Tag Archives: Nature Photography

Complementary Colors

When seeking out combinations of color in nature, I am often drawn to scenes with complementary colors. Notice the spelling here – complementary not complimentary. Yes, complementary colors are visually pleasing and feel balanced when used together in combination, but they are called complementary (root word complete) not complimentary (root word compliment) because when used in combination, they complete the color spectrum.

Autumn Reflections, Little River, Great Smoky Mountains National Park

For example, this image contains the complementary colors of blue and yellow. So why are they complementary? When referring to colors of light (also called additive coloration) red, green, and blue are the primary colors and when used in combination, they complete the color spectrum by making white. In our example, blue contains one-third of the color spectrum by being one of the three primary colors. Yellow contains two-thirds of the remaining color spectrum by including equal amounts of red and green.

Complementary colors are often used in art and fashion because the effect is visually stimulating and the individual colors appear brighter and more vibrant together then if viewed either solo or within other color combinations.

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November 18, 2011 | Leave a comment

Posted in General | Tagged Creativity, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Nature Photography, Tennessee

Available November 1, The Great Smoky Mountains: Behind the Lens

My new eBook, The Great Smoky Mountains: Behind the Lens will be available for purchase form my e-store November 1 if all goes as planned. I am still finishing up the final chapters and re-writing a few others.

As yet another tease, the following is a short introduction to the book. It should give you a good idea as to the flavor and tone of the writing. It’s been an absolute blast to relive the moments behind my favorite Smoky Mountains images as I’ve sat down to write this over the past 2 months.

Author’s Introduction

You could say my love affair with the Great Smoky Mountains all began with a single fish. Well, it was no ordinary fish. It was a handsomely colored brown trout that had just slid through my fingers and back into the cool waters of Deep Creek near Bryson City. It was only my second or third visit to the Smokies and on this occasion, I brought with me a fly rod and a box containing a dozen or so homemade dry flies.

It was a sunny morning in early May and nature was decked out in all her springtime splendor. The mossy rocks were greener and more vibrant than I had remembered before; the wildflowers more profuse; the water clear like gin. I was also under the spell of a book I just happened to be reading, Harry Middleton’s On the Spine of Time. I desperately wanted to connect to those mountains and this visit was partly the result of that desire. At that time in my life, like Harry, I made connections to most places and people primarily through fly fishing.

I made a better than average cast to the head of one of Deep Creek’s long, slick pools and the trout slowly and deliberately took the fly with such an air of innocence that it almost made me feel guilty about my deception. It appeared we were now both hooked, but in my case, it was for life..

I would eventually become a professional landscape and nature photographer, which I still am to this day. I travel the world with hopes of catching the most epic light cast upon the most dramatic of landscapes this planet has to offer. It’s with the most anticipation, however, when I can visit these mountains, with a camera instead of fly rod, in order to reconnect to these landscapes once again.

Please see more of my photography work on my photography website.

As you can see, this will be a very personal book about a very special place to me. It’s much more than just a how-to book, although I will describe how I captured many of the photos. Rather, it’s mostly about the places themselves, personal anecdotes and stories behind the scenes, and my thoughts about it all.

October 18, 2011 | 1 Comment

Posted in Announcements | Tagged ebook, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, landscape photography, Nature Photography, North Carolina, Tennessee

New Video Tutorials Coming this Summer

Well, I just finished giving a photography workshop in Charleston, South Carolina this past weekend and, as always, my students asked a lot of great questions. I always try to answer each of them slowly, carefully, and thoughtfully so they understand exactly what I am trying to explain without unintentionally misleading them – which is sometimes easy to do when there are exceptions and conditions attached to some of the answers.

Some of the questions are the very same ones I get on each and every workshop or class. The concepts that are asked about are the result poor explanations received in the past or just downright wrong information dispensed in books or by other instructors. So on Saturday in response to a question, I was explaining hyperfocal distance and where to actually focus during a landscape image we were making – walking around in front of the students, talking, gesturing, pointing – looking like a crazy person to the non-photographers who were in the general area. This is a common question and it’s usually accompanied by the “focus 1/3 into the scene” reference – the sort of bad advice which drives me nuts.

It was then that I realized that I needed to get all of this down on video to share with others. So, I decided that I will be offering short online instructional videos by the end of this summer that will help explain some difficult concepts and answer some common questions for nature photographers. Some will be shot here in local locations in the Carolinas while others will be done while traveling – Iceland, Alaska, Yosemite – just to name a few locales. Some I will do solo, while others will include friends or surprise guests. They will be instructional and informative, to be sure, but they will be fun and entertaining too.

Now I need to work on my on-camera presence. The last time I spent any considerable time in front of a camera was during my Riverventure expedition a few years ago.

Talking directly into a camera and trying to remember what to say is not the same as looking someone in the eye and just talking. Here’s a blast from the past: Day 14 of my 270-mile canoe trip in 2007. Yup, I definitely need work!

April 4, 2011 | 2 Comments

Posted in Announcements | Tagged Nature Photography, riverventure, tutorials, video

Dealing with the Unexpected

I don’t like creating airtight, minute-by-minute itineraries for my travels. As strange as this sounds, I don’t even like being being fully prepared. The unexpected, little challenges that creep up during a trip are going to happen anyway, no matter how prepared you think you are. How you handle them ultimately determines a trip’s success or failure. I’ve always prided myself as being flexible, intuitive, and innovative when faced with unexpected challenges while in a strange place. It certainly makes for better stories later when sitting around a campfire or a bar stool surrounded by friends.

So as I prepare and pack for three weeks in South America, I’m packing light and bringing a clear, cool head. The stories are to come later.

Two weeks ago in Death Valley, I contracted the flu on the second day after arriving there. That was certainly unexpected. I spent more time sleeping in hotel rooms than doing photography but my health was much more important than any photograph I could make. On the last day, I got up for sunrise and drove to an easy-to-access location that didn’t involve much walking or hiking – Zabriskie Point. It was completely overcast, so I didn’t expect any light on the famous wrinkles and folds in the earth found in that area. Then a small opening in the clouds appeared in the east allowing a wedge of light to illuminate the Panamint Range for about 30 seconds before the light faded again to pewter gray. Not all that is unexpected is necessarily bad.

Technical Details:

Canon EOS 5D Mk2, Canon 24-105mm @ 67mm, 1/6 second @ f14 ISO 160

March 2, 2011 | 5 Comments

Posted in Essays, Images | Tagged California, Death Valley National Park, landscape photography, Nature Photography

Black and White Dunes

I have always believed that photography is not necessarily about capturing what you see, but rather what you feel: an emotional connection, a sense of place, an experience. There is no better example of this than black and white photography. Black and white photography is a form of visual expression that looks nothing like what the photographer actually saw, yet it’s readily accepted by the general public as being “real” or “real photography.” Some photographers actually believe and espouse the notion that black and white photography is the only real form of photography. There’s that word again. What rubbish.

I don’t practice many black and white interpretations because to me, color is a big part of my experiences in nature – not always, but it’s usually the case. Sometimes, however, a black and white interpretation does a better job of emphasizing the elements that were important to me. This is one of those instances.

Technical details: