In this post, I share some highlights from 2023 along with some reflections on my current creative practices, thoughts about the direction of our photo business, some loose goals for 2024, and a short rumination about AI’s potential impact on my chosen career. If you are mostly here for the photos, you can skip ahead to the middle of the post. Before jumping into the text, I would like to thank you for being part of my photo community. I appreciate each of you and wish you the best for 2024!
Read MoreRon's 2023 Recap
While I am sometimes successful in avoiding cliches in my photographs, I am less successful in avoiding cliches for my blog posts. So here is my version of the yearly recap post!
The beginning of the year is a good time to reflect and ruminate on the past year, but since this is the end of the year, I’m going to skip all that and just share some photographs. These are not necessarily my favorite twenty photographs of the year but they are a diverse selection of the places we photographed and visited in 2023, arranged chronologically.
Read MoreRon's Recent Work From Alaska (New Portfolio Ebook)
After a very busy fall, I finally had time to process my photos from Alaska. The results can be downloaded here, as a portfolio ebook with about 100 new photographs. There are autumnal landscapes and plants, mountains, glaciers, misty fjords and ocean scenes, and even some wildlife sprinkled in this new collection. I have included a small sampling of the photographs in this blog post but they will look better in the ebook.
As I mention in the ebook, the size, scope, and wildness of Alaska is difficult to articulate. A map provides an intellectual approximation of its size, but the emotional realization of how big a place Alaska is doesn’t really settle in until visiting in person and for several weeks. This is the perspective I have from driving around the very small slice of Alaska that is paved (or well graded) within a reasonable distance of its largest population center. Even that “less wild” part was incredible—imagine the overwhelming majority of the state which is inaccessible except by water or plane. Hopefully in the future we won’t have to imagine, as we plan on making several return visits.
Read MoreAlaska Wildlife from a Landscape Photographer's Perspective
A black bear takes a break from salmon-maiming to shake off. The shapes in the background are all dead salmon, many of them maimed by the bears searching for eggs. Live spawning salmon can also be seen in the creek. This photo is an example of how I needed to shift my thinking about composition. Normally, distractions like the dead salmon would have kept me from taking a photo of this scene. With wildlife photography, I decided they add important context.
To start our fall nature photography season this year, we went to Alaska at the end of August and ended up spending a lot of time photographing wildlife and birds. Although I always enjoy watching wild animals, I have never spent much time photographing them for a variety of reasons. Yet, with so many animals and birds around us, it seemed like I should at least give it a decent try and I ended up really enjoying the experience. It felt exciting to try something new, stretch my skills, and add a different kind of photography to my portfolio. The process of watching these animals and birds also deepened my understanding of these ecosystems and left me feeling more connected to the landscape. Below, I share a few favorite experiences, things I learned as a landscape photographer trying to photograph wildlife, and a few new photos. You can see the full gallery of photos here.
Read MoreMonthly Review: Alaska, Photo Backlogs, and Stuff Peppers (#1.September 2023)
A few minutes of pretty light at Mount Rainier National Park. Canon R5, 2 seconds, 76mm, f/16, ISO 200.
This series is for our readers and for me. I am quite good at generating ideas but I need some help with discipline and follow-through. I plan to share a wrap-up like this at the end of each month through the end of 2024 to see if it helps me stay more accountable to myself. The basic format: an inventory of how I spent the last month with regard to nature photography and our photo business, a casual discussion about the things that are on my mind, and a few non-photography recommendations at the end. Thank you to Alex Kunz for the format inspiration.
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