Good Times in Moab

March 13, 2017

What a blast Blake Rudis of F64 Academy and I had in Moab last week! We had good weather, amazing scenery even some time with the Milky way. Blake and I most of our nights perched on little ledges shooting the milky way or hiking into position for great dawn locations. We got a bit of sleep cat napping between scouting sessions in the middle of the day. Aches National Park was our focus, but Canyonlands was obviously a place to come back and explore with more time.

I'll toss out a few preliminary pics below, but I have thousands to wade through later this month. No time now though. I'm off tomorrow to climb and ski Mount Whitney and then photograph Death Valley. I'll be posting on social along the way for those who want to follow the adventure.

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

March 2, 2017

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...

Last Kiter Out: Sony A6300: 19mm, F4, 1/60s, ISO 320 — Last Kiter Out: Sony A6300: 19mm, F4, 1/60s, ISO 320

What To Do When a Shoot Goes Haywire

May 10, 2016

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...

Gearing Up: South Padre Island with Pike

April 7, 2016

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.

Fast and Light: Skiing & Photographing Mount Saint Helens 2016

March 24, 2016

Join me and some northwest friends for a spring backcountry-ski and split-board trip up 5,800 feet to the crater rim of Mount Saint Helens. In this five minute video I cover the camera gear I carry for this kind of fast-and-light photo/video adventure and how I carry it to both protect my gear and maximize accessibility. I also briefly discuss my approach to photographing fast moving action such as snow-sports.

I keep getting the question, "what about the baby?" I had to discourage Stacey from carrying Pike part way up on snowshoes because of the weather, but we did take him kiteboarding on the coast last week. ;-)

Gear: Below is a list of links to the photo/video equipment I carried on this trip.

Capturing and Editing Still Photos for Timelapse

January 14, 2016

WHY TIME-LAPSE?

As photographers we constantly make creative decisions involving time and movement. We use long exposures to accentuate motion over time. We freeze time with fast exposures to capture the power of athletes in motion. Creating time-lapse video is another really fun way to visually dramatize time. It allows us to dabble in a new realm and capture the world of movement that we see around us in new and exciting ways.

Frequently students ask me if their digital cameras are capable of producing high-definition time-lapse and the answer is an emphatic yes. Film and video are simply a series of still frames played at 24 or 30 frames per second. Each frame of high definition 1080p video is only seven megapixels in size. Not only that, to keep file sizes small, digital video recording is so highly compressed that the ability to post process it is highly compromised. That means that a time-lapse created from a 14-megapixel still camera’s RAW images will be many times more editable than, as well as twice the resolution of, traditional video filmed in high definition.

FRAMES PER SECOND (FPS):

Before we delve any deeper I want to demystify the term frames-per-second (“FPS”) as it applies to video playback...

FAVORITE MOMENTS OF 2015

December 31, 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!

Mount Hood

Mount Hood on a January Dawn.

Twilight on the Ledge

San Diego Sunset Cliffs just after sunset. Waves coming over the rocks look like mist in long exposure.

Last Light

At the cliffs of San Diego

Tampa Bay Dawn

Ultra-hi-res Pano Merger

Death Valley Dunes

Ultra-Hi-Res Pano

Dawn at the Crater Rim

An ultra-hi-resolution, 270-degree panoramic merger of the crater rim at first light.

Entering the Blue Mosque

A couple enters the Blue Mosque in Isanbul at sunset.

Greek Umbrella Art

Stacey just after we learned of our pregnancy.

Our Windmill in Mykonos, Greece

One of my favorite places I've stayed.

Stromboli Smokes At Sunset

Volcanic smoke rises from Stromboli's crater as the sun sets over the sea.

Stromboli Erupts at Bluehour

Stromboli throws lava bombs and fire into the night sky above the sea below just after sunset.

The Amalfi Coast of Italy

Amalfi Dawn

Dawn rises over Atrani on the Amalfi Coast of Italy as chairs await beachgoers.

Notre Dame Sunset

The sun sets as a star beside Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, France.

Mont Saint Michelle Blue Hour (Ultra-Hi-Rez-Pano)

French Island Monastary refelcts in tidepool after sunset with blue clouds.

Paris Bastille Day

Milky Way and Smoke

Last summer's fires covered the Northwest in intense smoke.

A Special Blue

Steve canoes on the cobalt Waldo Lake.

Desert Trucks

Ultra-hi-res Pano Merger for a client in the Alvord.

Patagonian Sky

Torres del Paine, Chile

Glacier Grey

There’s nothing like seeing a massive glacier calving close up.

Stars over Lago Torre

Argentina

Dawn over Cerro Torre

Argentina

Fitz Roy Falls

I climbed up to these falls below Fitz Roy early one morning and was completely blown away. I'm used to scenic waterfalls in the Pacific Northwest, but this?

Patagonia Horse

How lucky is this horse?

Breakfast at Dawn

Andy at the crater rim of Mount St. Helens

PANORAMIC MERGER IN DEPTH: TORRES DEL PAINE, CHILE

December 22, 2015

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.

NEW PRINTS AVAILABLE

December 15, 2015

I just posted some new images to the print gallery. Here are some new ones from Patagonia.

Patagonia Time-lapse: Cerro Torre While We Slept...

December 8, 2015

We had an amazing star show as we slept at Lago Torre in Argentina. Even more rare -- calm water in these wind ravaged mountains. It was a rare opportunity and I left both my Nikons (D810 and D750) running as we tucked into our tent that night. Watching this video makes me long to get back there.