in the acid, it gets a quick water rinse, then it's set out on a screen rack to dry. Once thoroughly dried, I apply a single-coat of Palladium emulsion, and contact print as I've always done. The print I receive is just as rich, if not richer, than the old prints that I double-coated.

I originally thought that I'd have a problem removing the residual acid from the paper once the print was finished, but actually that's not the case. Using an acid testing pen used to check the acid-levels of papers, I've found that my clearing and washing process leaves the paper in a neutral to slightly basic state.

Have questions or comments? Send me an email.

Technical Data

I photographed Utah Juniper, Canyonlands National Park, Utah, Palladium Print with a with a Tachihara 4x5 field camera fitted with a Fujinon 150mm ƒ/6.3 lens on Kodak Tmax 100 (TMX) rated at EI 64. The exposure was 1/15 sec at ƒ/32. I developed it in Kodak D-76 (1:1).

To create the Palladium print, I scanned the negative and printed a digital negative on Pictorico OHP transparency film. I single-coated a sheet of Arches Platine watercolor paper that had been previously soaked in a 5% Oxalic Acid solution and then dried. I contact printed the digital negative on the coated paper for about 12 minutes under my UV exposure box, and then developed the print in warm Potassium Oxalate.

I often find myself shooting in edgy light, in conditions so dim that I'm beyond the range of safely handholding the camera to get a sharp image. Today's digital cameras with their fantastic high ISO capabilities have really opened up these dim scenes for us -- it's like being able to shoot in the dark. But what if you're using film, and are restricted to old-fashioned film speeds like 400, or Ansel forbid, 100?

This is the realm of solid slow-shutter techniques. There are some simple things you can do. Use a tripod, a cable release, and (if your camera has it) the mirror lockup function, or MLU for short. In SLR (Single Lens Reflex) cameras, the image you see through the viewfinder is actually the image coming through the lens, but it's being redirected to your viewfinder via a movable mirror at a 45° angle. When you activate the shutter release, the reflex-mirror rapidly flops up out of the way and allows the image light to strike the film at the back of the camera. This is incredibly convenient -- you view the actual image you're going to photograph right up to the exact moment of exposure, but it introduces a source of vibration to the camera, and vibration means a loss of image sharpness.

Camera manufacturers try to address this by designing mirror dampers inside the camera. These absorb the shock from the mirror slap and reduce vibrations, but only to a point. To maximize sharpness, especially on slower shutter speeds, locking the mirror up and out of the way a few seconds before you release the shutter is the only way to insure maximum sharpness. The drawback is that you can no longer see the image through the lens.

To capture the action of the running horse in the very dim light of the training arena, I mentally marked the spot in the frame where I wanted the horse to be. I locked up the mirror, then waited for the right moment. I quickly ran through a whole roll of 120 film to get this one frame that worked.

Have questions or comments? Send me an email.

Technical Data

I photographed Nicole Grainger riding Oxford, Middlebury, Vermont (Palladium Print) with a with a Hasselblad 500CM and a Zeiss 80mm ƒ/2.8 T* lens on Kodak Tri-X Pan Professional 320 (TXP) rated at EI 320. The exposure was 1/60 sec at ƒ/2.8. I developed it in Kodak Xtol (1:1) to get the full rated speed from the film, scanned the negative, and output a digital negative onto Pictorico OHP transparency film. I contact printed the digital negative in Palladium on double-coated Arches Platine watercolor paper.

"Besides, interesting things happen along borders — transitions — not in the middle where everything is the same."

- Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash

It's true. The most visually interesting things do happen around borders, or transition zones. Whether those barriers be temporal, such as the "magic hour" of beautiful, golden light that precedes sunset and dusk; mental, during those times when we're pushing ourselves outside our comfort zone to try something new; or physical, such as snow-covered trees on the edge of a forest, contrasted against a pure-white sky; it's these frontiers that make things stand out in stark relief and enable the rarely-seen details of our world to crystalize in our minds.

Have questions or comments? Send me an email.

Technical Data

I photographed December Snow I, Middlebury, Vermont with a with a Hasselblad 500CM and a Zeiss 150mm ƒ/4 CF lens on Kodak TMax 400 film (TMY-2). The exposure was 1/15 sec at ƒ/11. I developed the film in Kodak D-76 (1:1) and printed the image on Fotokemika Varycon fiber-based silver gelatin paper, toned in selenium.

You don't need expensive gear to make great images, just a simple camera, your eyes, and your mind.

I've been shooting some B&W landscapes, exteriors, and interiors of the Homer Noble Farm in Ripton, Vermont for Middlebury College. For the majority of the images, I've been using my Tachihara 4x5 field camera and Schneider Symmar-S lenses, but every so often a certain scene catches my eye and I switch to my 1950's-era Crown Graphic and a 1930's-era Agfa 10.5cm Solinar lens that I rescued from a crumbling 6x9 folding camera.

There's nothing remarkable about the Crown Graphic -- it's a standard mid-twentieth century press camera. It's built like a tank and is designed to work quickly. The real star of the show is the Agfa Solinar lens. Designed only to cover the 6cm x 9cm image area of an Agfa Isolette folding camera, I was stretching the coverage of the lens by using it with my 4"x5" camera. On film of that size, the center is very sharp but rapidly degrades as you move to the corners of the image, creating a soft-focus vignette that emphasizes the subject at the center. The result is a beautiful image with sharpness where you want it and a creamy-soft margin that draws your eyes to the important bits.

Neither the Crown Graphic nor the Agfa lens cost much money. Both combined, they're far less expensive than an entry-level DSLR camera or even a high-end digital point and shoot. They're all just tools, and as photographers the specific tools we use aren't critical to the creative process. It's how we're able to effectively leverage these tools, through our craftsmanship and imagination, to create successful expressive photographs.

Have questions or comments? Send me an email.

Technical Data

I photographed Bedroom, Homer Noble Farm, Ripton, Vermont with a Graflex 4x5 Crown Graphic press camera and an Agfa 10.5cm ƒ/4.5 Solinar lens on Kodak TMax 100 (TMX) at EI 64. The exposure was approximately 1/8 second at ƒ/4.5. I developed the film in Kodak D-76 (1:1).

In the past few weeks, I've received several questions about my digital negative and palladium printing process, so this week I'm going to briefly discuss my methods.

There are many ways to skin the digital negative cat: both Dan Burkholder and Ron Reeder have written very good books on the subject, though the information in each ages quickly (more about that below). Mark Nelson has his Precision Digital Negative system. There's a photographer here in Vermont that I just met who swears by the PDN system, and judging from his work, it's working well for him. If I can free up some time this winter, I might try PDN myself.

The thing with all of the tutorials and advice you'll find online is that bits of it are rendered obsolete anytime a new printer or inkset comes out. A large part of the "cannon" of making digital negatives was based on Epson printers of 8-10 years ago, so these hybrid alt-process guys had to come up with creative ways of getting those inks to smoothly stick to transparency material in color combinations that would most effectively block UV. The Epson software was woefully underpowered for the job, so they resorted to exotic RIP software (such as Quadtone RIP) to carefully control the amounts of ink laid down on a print. The result is that you ended up spending hours fiddling with QTR ink curves and piles of printed step tablets trying to tweak the process.

You'll find instructions that are just not correct for modern printers or bits of advice that seem fundamental but have no valid bearing on the result, such as "I only ever use matte black for making digital negatives", only to find out later that that person does so because he prints on matte papers and doesn't want to waste ink switching back and forth. In my experience (and that's important qualifier with this kind of work) with Epson's modern Ultrachrome inks, matte or glossy black makes no difference in the output (though if you have hard evidence to the contrary, I'd love to hear about it.)

My method cobbles together bits from many sources: some of Reeder's advice, some of Dick Arentz' (from his book Platinum and Palladium Printing -- he doesn't tackle digital negs, just the wet bits), and I filled in the spaces from a multitude of others online who have shared their methods. I started off with the ChartThrob method, printed a few step tablets, and let the ChartThrob scripts generate correction curves automatically. These were close, but not great. So I started printing the ChartThrob step tablets alongside real photos with broad spans of continuous tones and just used my eye to manually create correction curves in Photoshop. I use Epson's Advanced Black and White option in the printer driver to print onto Pictorico OHP film. I print Palladium with a kit obtained from Bostick and Sullivan onto Arches Platine paper, also purchased from B&S. I double-coat the paper at a relative humidity of 50-65%, making sure I let the paper equalize to that humidity before coating. The RH makes a huge difference in your prints, let me tell you. I spent a couple of weeks chasing that problem. Here in Vermont, I use a humidifier in my darkroom to boost the moisture levels from ~20% in the wintertime to the required 50-65%. But don't let it go too high -- the humidity has a profound effect on contrast.

I expose the paper with the digital negative sandwiched on top of the coated paper inside a contact printing frame I constructed underneath an array of 8 black light fluorescent bulbs, all built using materials purchased from my local "Lowe's" store. My exposure time is about 6-8 minutes. I develop the print in warm Potassium Oxalate, and clear it in Kodak Hypo-Clearing Agent followed by several water-soaking baths.

Consistency in your work ethic is critical. You change one variable -- the paper type, the RH, the transparency film, the developer, etc -- and everything falls apart.

I could go on for hours about this. There are so many disparate pieces to this puzzle that all have to come together in the end to get a successful product, it's a little overwhelming. When I first started experimenting with this process, I thought it would be easy: I was always a good worker in my Organic Chemistry classes at college, I can follow directions, I'm a dedicated worker -- how hard could it be? Well, it's another Rabbit Hole, that's for sure. How far you go down that hole is up to you. :-)

This is the way I do it, and so far it's working for me. If you have suggestions or feel that something I've shared here is incorrect, please don't hesitate to contact me.

Technical Data

I photographed Deer Skull, Citronelle, Alabama with a Nikon D200 DSLR and an Nikkor 50mm ƒ/1.8 AF-D lens. The exposure was approximately 30 seconds at ƒ/8, ISO 100. I processed the image in Nikon Capture NX2 and Adobe Photoshop, and output a digital negative onto Pictorico OHP transparency film. I then contact printed the negative in Palladium on double-coated Arches Platine watercolor paper, developed it in warm Potassium Oxalate, and cleared the print in Kodak HypoClearing Agent and several water soak baths.

Through December 31st, 2010, I'm offering Hostas II, Middlebury, Vermont from the In Vermont portfolio, for the special price of $125, plus shipping. The 7"x7¾" gelatin silver image is printed on 11"x14" paper and split toned in sepia and selenium. Each image is signed on the verso (that's "back" in artist-speak). As always, my images come with a Lifetime Guarantee.

Be sure to order by December 18th to insure delivery before the 25th. Orders received after December 18th will be filled after January 1st, 2011.

Thanks again for your support, and have a safe and happy holiday season!

P.S. - Newsletter subscribers get free shipping. Sign up for my newsletter and I'll send you a link to waive the shipping costs.

Look behind you.

Reading that first sentence, regular visitors of my "Image of the Week" pages will probably expect me to say something along the lines of how you should look behind you to find alternative compositions. That sometimes, the best image might be at your backside, quietly licking its chops while you busy yourself with the first thing that caught your eye in the scene. And it's a good point -- I've lost count of the times I've spent half-an-hour setting up the camera, taking meter readings, and exposing several sheets of film only to spin around and find something even better.

But that's not my point this week.

Nope, this week is about personal safety. It's about being aware of your surroundings and how to be prepared for any eventuality that might come your way. Whether you're in the middle of a busy city, at the bottom of some narrow desert canyon, or say, at the foot of a local dam, you've got to keep one eye on what's happening around you.

This week's image was photograped just a hundred feet from the bottom of the Weybridge Dam. When I drove into the parking area, signs warned that water levels might suddenly rise without warning, and they weren't kidding. After exposing a few sheets of film with my field camera, I suddenly noticed that the white noise from the waterfall behind me had become louder. I looked around to see that there was a fresh torrent of water spilling out of the dam. I hastily packed up my gear, tossed my backpack over my shoulders, and hustled up the river bank. The spot where my tripod had been was very quickly submerged beneath a three feet of water.

So, while this wasn't a life threatening event, it was certainly a reminder that environmental conditions can change without warning.

Technical Data

I photographed Boulders in swiftly moving stream, Weybridge, Vermont with a Tachihara 4x5 field camera and a Schneider 150mm ƒ/5.6 Symmar-S lens on Kodak TMax 100 (TMX) at EI 64. The exposure was approximately 30 seconds at ƒ/22. I developed the film in Kodak HC-110 dilution H (1:63).

You can do a lot with a 50mm lens.

On a recent trip to Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, I made a bone-headed mistake when I was packing my gear. The ambitious trip plan included a non-trivial amount of elevation gain and loss, so I mercilessly pruned my gear selection. To that end, I decided to go photographically minimalist: one camera, one lens. I figured not only would I save on weight, but it would be a fantastic exercise in simplicity. Good photographers can make an image with any old gear, right?

So with a bulging frame pack and a small shoulder bag, I flew out to Salt Lake City to meet up with my partners and make the road trip to Jackson. With our gear splayed on the asphault of the trailhead parking lot to divide up group gear and make the final load-out, I soon discovered my error: instead of the 35mm ƒ/2 lens I had wanted to pack, I had brought my 50mm ƒ/1.4 lens instead.

Cue that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Without a wideangle how was I going to capture those sweeping mountain vistas? I was stuck with a "normal" lens, for all intents and purposes a really-short telephoto that I typically use for environmental portraits.

After a few minutes of feeling sorry for myself, I recovered. I realized I had the best of both worlds: Not only is the 50mm ƒ/1.4 one of Nikon's sharpest lenses, its large aperture means easy focusing for night photography, and if I need a larger angle of view than it can afford, I can just stitch the images together.

This week's image is one of the results. On our second night out, we camped on the South Fork of Cascade Creek, just to the west of the Tetons. Table Mountain loomed over us and was beautifully backlit by the last remnants of the setting sun just as the rising moon had begin to illuminate its eastern face. I quickly made four exposures with my D700 and 50mm lens vertically oriented, panning from right to left. Back home, I imported the images, color corrected and dodged the moonlit mountainside, and merged the panorama using the open source application Hugin.

Have questions or comments? Send me an email.

Technical Data

I photographed Sunset and Moonrise at Table Mountain, Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming with a Nikon D700 and Nikkor 50mm ƒ/1.4 AFD lens. The exposure was 4 sec at ƒ/2.8 at ISO 800. All four exposures were color corrected in Nikon Capture NX2 and stitched using Hugin.

Starting October 2nd and running through October 31st, Carol's Hungry Mind Cafe in Middlebury, Vermont will be showing a selection of ten photographs from my portfolio In Vermont. There will be a reception on October 8th starting at 5:00pm to coincide with the Middlebury Art Walk.

Please see my Image Sales page for more information about my fine art prints. You may order online using your credit card, or contact me directly to discuss your needs and arrange payment.

» View the In Vermont Gallery

Directions

Carol's Hungry Mind Cafe is located on Merchant's Row in the heart of Middlebury, just off the village square.

Carol's Hungry Mind Cafe
24 Merchants Row
Middlebury, VT
Phone: (802) 388-0101
Website: http://www.carolshungrymindcafe.com/

I was channeling the spirits of St. Ansel and St. Edward the day I photographed this scene in the Anza-Borrego desert.

After walking around these two abandoned Airstream-like trailers looking for a composition, I noticed the waxing moon rising in the east. I couldn't resist making an image with it in the frame.

I set up my 4x5 field camera low to the ground to pick up some grass in the foreground and fitted a deep red filter over the lens to deepen the tones of the blue sky. The deep red filter blocks blue light and is the secret to getting those black skies we've come to identify with the American West.

Have questions or comments? Send me an email.

Technical Data

I photographed Moonrise and Abandoned Trailers, Anza-Borrego Desert, California with a Tachihara 4x5 field camera and a Schneider 150mm ƒ/5.6 Symmar-S lens on Kodak TMax 400 film (TMY-2). The exposure was 1/8 sec at ƒ/32 with a deep red filter.

Due to newly discovered time constraints over the last nine months, I haven't produced much in the way of new work.

Between sharing childcare duties with my wife and a heavy load of commercial assignments this spring, I've been swamped. So, instead of producing new personal work, I've been at work in the darkroom reimagining existing work as new pieces.

One of these projects includes printing the Vermont Morgan Horse black-and-white images as a Palladium portfolio. I've covered Palladium printmaking in a previous post, and I feel Palladium's warm glow works beautifully with the Morgan Horse work.

This week's image is the first in a long line of prints to come, and one of my favorites from that set.

Have questions or comments? Send me an email.

Technical Data

I photographed UVM Mallory, Morgan Horse Farm, Weybridge, Vermont, Palladium Print with a Hasselblad 500CM and a Zeiss 80mm ƒ/2.8 T* lens on Kodak TMax 400 film (TMY-2). The exposure was 1/60 sec at ƒ/11. I scanned the negative, corrected dust, scratches, and tone in Photoshop, and output the image as a digital negative onto Pictorico OHP transparency material. I then contact printed the negative in Palladium onto double-coated Arches Platine watercolor paper.

It's about this time of the year that I start thinking warmer thoughts and about sunnier climes, and when that happens, my mind drifts to the desert.

About twice a year I jump a plane to escape frigid New England and visit the high desert canyons of Southern Utah or the warmer, arid expanses of Southern California. One of my favorite places is the Anza-Borrego, a stretch of dry barrens skirting the Mexican border between San Diego and El Centro, California.

One of the remarkable things about the desert are the effects of such low rainfall. Not only does it make the desert explode with color after an early spring shower, but human-made objects undergo a certain kind of desert "mummification", and the landscape is left with these anachronistic structures. Abandoned adobe cabins, wooden-wheeled camp trailers from the 1920s, Wild West era stagecoach stations -- it'll make you feel like you've just stepped out of a time machine.

Lacking water's competition, the sun, wind, and sand take their toll rounding the edges, drying the wood, and baking the metals and plastics. All that's left are the bleached skeletons of humankind's tools and shelters, standing as monuments in the unapologetic desert light.

Have questions or comments? Send me an email.

Technical Data

I photographed Abandoned Cabin, Anza-Borrego Desert, California with a Nikon D300 and a 17-35mm ƒ/2.8 Nikkor lens. The exposure was 1/60 second at ƒ/11.

You can work really hard engineering lighting setups, backgrounds, props, posing methods, hair, and makeup to get an image like this. Or, you can just always be ready with your camera when all of those variables just happen to converge by chance on the ideal scene.

I prefer the latter.

Our good friend Melissa was sitting in this overstuffed leather chair at my inlaws' house, holding her new son, Parker, when the window light swelled in intensity (the sun must have peaked from behind the clouds). It made Melissa and Parker positively glow. I grabbed my 'blad, metered the light, and snapped off just two frames before the light faded.

To create a print that conveys that glow I saw, I made a digital negative using my Epson 3800 printer and contact printed this image with Palladium, a noble metal similar to Platinum but with a warmer tone. The resulting Palladiotype features an extremely soft, glowing tonality and possesses remarkable archival properties.

Have questions or comments? Send me an email.

Technical Data

I photographed with a Hasselblad 500CM and an 80mm ƒ/2.8 Zeiss T* lens. The exposure was 1/60 second at ƒ/4 on Kodak Tri-X Pan Professional 320 (EI 200). I developed the film in Kodak HC-110 dilution H (1:63). The film was scanned, adjusted in Photoshop, output as a digital negative onto Pictorico OHP transparency film, and finally contact printed with Palladium onto Arches Platine watercolor paper.

The most striking thing about this scene is the one thing this photo can't convey.

The quiet.

It's an arresting stillness that assaults your senses, simply because they are so used to the constant onslaught of sound: cars, cellphones, televisions, barking dogs. Drop a blanket of snow on your environment -- like this one on the morning of December 28, 2009 -- and it all goes away. The snow soaks it up, and your ears and left grasping at straws. There's nothing to hear, except maybe the wind or the soft crunching of your shoes in the fresh powder.

Have questions or comments? Send me an email.

Technical Data

I photographed Old Stone Row in Winter, Middlebury, Vermont with a Nikon D300 camera and 17-35mm ƒ/2.8 Nikkor lens. The exposure was 1/13 second at ƒ/11. Several images were captured vertically and then digitally merged together to produce a high-resolution image.

I've written before on the merits of always having a camera in hand, of always being ready for the unexpected photographic moment. But that doesn't always mean you need to lug around a backpack full of DSLR gear -- sometimes a Point & Shoot camera will do.

Today's P&S cameras are much more advanced than the birthday-party-snapshooting-toys of just a few years ago. With full-manual modes, the ability to shoot RAW format, flash hotshoes, Vibration Reduction technology, and high pixel counts, these technological triumphs pack a lot of quality and control into a small, lightweight package. Now, on short trips where I'd typically wince at carrying my shoulder bag with a DSLR body and two lenses, I can simply slip a P&S in my pocket and be (reasonably) prepared for that unexpected moment.

There are glaring drawbacks, however. P&S cameras aren't nearly as fast as DSLR's -- there's a palpable waiting period between the time you punch the shutter button and the shutter actually firing, so forget about shooting sports, hyperactive kids, or anything but nearly-static scenes. Additionally, the small sensors on these cameras can't deliver the high ISO performance of their DSLR big siblings. Anything higher than ISO 200 and your photos start to look like noisy video grabs.

This week's image was taken on the newly opened Worth Mountain Ski Lift at Middlebury College's Snow Bowl in Hancock, Vermont. I carried a Canon G10 P&S camera on a bandolier strap underneath my ski jacket. I slipped off my gloves (you can't operate the controls of the G10 with gloved hands), held a 2 stop graduated neutral density filter over the lens, and captured this frame just as the sun broke from the clouds.

I photographed this scene just a short time ago, in the waning days of 2009, during the first big snowfall of the season. It was one of those days when the flakes were blowing in sideways, and the temperature was just right to make it stick to the trees. I expended two rolls of 120 film on this and a few other compositions, and then retreated to the warmth of my wood stove heated house.

From now until January 31st, I'm offering a print of December Snow I, Middlebury, Vermont at the special price of $150 (unframed) or $225 (framed), plus shipping. The 9"x9" photograph is printed using archival pigment inks on Harman Fiber Gloss AL paper and matted with bright white acid-free museum board to fit a 16"x20" frame. The unframed will arrive ready to install into any frame you supply, while the framed print comes ready to hang in Nielsen-Bainbridge Profile 117 black anodized aluminum frame moulding and UV-resistant acrylic glazing.

I wish you all a Happy New Year, and please contact me if you have questions or comments.

This is coming rather late in the season, but this is the first chance I've had to sit down and update the website. It's been a busy year, and I'd like to thank all of my clients and customers for their continued support.

From now through December 31st, 2009, I'm offering one of my favorite images of the year, UVM Mallory from the Vermont Morgan Horse portfolio, for the special price of $100, plus shipping. The very intimate 6.5"x6.5" square image is matted and mounted in 11"x14" bright white museum board. Each image is signed on the front in the image border, and signed and dated on the back of the mount. As always, my images come with a Lifetime Guarantee.

Thanks again for your support, and have a safe and happy holiday season!

Lately, I'm carrying my Hasselblad everywhere I go, even on jobs where I wouldn't realistically use it. I prefer it for people portraits, and you never know when or where you'll meet an interesting character.

Nearby Middlebury College had hired me to shoot some aerial scenics of the college campus and had scheduled some air time for me with local farmer and pilot Ed Peet. Ed flies a 1960's era Cessna 172 off an airstrip on his Cornwall farm, from (as the written directions I received detailed) a "large hanger/barn after a barn full of cows."

Actually, I couldn't tell which barn was which. There were cows everywhere and not much of an airstrip -- just a swath of flat pasture with close-trimmed grass. I walked up to the only man in sight, introduced myself and said that I was looking for Ed Peet.

"You found him."

After a five-minute preflight, we were airborne and cutting an elegant arc across the Vermont sky back towards Middlebury's campus. Ed was an extraordinarily nice guy, and was extremely accommodating during the flight, making just the right turns at the perfect altitude for my images.

Back on the ground, I asked Ed if I could take a portrait, and he quickly agreed, striking up this pose just as I swung the Hasselblad up to my eye and focused the lens.

Have questions or comments? Send me an email.

Technical Data

I photographedFarmer and Pilot Ed Peet, Cornwall, Vermont with a Hasselblad 500CM and a Carl Zeiss 80mm ƒ/2.8 T* lens on Kodak TMax 400 (TMY2), exposed at EI 320. The exposure was 1/125 second at ƒ/8. I developed the film in Kodak HC-110 dilution H (1:63) for 8:15 at 23°C.

We've already lost a great number of the "Old Guard" photographic products and companies to the inexorable march of digital, but when Polaroid announced two years ago that it was ceasing production of its legendary instant photography films, photographers around the world let out a collective gasp. Polaroid, a company with a photographic brand name as ubiquitous as Kleenex and as legendary as Levi's, suddenly stopped making the product that made it famous, and upon which thousands of artists, scientists, and consumers depended for their imaging needs. The demand dried up, sales dropped. Poof. Gone.

Sure, Fuji continues to make instant film products in pack form, but nothing that replaces the look and feel of Polaroid Type 55, that gorgeous, fine-grained, long-tonal-scale print-and-negative instant film that has long been regarded as one of the finest black-and-white film products on the planet. Unlike the rest of Polaroid's product line, Type 55 produces both a black-and-white instant print and a negative that can be saved and printed (or scanned) later. Rumor has it that the negative stock was based on the reknowned Kodak Panatomic X, a high-altitude reconnaissance film with extremely fine grain and resolution. To produce and preserve a Type 55 negative for later use, you had to expose at around ISO 40-50, develop the sheet in the proper Polaroid sheet film processor, peel the print and mask away from the negative, then immerse the negative in a bath of 18% Sodium Sulfite solution to clear the processing chemicals.

So, yeah, using Type 55 was kind of pain in the rear: it was slow, it wasn't really "instant" unless you carried a bucket of Sodium Sulfite solution with you into the field, and the developing speed was very dependent on the ambient temperature. Many photographers (including myself) would simply choose to stack up the exposed sheets of film and process them later at home under controlled conditions.

It was well worth the effort. The images you could get with Type 55 were unparalled.

There's hope still. A group of photographic enthusiasts have banded together to create The Impossible Project. The group bought Polaroid's Netherlands factory and equipment and are committed to launching a new line of analog instant film products in 2010. Just recently, they announced that Polaroid itself has commissioned them to produce a run of Polaroid-branded instant films.

Does that mean Type 55 will make a comeback? Probably not, but you never know.

Have questions or comments? Send me an email.

Technical Data

I photographed Birches, Middlebury, Vermont with a Tachihara 4x5 Field Camera and a Schneider 210mm ƒ/5.6 Symmar-S lens on Polaroid Type 55, exposed at EI 50. The exposure was 1/2 second at ƒ/11.

The National Museum of the Morgan Horse in Shelburne, Vermont will be showing a selection of twenty images from my portfolio of the University of Vermont's Morgan Horse Farm. There will be a reception on November 6th from 5:00-7:00PM.

Archival, fine-art photographic prints are available for purchase in a variety of sizes, either just matted or matted and framed. Prices start at $175 for color 10"x16" and $200 for black-and-white 14"x14" matted images, up to $275 for color and $300 for black-and-white framed and matted images. Please see my Image Sales page for more information about my fine art prints.

Please contact me if you have questions or comments.

» View the Vermont Morgan Horse Portfolio

Directions

The National Museum of the Morgan Horse is located on Bostwick Road off of Route 7 just south of the Shelburne Museum.

The National Museum of the Morgan Horse
122 Bostwick Road
Shelburne, VT 05482
Phone: 802-985-8665
Website: http://www.MorganMuseum.org

This was a difficult scene to capture.

Early morning light can be tough, especially in the desert. The exposure range from deep shadows to sunlit highlights can be extreme, enough to overwhelm the ability of most digital and film cameras to attractively record the scene. Using a large format camera and black-and-white negative film, the standard approach is "expose for the shadows, develop for the highlights". In other words, you "pull your film" by overexposing it in the field and underdeveloping it in the darkroom. The resulting negative has lower contrast and greater shadow detail with controlled highlights. Then it's simply a matter of spending some time in the wet darkroom to extract a print that matches your vision of the scene, and that's often easier said than done.

I prefer a hybrid approach. A marriage of analog and digital: a traditional B+W negative, scanned, processed in Photoshop, and output to archival pigment inkjet printer.

I scan my film using Vuescan, a simple yet powerful scanning application. Not only is Vuescan compatible with virtually every modern scanner on the market (as well as a countless number of long-discontinued and manufacturer-abandoned models), it's also able to produce RAW scans of your transparencies and negatives, meaning you get a scan-once, process-many solution. After saving the scan in Adobe's Digital Negative format (DNG), I can import the file as many times as I'd like using Photoshop's Camera RAW interface and optimize the digital development settings for different areas of the image. Once inside Photoshop, I layer the multiple imports and create a series of masks that display only the optimized areas of the image.

This means I can produce a large format image with beautiful highlights, detailed shadows, and arrestingly-textured midtones without spending hours and hours in the darkroom doing all sorts of dodge-and-burn gymnastics. I get a better result that more closely matches what my eyes saw at the time of capture.

Mountain Palm Springs is one of my favorite spots in the Anza-Borrego, and I love getting there long before sunrise to watch the stars fade away and the morning sun climb over the horizon. On the morning I shot this image, the sun was brilliantly illuminating the hillside in the background while the soft, shadowed light reflected by the arroyo wall behind me warmly lit the palms. A straight exposure would not have successfully depicted the range of tones visible to your eye.

Technical Data

I photographed Mountain Palm Springs, Anza-Borrego Desert, California with a Tachihara 4x5 Field Camera and a Schneider 210mm ƒ/5.6 Symmar-S lens on Kodak TMax 400 (TMY-2), exposed at EI 200 to pull one stop and lower the overall contrast. The exposure was 4 seconds at ƒ/22. I processed the film in XTol diluted 1:1 for 8 minutes at 20° C.

Location lighting is a well-skinned cat. Monolights, power packs and heads, hotlights, small shoemount strobes...there are many choices. When I need to travel light, I get away with a bag full of SB-25 and SB-26 strobes and enough PocketWizards to fire them for lighting situations where I don't have AC outlets available and can't haul a Pelican case full of studio strobes. After a couple minutes of setup attaching cables and checking exposure with a handheld light meter, I'm ready to roll.

But Nikon's Creative Lighting System is changing all that. Using a DSLR with pop-up flash unit, or a dedicated infrared flash unit to "command" a small army of Speedlights, you can mimic the results of much larger studio strobes for a fraction of the weight and complexity.

The system works by attaching a "Commander" to the hotshoe of your DSLR. Certain high-end Nikon DSLR's will allow you to use their pop-up flash as the Commander. There's also the Nikon SU-800 Infrared flash that will serve as a Commander for cameras without a built-in flash. The Commander emits a series of ultra-fast "pre-flashes" that evaluate the scene and tell other remote Speedlights the proper flash exposure for the scene. Each remote Speedlight is assigned to one of three groups on four channels, allowing you to control each flash's output, whether you're using TTL or Manual output.

The end result is that you get a portable flash system that allows you to remotely control power levels without having to walk to each flash to adjust, plus there's no need to carry additional radio triggers to fire the flashes in sync.

Your camera bag just got a lot lighter.

This doesn't mean I'm giving up on PocketWizards. They're radio triggers and have a much higher range than the infrared-controlled Nikon system, and aren't limited to line of sight. But there are advantages to having remote control over your strobes' power output. I'm impatiently waiting for PocketWizard to release the Nikon version of their new FlexTT5 system, which will give you the best of both worlds: wireless TTL and manual remote control of strobes via Nikon CLS with PocketWizard's reliable radio communication.

This week's image is of Ashton, an eight-year-old girl in rural Alabama demonstrating her diving skills. I placed an SB-600 on the ground at camera left and an SB-900 on the ground camera right slightly in front of the edge of the diving board. Both strobes were set to fire at 1/4 power and zoomed to their widest coverage setting.

Have questions or comments? Send me an email.

Technical Data

Bullseye, Citronelle, Alabama was photographed with a Nikon D300 and a Nikon 85mm ƒ/1.8 lens. The exposure was 1/200 second at ƒ/5.6. Supplemental lighting was provided by two Nikon strobes: an SB-600 camera left and a Nikon SB-900 camera right, both set at 1/4 power and triggered via Nikon CLS.

This week, I want to use this space to thank everyone who helped make Vermont Morgan Horse a reality.

I'd like to thank Farm Director Steve Davis for giving me access, putting up with my questions, and for generally being a fount of information about the Morgan Horse; The employees and apprentices of the Farm without whose kind assistance and willingness to be photographed would have left me lost: Kelsey Connor, Rachael Courant, Olivia Chicoine, Nicole Grainger, Stephen Iocco, Jessica Kemp, Anna LaRoche, Shane Morin, Rachael Rogers, and Alanna Schober.

Then there's Lee Beckwith, the Blacksmith and Ferrier whose openness and enthusiasm for his craft (and mine) contributed greatly to the images.

I'd also like to thank David Clark and the staff of Ilsley Public Library, as well as the organizers for the Middlebury Arts Walk, for helping make this exhibit possible.

Finally, I want to thank good friends Don Feitel and Susan Allen for helping prepare for the reception, plus the friends and family who attended. You all helped make it a huge success.

This week's image is one of the most popular from the exhibit: it's UVM Orlando being lunged by Alanna Schober in the farm's show arena. Lighting and exposure is difficult in such a dark space, and for every good frame you get like this one, there are dozens (hundreds?) that didn't work.

Have questions or comments? Send me an email.

Technical Data

Lunging UVM Orlando, Morgan Horse Farm, Weybridge, Vermont was photographed with a Nikon D300 and a Nikon 85mm ƒ/1.8 lens. The exposure was 1/250 second at ƒ/4.

The Ilsley Public Library in Middlebury, Vermont will be showing a selection of ten images from my work at the Morgan Horse Farm in Weybridge, Vermont. There will be a reception on June 12th from 5:30-7:00PM to kick off the first Middlebury Art Walk.

Founded by Colonel Joseph Battell in 1878 to foster the Morgan bloodline, today the Morgan Horse Farm is owned and operated by the University of Vermont as an educational facility for the University's agricultural program. Everyday, the farm staff grooms and trains the 30-40 horses on the premises, conducts tours for the public, and manages an active breeding program.

The ten images on display at Ilsley Library are just a small fraction of the photographs I've captured at the farm. For a more complete view of the very best images, please visit my Vermont Morgan Horse Portfolio, or for even more imagery, my Morgan Horse Archive Gallery where you may license images or purchase archival fine art photographic prints in a variety of sizes.

I'd like to thank Steve Davis, Lee Beckwith, Kelsey Connor, Rachael Courant, Olivia Chicoine, Nicole Grainger, Stephen Iocco, Jessica Kemp, Anna LaRoche, Shane Morin, Rachael Rogers, and Alanna Schober for their kind guidance and patience letting me photograph their work at the farm. I'd also like to thank David Clark and the staff of Ilsley Public Library for helping make this exhibit possible.

» View the Vermont Morgan Horse Portfolio

Some of you may have noticed that a long time has passed since the last Image of the Week. I've got a good excuse. During the last month, I've migrated my image archive to Photoshelter and launched a new, streamlined website tightly integrated with the new functionality.

Now, you can keyword search for desired images, purchase Rights Managed Images for use in your editorial and commercial publications, and buy a larger range of fine-art archival photographic prints. All print production is still done personally by me, but Photoshelter will provide the transaction processing.

Additionally, I'm preparing a exhibition from my work at the University of Vermont's Morgan Horse Farm in Weybridge, Vermont. A selection of ten images will hang in the Ilsley Public Library in Middlebury, Vermont for the month of June. For more information, please see the exhibition information page.

Thanks for your support!

I often revisit subjects. Sometimes I'm dissatisfied with earlier attempts to photograph a location; I see my mistakes and my inner perfectionist is eager to go back and try again. Like the old cliché goes: if you're satisfied with your work, then you're not working hard enough.

But this isn't always the case. I may be perfectly happy with my earlier photographs of a subject and still return to try again. I'm not looking to improve upon my past work, I just want to say something different, to photograph the subject from a different perspective, both literally and mentally.

The barns just down the road from my house in Vermont are just such a subject. I've photographed them numerous times, and each image says something different about the scene.

Have questions or comments? Send me an email.

Technical Data

Barns IV, Middlebury, Vermont was photographed with a Tachihara 4x5 Field Camera and a Schneider 210mm ƒ/5.6 Symmar-S lens on Kodak TMax 400 (TMY-2). The exposure was 1/2 second at ƒ/32.

We often go out shooting with a preconceived photograph in mind. We know the subject and conditions we want, it's just a matter of setting the camera in the right place and waiting for the sun and weather to create the light and atmosphere we seek.

It's a time-tested technique, and it sometimes pays off handsomely. But, if we stick to rigidly to "The Plan", we miss out on other photographic opportunities that coalesce and dissipate, literally right under our noses.

This week's image would have passed me by had I not looked down while waiting for one of those preconceived images to appear. I was in Grand Teton National Park waiting for the morning clouds to part and reveal that much-photographed mountain range that we know so well from calendars, books, and postcards. My idea wouldn't have brought anything new to the table, but it was stuck in my head and I was set on capturing it. Thankfully, the weather didn't do what I wanted and I photographed this fallen tree instead.

As I always say, flexibility is the key.

Technical Data

Fallen Tree in the Creek, Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming was photographed with a Tachihara 4x5 Field Camera and a Schneider 150mm ƒ/5.6 Symmar-S lens on Kodak TMax 400 (TMY). The exposure was 1/15 second at ƒ/32.

When you're shooting on location, the location is your studio, an overcast sky is your softbox, and whatever structure you can find is your background.

Cloudy skies provide beautiful, directional, even light that fills in under brow ridges and chins. However, it's often difficult to get separation between the subject and background unless you can find a background in different light than your subject. One sure-fire method is to frame your subject inside the doorway of a building and let the light falloff into the building interior provide the dimensionality you seek. In this photo, a window on the other side of the barn provides a low-intensity, textured gradient of light across the floor.

Pay attention to your surroundings when on location, because very often you'll find natural lighting conditions that'll trump your roller case full of lighting gear.

Have questions or comments? Send me an email.

Technical Data

Blacksmith Lee Beckwith, Weybridge, Vermont was photographed with a Hasselblad 500CM and a Carl Zeiss 80mm ƒ/2.8 T* lens on Kodak TMax 400 (TMY-2). The exposure was 1/125 second at ƒ/8.

It's dang cold up here in Vermont. The other morning, I woke up to a thermometer that registered -17°F (-27°C). The snow keeps piling up, the salt is building up on my car and the front step, and deadly daggers of ice plummet from the rooftops everywhere you walk.

Don't get me wrong -- winter is great. Skiing and snowball fights are fun. Fresh snow and ice can be truly beautiful. It's the day-to-day coping with the ugly side of winter that wears me down.

So, when I try to create stunning wintertime imagery, I have to make sure I'm in the right mood for it. Also, timing is everything: I wait for a fresh dump of snow or an icestorm to transform the landscape into that archetypal "Winter Wonderland".

But depicting the beauty and wonder of winter isn't restricted to landscape photography. Sometimes, it's about capturing the right moment or expression of those enjoying it.

This week's image is of Ali, the daughter of a good friend, making her first Snow Angel. The act by itself is worthy of a photograph, but to me it's her expression -- her look of complete, blissful abandon -- that really makes the image.

Have questions or comments? Send me an email.

Technical Data

Snow Angel, Middlebury, Vermont was photographed with a Nikon D300 and a Nikkor 17-35mm ƒ/2.8 lens. The ISO 200 exposure was 1/1000 second at ƒ/4.

You don't always need to include the face to create a successful portrait.

In fact, other elements can be way more revealing about a person than their eyes, nose, and mouth in different situations. Take this week's image for example: a tight shot of the girl's face would have said nothing about the action taking place, and a wide shot of her face down to her feet on the slender slack line would have been too busy to convey the tension of the moment.

So, next time you're out shooting portraits, look around a bit for those often unnoticed details. It can make for some extraordinary imagery.

Have questions or comments? Send me an email.

Technical Data

Slack Line, Middlebury, Vermont was photographed with a Hasselblad 500CM and a Carl Zeiss T* 80mm ƒ/2.8 lens on Kodak TMax 400 (TMY-2). The exposure was 1/125 second at ƒ/8.

A lot of people have asked me how I got this shot.

This image is actually the result of three separate exposures: one for the coffee cup, another for the column of pouring coffee, and a final capture for the splash. Getting one capture in-camera of this same scene would have taken many, many more hours, several gallons of coffee, and a box full of branded cups. As it is, I was able to shoot the entire thing in just a couple of hours using the only printed cup I had and a single pot of coffee.

By compositing the best elements of different captures, not only was I able to save a great deal of time in the studio, but I was able to provide the client with a layered Photoshop file that allows them to selectively display each of the elements: if they want just the cup and the splash, they can turn off the layer with the pouring coffee. If just the pour is needed, off goes the splash.

The lighting is pretty straightforward: two Nikon SB-26 flashes, dialed to their lowest power setting to produce the shortest flash duration, were on lightstands just underneath the table surface and pointed up and back to bounce into a white reflector to create a clean, white background. The front was lit with two Hensel monolights bounced into umbrellas.

Have questions or comments? Send me an email.

Technical Data

Coffee Splash was photographed with a Nikon D300 and a 105mm ƒ/4 manual focus Micro-Nikkor lens. Overall exposure with the studio strobes was ƒ/11.

Previsualization.

As an image maker, knowing your tools and anticipating the capabilities and output of those tools is critical to your success. Photography comes with a lot of variables -- exposure, lens choice, raw file processing, film development, post processing -- and you've got to have a mental grip on all of them if you want to consistently create outstanding photographs.

The key is practice.

Look through the viewfinder. Compare what you saw with the resulting photograph. Lather, rinse, and repeat thousands of times. Pretty soon, you'll anticipate what the final photo will look like before you trip the shutter. This is called previsualization.

With this week's image, I wanted a sharp, high-contrast image to faithfully render the texture of the wood and subtle afternoon shadows falling across the barn's facade. I knew that Tri-X Pan 320 in D-76 1:1 would produce the contrast range and sharpness I envisioned.

And that's exactly what I got.

Have questions or comments? Send me an email.

Technical Data

Barns III, Middlebury, Vermont was photographed with a Mamiya RZ67 and a 127mm ƒ/3.8 Mamiya-Sekor Z lens. The exposure was 1/30 sec at ƒ/22 on Kodak Tri-X Pan 320 Professional Film. The film was processed in Kodak D-76 1:1.

Kids, don't try this at home. Adults, it's probably not a good idea for you, either.

Go to your uncle's house and do it.*

Especially if that uncle has a beautiful 1957 Willy's Jeep named Beulah that he (foolishly) lets you drive through the Southern California desert while looking through the viewfinder of a camera.

Most of the geography of the Anza-Borrego Desert that I've seen has been framed in the windshield of this jeep, so it seemed only fitting that I photograph it that way. Using a fisheye lens and a big memory card, I drove through the remote Carrizo Badlands at about ten miles-per-hour, sneaking peaks through the viewfinder when the road was wide and without obstacles. Naturally, shooting this way insures that the majority of the exposures are destined for the bit bucket. Sometimes you get lucky and a few turn out.

Point-of-view images like this are a great way to make the viewer an active participant in the photograph, seeing exactly what the photographer saw at the moment of exposure. They can imagine it's their hand on the steering wheel and their face feeling the warm desert sun. It's this kind of involvement that can make a photograph live in a viewer's mind.

Have questions or comments? Send me an email.

Technical Data

Beulah in the Carrizo Badlands, Anza-Borrego Desert, California was photographed with a Nikon D300 and a 10.5mm ƒ/2.8 Nikkor AF lens. The exposure was 1/400 sec at ƒ/9.

* On a serious note, please don't try this yourself. It's very dangerous to drive while doing something else, especially taking pictures. I am not responsible for any accidents you might have trying to shoot pictures while driving a car.

Sometimes I feel like a professional tourist.

Everywhere I go, I'm laden with cameras. I can't go out the front door without hauling a camera bag. Every time I board a plane, I've got at least two carry-ons stuffed to the gills with an assortment of camera bodies, lenses, and film. I'm in and out of airports, small planes, big planes, buses, vans, and subway trains dragging a metric ton of gear on wheels and shoulders, all so I can show up at a remote location and shoot something that has been shot a zillion times before.

The real trick: use your head -- don't photograph like a tourist.

Take this week's image for example: The Chapel of the Transfiguration in Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming. I was in the Tetons this fall-color season with a hiking partner scouting out locations for possible future trips and stock shoots. We stopped at the Chapel one afternoon on our way to Jackson Hole for supplies.

Do a search for "Chapel of the Transfiguration" at your favorite internet search engine and you'll receive pages and pages of photographs of the Chapel. It's a well-covered subject. Most of the images feature the entire chapel with the majestic Tetons in the background. A smaller bunch of photos are taken from the inside where an immense plate glass window frames the Tetons just above the Chapel's altar and crucifix.

My take on the Chapel is a little more graphic than most. The centered composition emphasizes the repetive elements of the crosses on the inside altar and the roof. By cropping tight on the Chapel, I was able to isolate two complementary swatches of bold color: the blue sky above, and the bright yellow aspens below, framed within the plate glass window above the altar. The "picture within a picture" creates a feeling of depth within the photograph, drawing the viewer into the front door.

When you're playing the tourist, you might not invent anything completely new, but with the right timing and thinking, you can bring your own perspective to it.

Have questions or comments? Send me an email.

Technical Data

Chapel of the Transfiguration, Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming was photographed with a Nikon D300 and a 17-35mm ƒ/2.8 Nikkor AF lens. The exposure was 1/100 sec at ƒ/8.

From October 15th through December 14th, I'll be showing a small selection of images from my Anza-Borrego portfolio at Carol's Hungry Mind Cafe in Middlebury, Vermont. The nine images on display feature examples of my large format film and digital work from California's largest state park.

A forgotten desert, Anza-Borrego's history is etched across its landscape from the petroglyphs and morteros of aboriginal man, to the wagon trails of early European settlers, to the offroad vehicles and vacation homes of the modern day. The hand of man is ever present in this wild landscape, and the deteriorating ruins of man's efforts to live in a harsh environment are a vivid reminder of the marginal existence possible here.

All of the images were printed using an Epson 3800 and Epson's Ultrachrome K3 archival pigment inkset for the ultimate in digital color print quality and longevity. Each image was mounted and matted using only acid-free materials and then framed using Nielsen-Bainbridge black aluminum frame moulding. A price list of the show images is below.

Several of the images were captured using a 4x5 field camera on black-and-white film. These images are also available as hand-crafted gelatin silver prints created in the wet darkroom. Printed on glossy, cotton fiber-based paper and archivally washed, these images represent the ultimate is image fidelity and longevity. Gelatin silver prints are made to order, so please allow a little extra time for these prints to be delivered.

To view the images and shop for prints, please visit the online gallery. Click on a small image to view it larger. To add it to your shopping cart, scroll to the bottom of the large image page and click the "Buy a Print" button.

To learn more about my fine art prints, visit the Print Sales page. If you can't find what you want, feel free to ask -- I do custom work.

View the Anza-Borrego Gallery

This week's image is from the University of Vermont's Morgan Horse Farm, a National Historic Site where the Morgan bloodline has been maintained for a century. I'm shooting a portfolio on the farm and will publish the entire set on this site once it is complete.

For now, here's an outtake from last week's shoot, a horse bath taken in the shade of the barn. The soft light and the shine of the horse's coat provided the perfect stage for the gentle curls of the wet mane. The vertical lines of the barn's corrugated metal siding further enhanced the graphic composition.

Have questions or comments? Feel free to contact me.

Technical Data

Horse Bath, Morgan Horse Farm, Weybridge, Vermont was photographed with a Hasselblad 500CM and a Zeiss 80mm ƒ/2.8 T* lens on Kodak TMax 400 film (TMY-2). The exposure was 1/60 sec at ƒ/11.

Occam's Camera

Many of you may be familiar with the principle of Occam's Razor, a philosophical and scientific axiom that is best summarized as, "The simplest solution is usually the best." The principle espouses an economy of ideas to explain the unknown, encouraging one to whittle away the useless, the irrelevant, and the needlessly complex.

It's a great way to think about photographic composition.

If you think about a scene or subject as a problem and the photograph as a solution, then the Razor applies. The process of composing a photograph is nothing more than the stripping away of the extraneous image until you you are left with the core message -- the central idea -- the simplest idea -- of the scene.

The subject is the unstated message, the photograph is your voice. If you fail to strike a balance between including too much and too little, the photograph will fail; you might as well say nothing at all.

The uncropped photograph

This week's image was shot with a Hasselblad 500CM, a camera that produces a 6cm x 6cm square image. Shooting in square is convenient: you don't have to turn the camera on its side for vertical format. If you want a vertical or horizontal, you crop the square. I usually compose my images as squares shooting with this camera, but every so often I visualize alternate crops to enhance the subject's moment.

Compare the uncropped image (above, left) to my cropped version, and let me know what you think.

Technical Data

Whitney, Citronelle, Alabama was photographed with a Hasselblad 500CM and a Zeiss 80mm ƒ/2.8 T* lens on Kodak TMax 400 film (TMY-2). The exposure was 1/250 sec at ƒ/11.