Ron's Recent Work from Death Valley

Sarah and I spent most of February in Death Valley in our Airstream until eventually the busy weekend crowds drove us away. Despite Death Valley’s increasing popularity it is still possible to avoid the crowds if you explore lesser known areas of the park, including the numerous canyons which have been the focus of our last few trips to Death Valley, and feature prominently in this collection.

This is only a small selection of my photos from our last trip, please see my recent work Death Valley gallery for the complete fifty photograph collection.

“Curves” - Shadow and light and blowing sand mingle.

“Proud Pygmy” - A Pygmy Cedar against a glowing canyon wall.

“Sand Waves” - Sand patterns that are revealed for a few moments when the sun is low in the horizon.

“Spray Paint” - Natural graffiti adorns this rock in the Panamint Mountains.

“Ghosts” - Drifts of sand blowing in the howling wind

“Beamed” - A sunbeam briefly lights up an alluvial fan.

“Winding Canyon” - Reflected light in a remote canyon.

“Sand Storm” - Dust and sand from high winds revealed this layers of the Panamint Mountains.

“Tortured” - A gnarled and twisted remote canyon wall more resembling driftwood than rock.

“Rock Candy” - A potpourri of colors and shapes

Ron's 2017 Year in Review

Sarah and I started and finished 2017 in Death Valley National Park. In between we also visited the Mojave Preserve in California, the Huntington Gardens near Pasadena, the Sonoran Desert in Arizona, Grand Teton National Park (twice), witnessed the total solar eclipse in Wyoming, and photographed fall colors in Zion National Park. We also photographed wildflowers and fall colors near our home in southwest Colorado, and finally moved into our house in October after living fourteen months full time in our Airstream trailer.

My complete processed work - so far - from 2017 can be viewed on my 2017 gallery, which includes:

• Elements Collection - A collection abstract scenes in nature, many captured in 2017
• Huntington Gardens - An incredible botanical garden near Pasadena, California
• Mojave Desert and Death Valley National Park
• Sonoran Desert
• Grand Teton National Park
• Colorado Wildflowers
• Colorado Fall Colors
• Zion Fall Colors

I also created a gallery of my favorite photos of 2017, a dozen of which I will share in this post below.

"Sun Dance" - The sun momentarily breaks through a thick fog layer in a Joshua Tree forest.

"Mojave Garden" - Lush desert flora in the Mojave Preserve

"Warm Fuzzies" - Teddy Bear cholla and ocotillo glow in the rapidly setting sun

"Organized Mess" - Cactus from a garden near Tucson, Arizona

"Pastel Grasses" - Papyrus in soft light at the Huntington Garden near Pasadena

"Gildy's Gift" - An incredible sunrise at Grand Teton National Park which we would have missed had our cat Gildersleeve not woken us up for food at 4 AM.

"Circles and Lines" - Lily pads in a small pond near Grand Teton National Park

"Sticks and Cones" - No further description necessary :)

"Who Needs Vermont?" - A colorful hillside of oaks and cottonwoods in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado.

"Fogged" - Fall aspens in a layer of ephemeral fog

"Last to Leave" - A few persistent leaves cling to a tree in Zion Canyon

"Autumn Sky" - Fall foliage contrasts against a blue sky

The Poor Man's Drone: A Macro Lens

Drones are the latest rage among nature photographers these days. It is easy to see why, they provide unique perspectives of the world that were previously impossible to get, or at the very least expensive. They keep getting better too, the DJI Phantom 4 drone has a 20 megapixel camera sensor!

There is a downside, of course. As of this writing, the DJI Phantom 4 retails for around $1,300, and the soon(?) to be released DJI Mavic Pro retails for $999. For photographers used to shelling out a lot of hard earned money on lenses, that actually doesn't seem too bad. But still, I would like to offer a cheaper if not perfectly equivalent alternative: A macro lens!

Salt Squares. Macro lenses can also magnify subject matter, such as with these salt crystals.

I know, a macro lens is not the same thing as a drone, and it is certainly not a replacement for one, but it does provide a similar function in that it offers a new and different perspectives on the everyday world around us. When concentrating on abstract patterns and shapes, perspectives a few hundred feet in the air can look very similar to those just inches away from the ground.

Best of all, great quality macro lenses are (relatively) cheap! My favorite macro lens, and the sharpest lens I own, the Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 L ISM 1X macro lens, is only $799 (all photos in this post were taken with that lens) If you truly want to get microscopic the Canon MP-E6 1-5X Macro Lens is even more crazy, providing a 5X magnification (though it's slightly more expensive at $1,050). 1X magnification means that a subject that is the same size as your camera sensor will fill the frame. 5X magnification means an object 5 times smaller than your camera sensor will fill the entire frame.

Yucca Curlies. Macros can excel at low depth of field photographs, due to their minimum focusing distance and longer focal lengths.

Other advantages of a macro lens over a drone:

• Macro lenses do not need to comply with FAA regulations!

• Macro lenses do not sound like the world's most annoying hair dryer

• Macro lenses are permitted everywhere photography is permitted, including National Parks

• Macro lenses easily fit into your existing camera bag

• Macro lenses do not need their own batteries

• Macro lenses do not fly away from you never to return again

• Macro lenses can take long exposures at low ISO when using a tripod

• Macro lenses can work with the latest camera sensors, which can be upgraded independently

Ice Swirlies. These ice patterns are only noticeable close up.

Macro lenses also have benefits over traditional lenses. Macro lenses have a closer minimum focusing distance than equivalent focal length non-macro lenses (which is how they achieve 1X and higher magnification). The Canon 100mm macro has a focusing distance of 1 foot, the Canon 100mm prime f/2 (non-macro) lens has a minimum focusing distance of three feet. This means that with a macro lens you can get closer to your subject matter and still have everything in focus, giving you a different photographic perspective. Remember that cropping a photo does not change perspective, it only decreases resolution, so having a closer minimum focusing distance opens up new creative possibilities. The Canon 100mm macro (and many others) can also focus at infinity, allowing you to use the lens as a normal prime lens in addition to as a macro lens.

Barrel Blurries. Bright backlit barrel cactus on a clear day. Macro lenses can be used to highlight the abstract properties of plants and other subjects.

Macro lenses are often used to photograph small subjects, allowing you to easily modify light and have it affect the entire scene. Most typically this involves shading your subject on a sunny day using a reflector or diffuser or just the shadow of your own body. This means that you can photograph macro subjects during more hours of a day than might be suitable for a wide-angle grand scenic.

Most of all, like drones, macro lenses are fun!

So by all means, purchase that drone (we will get one at some point when we have a place to store it), but also get a macro lens, even if it isn't as sexy these days. They both can provide opportunities that are not available with traditional lenses.

Beach Bubbles. Macro lenses can make a small subject take up the entire frame.

For more on small scenes and macro photography, please see our e-book Beyond the Grand Landscape: A Guide to Photographing Nature's Smaller Scenes. Colleen Miniuk-Sperry also has a recent blog post on gear and accessories for macro/wildflower photography that is well worth reading.

Note: Links on this page and blog are Amazon affiliate links, if you click on them, you help support this site at no extra cost to you. Nature Photo Guides is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.

Photographing Silhouettes in Nature: Treasure Lurking in the Shadows

With the proliferation of digital photography and digital post-processing came a corresponding belief that shadows were to be avoided. Now that it was easy to capture shadow detail, shadows should be avoided at all costs. This nascent phase of digital photography also introduced us to the tone-mapped HDR photograph trend which is now history. Unfortunately, some of the biases against shadows still remain from that era.

Say it with me: shadows are OK!

"Sun Dance" - Joshua Trees and rolling fog in Death Valley National Park. Joshua Trees have a distinctive shape, which is highlighted via the silhouette.

Although it is now easy with digital camera sensors to capture the full dynamic range of a high contrast scene, does it mean you always should? Whether or not to show shadow detail in the resulting image is a creative decision. There is no rule in photography that says there needs to be detail everywhere, and certainly not just because it's easy to capture. In fact, I would often argue the opposite: that too much detail can take an otherwise dynamic scene and turn it into a flat muddled mess.

Silhouettes take this philosophy to the extreme, and often render their subjects with no detail at all - shadow areas can be nearly or even completely black! Why would anyone want to throw away all that precious detail?

"Smokies Silhouette" - Silhouettes do not need to be completely black, in this case, each subsequent ridge is slightly brighter leading to the sun in the background.

Why Photograph Silhouettes?

• Silhouettes can be used to reduce complex subjects to their essence, namely their shape. For many trees and plants, this shape is distinctive and enough to identify the subject without providing so much information as to detract from the rest of the scene.

• The shadow areas might not be that interesting. By making them black (or nearly so), you eliminate distracting elements and highlight the more interesting portion of your photograph, such as the light shining through. The uninteresting shadow areas can merge together into one tonal range rather than compete with each other and distract the viewer.

Mojave Yucca. This distinctive plant's shape is highlighted using a silhouette, and the bright sun shining through serves as a focal point.

How to Photograph Silhouettes

Silhouettes often work best with strongly backlit scenes, so face into the light source (most usually the sun). This can often result in undesirable lens flare, so you may need to shield your lens with a lens hood and/or your hand. If your hand gets in the frame you can zoom out a little bit, and then crop your hand out of the resulting photograph so that there is no lens flare at all and you retain your original desired composition.

From an exposure perspective, silhouettes are actually easier to photograph than scenes where you want to show a full range of detail. If you do not care about shadow detail, you do not have to expose for it, and instead can just concentrate on making sure that the brighter parts of the scene are properly exposed. Most metering modes will try and "average" the light through the scene, which usually works great but not so much for silhouettes where such an exposure would render the shadows too bright. So use manual exposure, or dial back the exposure compensation a few stops so that the shadows are properly dark.

That being said, you may wish to capture all or most of the detail in the field (exposure bracketing if necessary) and then later decide how much of it to keep or throw away during post-processing. This approach is more flexible, though usually if I know I want a silhouette I keep it simple and do a single exposure.

Mossorama - A silhouette emphasizes the moss on these trees in the Pacific Northwest.

How to Post Process Silhouettes

Silhouettes are usually easier to process compared to photographs that show a full range of detail. A silhouette photograph can usually be divided into two parts: the silhouetted areas and the highlights/mid-tones. For the highlights and mid-tones, use your normal processing strategies for adding contrast, saturation, etc.

For the shadows, there are a few specific techniques you can use:

1. In your RAW editor (such as Adobe Camera Raw or Lightroom) bring down the shadows, blacks, or exposure sliders. These are all different adjustments and have different effects, so experiment to see what works best for your image. By default these adjustments are global, meaning they affect the entire image. Often this is exactly what you want, but if you need finer control, you will need to use Photoshop to use masks to fine tune your adjustments.

2. In Photoshop, you can selectively burn (darken) areas of the photo that might still be too bright or otherwise distracting. To do this, I create a dodge/burn adjustment layer, and paint black through a darks luminosity selection (more information on this "luminosity painting" technique can be found in Sarah's Ebook/Video on processing in black and white, or on Tony Kuyper's website). I generally find this to be the most controlled way to selectively darken portions of an image (regardless of if it is a silhouette or not).

3. Also in Photoshop, you can use a levels adjustment layer and move the black point and/or midpoint to the right to darken the shadows, or you can use a curves adjustment layer and drag the shadow areas down. This technique works best if most of the shadow areas are in the same tonal range. If they aren't, you will need to fine tune with layer masks.

"Inverted" Silhouettes

You can also change it up and do what I call inverted silhouettes, where the majority of the photo is in shadow but there is only a small portion of light, as in this photograph looking up from a slot canyon:

Canyon Crack - An example of an "inverted" silhouette.

Conclusion

Don't be afraid of the shadows! Silhouettes are one tool, among many, that every photographer should have in their photographic toolbox. While silhouettes are not necessarily appropriate for every scene, they are appropriate for many scenes and can often be used to make a more powerful image.

While this post concentrated on silhouettes (the elimination of shadow detail), the same process can be applied for high key images which often throw away highlight detail. Many photographers are increasingly fine with throwing away shadow detail but bristle at the thought of throwing away highlight detail. My philosophy, as always, is that it depends on the image. Do not unnecessarily box yourself in! If you are unsure capture the full range of detail in the field but be open to throwing parts of it away in post processing. The result may be a stronger and more impactful photograph.

Photographing Botanical Gardens - 5 Tips for Nature Photographers

Note: If you want to learn more about photographing plants and small scenes (like those featured in this post), please see our book Beyond the Grand Landscape: A Guide to Photographing Nature's Smaller Scenes. You may also view my full gallery of photos from the Huntington Botanical Gardens.

Sarah and I currently find ourselves camped in the heart of the Mojave Desert, an hour from the nearest gas station and in the middle of a beautiful nowhere. After looking at the map, we realized that we are also within a four hour drive of one of the best botanical gardens in the United States: The Huntington Botanical Gardens near Pasadena, California.

We drove 8 hours round-trip and spent a night so that we could photograph the plants in the garden over the course of two days. That may sound extreme, but those of you who are familiar with the garden know that it is superlative in every way and worth the effort to get there.

Bold and Red

The good news is that most people do not need to go to extreme measures to find a local botanical garden worth photographing. While living in Denver, Sarah and I made it a point to visit our local garden, The Denver Botanic Gardens, as often as possible, and we try and visit as many botanical gardens as we can while we travel.

Here are a few ways that seeking out a local botanical garden can improve your photography and help you accumulate portfolio-quality photographs.

• Practice. The key to getting better at anything, including photography, is to do it again and again and again. Gardens offer a great place to practice and to experiment. Try different focal lengths, lenses (including macro lenses), different apertures, and different perspectives (near, far away, looking up, looking down on the ground). Photograph through plants. Photograph into the light (backlight) to highlight translucent foliage or flowers, or use front light on an overcast or wet day to show color. Do not be afraid to look ridiculous - your goal is not to avoid embarrassment. It is to get photographs! Harness your powers of observation, which is a key skill to develop as a photographer. Gardens offer many subjects that reveal themselves to a patient observer. These experiences in a botanical garden can enhance your photography skills for when you are out in more wild places.

Purple Rain

• Shoot Local. By having a local place that offers easy access, the risk of "coming home with nothing" is greatly reduced. If you made a mistake or want to revisit a subject, you can easily go back with minimal effort. If you stop limiting photography to when you are on vacation, traveling outside your local area, or are on an epic hike and instead fit photography into your normal daily life, you will not only improve much faster but you will come away with some great photographs.

Fallen Leaves

• Learn to Adapt. Gardens are constantly changing with the seasons. Different flowers are blooming, foliage transitions from spring greens to autumn colors, and some plants actually are at their best during winter. The weather can also change, from bright sunlight to overcast rain or even snow. Being able to adapt to the subject matter AND to make the most use of whatever light that is available are skills that will serve you well wherever you photograph. Creativity rarely happens when things go exactly as planned. Gardens give you a moving target where you are forced to experiment and try new things in order to be successful.

Sumptuous Succulent

• The Exotic, Close to Home. While it is not possible to move entire mountain ranges or coastlines from exotic locations to your hometown, it is (often) possible to do so with plants. Take the Spiral Aloe. The Spiral Aloe is a beautiful plant but most people are not going to be able to travel to Lesotho to see it in its natural habitat. You may live in a wet climate not suitable for desert plants like cactus, but they can be grown in a controlled indoor environment even in rainy climates and still be beautiful to photograph. It's not just exotic plants that look good in a botanical garden - native plants can also look great. For example, you may live in a desert climate and want to photograph desert flowers, but they might not bloom during a dry year. A controlled environment in a botanical garden can produce blooms every year.

Repetition

• Enjoyment. Gardens are enjoyable to visit - they have been around a lot longer than photography. Even in busy popular gardens, there are usually places to escape the crowds (and a garden's off-season can be less busy and offer different opportunities for photography). Strolling through a garden, learning about the plants, and seeing how they change through the seasons is enjoyable, even if you do not come back with any photographs. It may shock some of our readers, but Sarah and I often visit gardens without our photography gear. Gardens are often community institutions and showing your appreciation (financially or by your visitation) is a good way to support your local community.

Leaf Layers

If you have not visited a botanical garden for photography, we encourage you to give it a try as a means of expanding both your photographic skills and your portfolio. If you already enjoy botanic gardens and have a favorite one, please let us know in the comments. We are always on the lookout for new gardens to visit and photograph.

Pastel Yucca

Some of our favorite gardens

Here's a list of some of our favorite gardens across the US to photograph. Note that different gardens have different photography policies (not allowing tripods, or charging a fee for their use), please check the specific garden's website or call them to confirm. For some gardens it may be cheaper to purchase an annual membership if you plan on visiting more than 2-3 times a year, and some gardens have reciprocal memberships (for example, our Denver Botanic Gardens membership also allows us membership to the Desert Botanical Garden).

• The Butchart Gardens (Vancouver Island, BC)
• Bellevue Botanical Garden (Bellevue, WA)
• Washington Park Arboretum (Seattle, WA)
• Portland Japanese Garden (Portland, OR)
• Hoyt Arboretum (Portland, OR)
• Denver Botanic Gardens (Denver, CO)
• UC Botanical Garden at Berkeley (Berkeley, CA)
• San Francisco Botanical Garden (San Francisco, CA)
• The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens (San Marino, CA)
• Desert Botanical Garden (Phoenix, AZ)
• Boyce Thompson Arboretum (Superior, AZ)
• Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum (Tucson, AZ)
• Tohono Chul Botanical Gardens (Tucson, AZ)
• Atlanta Botanical Garden (Atlanta, GA)
• National Tropical Botanical Gardens (various locations in Kauai, Hawaii)

2016 Year In Review (Ron)

2016 was an eventful year for Sarah and I. We bought land in southwest Colorado in the heart of the San Juan Mountains and will shortly be building a house on it, sold our house in Denver, and moved full time into our Airstream trailer. During that time we went over 5 months (!) without taking a single photo, by far the longest stretch since we've been photographing.

Despite the "Lost Summer" we were able to get a decent amount of photography in during the rest of the year.  We started the year in Death Valley, moved to the Sonoran Desert in Arizona, and then went up to Nevada and Utah during spring. After summer we spent 10 days in Iceland leading a workshop, a few weeks in the San Juan Mountains and south Utah photographing fall colors, and then spent some time along the Oregon Coast in November.

All photos I have processed from this year can be viewed on my 2016 Portfolio page, including:

• Death Valley Winter
• Southwest Spring
• Iceland Autumn
• Colorado Autumn
• Southwest Autumn
• Autumn Monochrome
• Pacific Northwest Winter

Finally, I have collected a few of my favorite photos of 2016, some of which I will include below with brief captions. You may also be interested in the 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015 versions of this post.

Desert Gold. One of the highlights this year was the wildflower bloom at Death Valley National Park. This photo fails to convey how wonderful it smelled out here!

So That Happened. The other major highlight at Death Valley National Park this year was all the rain which flooded Badwater. This particular sunrise came out of nowhere, it was completely clear about an hour before.

Wind Rain Sand. This photo was taken the sunrise after a day of almost constant rain (not that common in Death Valley), the winds were blowing 35-50mph - creating a unique mix of rain patterns and blowing sand.

Wavy Ibex. Ibex Dunes may be my favorite in Death Valley, we were treated to some stormy light at sunset.

Beach Bubbles! Photographing these foam bubbles on Cannon Beach was quite the challenge, they would move quickly and then burst and evaporate. I was lucky to get a few sharp photos highlighting the iridescent foam.

Stormy Cannon Beach. The Pacific Northwest coast in late fall and winter is beautiful - there are often breaking storms in between the relentless rain which we were lucky to catch on this particular sunset along with some washed up foam and a well timed gull.

Mossorama. Winter trees in the forests along the Pacific Northwest coast are beautiful, especially the mossy trees with a little backlight highlighting the shapes and forms of the trees.

Shuffleboard. Mud patterns in Death Valley (reminding me of a shuffleboard table) and an approaching storm that would dump about an inch of rain later that day.

Organ Pipe Frames. Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument has some of the most pristine Sonoran Desert scenery in the United States and is the only place in the US with the namesake Organ Pipe cactus.

Colorful Blurries. Multicolored aspen leaves photographed against a colorful blurred out background. Aspen leaves in fall can be all sorts of colors, not just the common yellow and gold.

Organ Pipe Fuzzies. Backlit Saguaro and red-fringed Organ Pipe cactus. The Sonoran Desert is called the green desert for a reason!

Ocean Motion. A nice sunset on the famous beach in Vik, Iceland

Classic Zion. The famous Watchman framed by colorful autumn Cottownwood trees and surrounded by lush desert vegetation. 

Last Leaves. Bare aspens in front of the last autumn foliage of the year.

Saguaro Forest. Saguaro, cholla, and green octotillo frame a hillside in the Sonoran Desert in Arizona.