This Saturday I'm off to Patagonia. Last week I talked about what photo gear I was bringing and I had a number of viewers ask me how I travel internationally with my tall tripod. In this video I'll show you exactly how I pack it as well as other critical gear. I also address the question about which of the two Nikon Z cameras I more highly recommend.
2018 Michoacan Day of the Dead Workshop
I'm so excited to announce this very special, all-inclusive fall workshop. I'll be taking a group of eight photographers to one of the world's truly great cultural celebrations in one of my favorite locations.
Mount Whitney Panoramic: 3-frames Nikon D70. I'm so excited to head back here in just 2 weeks.
Getting the Shot: Mount Whitney Panoramic Ski Adventure
This is a new series of multimedia posts I'm launching to tell the stories behind capturing some of my favorite portfolio images. To accomplish that I'll mix it up with a blend of photographs, audio clips and/or video.
This is the story behind one of my very first digital panoramic images: a 3-frame merger of Mount Whitney in 2005 using my very first DSLR, a Nikon D70. That year was really a turning point for me. I bought both my first DSLR as well as my first backcountry ski-mountaineering gear. I was instantly obsessed with...
Read MoreGearing Up For Kauai
Here's the photo gear I chose to take to Kauai. It's never an easy process.
Gear Links:
Digital Travel Scale
Zeiss lens wipes
Hoya Solas IRND Filters
Sony A6300
My complete updated gear list
Hanalei Valley, Kauai (Panoramic Merger: Nikon D800)
Kauai Bound
This Halloween we're headed to one of my favorite places on earth: Kauai. The north shore of this island ignites my creativity. Waterfalls, epic ridges, pounding surf, tiny winding roads, one lane bridges, epic beaches, crazy volcanic rock formations and very little development. This is old Hawaii and it's so fun to photograph and film.
Years ago my grandmother (Nana) managed a beautiful beachside resort near the end of the road on the north shore. Nana was an adventuresome woman who traveled the world from New Zealand to the Arctic, but she loved Kauai more than anywhere. It's been several years since we put her ashes in her favorite bay.
I'll be doing a fair bit of work on the trip; what creative professional wouldn't? What I'm most excited about though is watching our now 8-month-old Pike Henry crawl around this epic place. Yeah, he's crawling now and he's headed to one of the earth's most spectacular sand features...
Kalalau Beach, Kauai (Nikon D200)
Last Kiter Out: Sony A6300: 19mm, F4, 1/60s, ISO 320
What To Do When a Shoot Goes Haywire
The kitesurfing trip that wasn't:
Last month Stacey, some friends and I took kitesurfing gear, photography equipment, and 6-week-old baby Pike to South Texas to kite and photograph in warm water for 10 days. I'll get it right out of the way. This trip did not go as planned, but we had a blast anyway.
What went wrong? The weather. This time of year South Padre Island generally gets nice steady warm wind from the south along with lots of sunshine. The first day on the island was perfect and we all kited until we lost the light to a magnificent sunset. As I landed my kite, I grabbed my little Sony A6300 mirrorless camera out of the rental van's console and...
Read MoreGearing Up: South Padre Island with Pike
This Tuesday Stacey, Pike, a few friends and I head out for a Kitesurfing and photo adventure on South Padre, a barrier island just off Texas. It's a place with warm water and steady wind. At seven weeks old it's Pike's first big trip and I'm stoked to capture not just landscape and action photos, but also of to document his first beach island experience. How much gear do we need for this? We made this one minute video to highlight the challenge of packing for air travel with photo gear, kite gear and Pike's accessories. I'll be posting on Facebook and Instagram along the way.
Lens Filters For Digital Photography
What filters should I be using? It's one of the most frequent questions I hear from new photographers and students. For today's modern digital photographer I've got great news. You don't need nearly as many as we did in the age of film.
When I shot film I carried an array of filters: polarizers, UV protective, neutral density, graduated neutral density, warming and cooling. Now with the amazing dynamic-range and color flexibility of RAW digital files I only carry the first three. Let's look at each type of filter I currently carry: polarizers, UV filters, and neutral density.
Circular Polarizer
The first filter I ever purchased was a circular polarizer and I haven't been without one since. They allow me to...
Read MoreFAVORITE MOMENTS OF 2015
I've had the good fortune to participate in some epic photographic adventures in 2015. Here's a quick slideshow of some of my favorite moments of the past year.
Happy New Year everyone!
PANORAMIC MERGER IN DEPTH: TORRES DEL PAINE, CHILE
View in HD: The depth and enlargeability of an ultra-hi-rez panoramic-merger.
Panoramic Mergers. I stumbled across the technique a decade ago when I was wishing for a wider angle lens for my medium format film camera.
On an amazingly calm Patagonian morning last month this scene could have been easily captured with a single frame with my Nikon D810, but by instead making a panoramic-merger from 8 images I created this highly-enlargeable, 80-megapixel image. Have I mentioned that I love this stuff?
Check out this gallery of select panoramic mergers. You can view this image full screen there.