Much is said about light in landscape photography, especially golden hour, blue hour and moonlight. While most associate these lighting conditions with the end of the day it’s important to note they happen at the beginning of the day too and not just sourced from the sun. It’s a little bit rarer to see, as fewer photographers actually want to stay up or wake up to see golden moonlight. Case and point was

Yosemite Sunrise I was revisiting some old film scans from several years ago thanks to a client request and rediscovered this photo. Slide film isn’t very forgiving in regard to dynamic range, but I always liked the contrasty nature of this photo. It was taken on a cold snowy winter morning well before sunrise. Taking a long exposure allowed for the faint color in the sky to register quite strongly which I alwa

When you first enter Yosemite National Park it is impossible to miss El Capitan. Towering some 3,000 feet above the valley floor with a peak elevation of 7,573 feet its a feast for the eyes and an attractive challenge for several hardy rock climbers. The more I visit Yosemite the more I see visitors accept the walls of the valley as an unmoving constant, but if you stop to really watch the valley walls you’ll n

Photography is about a lot of things and other than “light” I’d say the “journey” is the most important. The fantastic thing about photography is that one’s mastery of the medium & artistic vision is a journey as much as the quest for each photo. Just as you never know what is over the next hill to photograph you never know how your view of the world might evolve. In both regar

One of the more intriguing visual phenomenon is seeing a giant moon on the horizon. One might think that there is some physical explanation as to why the moon is larger when low on the horizon, but its actually a visual illusion where your brain is playing a trick on you. This illusion is aptly called the “Moon Illusion“. This illusion is incredibly well explained in the following video: So how do people

Saturdays full moon was a sight to see, but then again it always is. I never tire of seeing the moon as it is a constant curiosity, inspiration, and friend. When ever I gaze upon the full moon my first thought is that we’re not alone in this big universe and second countless generations before me gazed upon this same celestial body pondering its origin, its meaning, and our relationship to it and other celestia

2012 was full of great photo opportunities and between my DSLR and cell phone I must have taken close to 55-60,000 photos. This years personal projects were centered around time-lapses and iPhone photos of my son, but I was also selectively choosing my DSLR photo subjects. A sample of what caught my eye is quite evident in my Best Photos of 2012 final selections. As was the case in years past it is impossible to rank

To gaze upon a sunrise is a treasured moment, you only get so many opportunities to see them. Keeping that in mind it always pays to get up early. John Muir also had an eloquent quote, “God never made an ugly landscape. All that the sun shines on is beautiful, so long as it is wild.”  I couldn’t agree more, but it’s easy to see how he came to that conclusion witnessing so many sunrises in Yose