I have made at least six trips to Svalbard. Svalbard is a territory of Norway in the polar circle. We normally board a ship there and spend at least ten days exploring the area. Part of the mission on the trip is to photograph polar bears. This is one Polar Bear we tracked for a while. You can search this site for Polar Bear and find more photographs of thse magnificent creatures.
After a long hike, the day before our workshop group camped out along the trail in Patagonia. I arose before sunrise and found a number of areas to shoot the area as dawn slowly revealed itself.
Everyone knows about how beautiful Iceland is. If there is a god then this is the place on earth where all the art school graduates display their work. Almost anyplace you int your camera you will find incredible photo opportunities. I have traveling to Iceland since 2005 and I have still so much to see and discover.
One place that yields new winning images every time I visit is the iceberg beach. This is a beach not too far from a giant glacier. The icebergs calving off the glacier float out to sea and then low tide washes them on the beach. This usually produces under the right conditions hundreds of small icebergs. It’s heaven for photographers. These two images I produced in a couple of hours there. The background also lends to great images and as you can see in these, what I call the Arctic Yellow shines though along with such beautiful clouds.
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Kevin also runs workshops for photographers all over the world at Rockhopper Workshops
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This is an image I saw while driving north in Canada to Algonquin State Park. It was very foggy and we were driving through a farm area. Through the fog, we saw these groups of farmers cutting celery and harvesting it. What caught me was a subservient look of the bent-over farmers and the guy walking around with a big machete. The whole image asks a lot of questions that the viewer needs to solve for themselves.
Nature has patience. And, with all my travels I have seen many times how nature reclaims what is here. Whether it be a Forrest devastated by. fire, an abandoned house or rusty and rotting machines. Mother nature always wins. She has immense patience. In this image, I was walking through a train yeard looking for abstract photo opportunities. I stopped at this one train car and found this. A small but of a plant of some kind growing in the rusty dust form the boxcar door of this train. Nature always finds a way.
This image was made at Scotty’s Castle in Death Valley National Park a few years ago. Scottys Castle is a kind of strange place as a lot of things are out in the desert. Essentially it is a giant mansion built in the early 20th century out in the middle of nowhere. You can read about Scottys HERE. Please note that a little over a year ago Scottys was almost wiped out by a torrential flood and still remains closed and will not reopen until mid-2020.
This image was made lying on the floor of one of the circular cases. I shot directly upwards and then did some post-processing to add the gritty effect.
Another image from one of my favorite cities to shoot architectural abstracts. This one was done with a Sony and a 100-400mm lens. I then corrected perspective in post-processing so all the lines were straight up and down. The golden glow was caused by early morning light which is my favorite shooting time in Chicago.
Watching a glacier calve is the most incredible sight and sound. It’s an art to position yourself so you can catch a glacier as it calves. Once you are positioned you need to keep your camera to your eye to make sure you are ready to catch it. My technique is to get a zodiac in place and pick out the front of a glacier that may calve. Then holding the camera to your eye sweep left and right until it happens. If you wait until you hear it is too late. The noise is like an explosion and the sight is something to behold. This glacier was in the arctic circle in Svalbard.
One of the things I love doing in the Palouse is exploring and photographing abandoned cars and trucks. They seem to be everywhere. It seems they all have their stories. One day someone parked the vehicle and just left it there never to return. I like to document the curves and textures as seen in some of my previous posts. This image today is of an old pickup truck dashboard shot with my Sony 100-400mm lens. I like using long lenses for images that some wouldn’t think of using a long lens for. The thing that I love most is peeling p[aint. I don’t know where this comes from but it is fun to see how time and nature change as well as reclaims things.
The Palouse is such a place of beauty. Farmland that is art. No matter where you go in the Palouse the simplicity of the landscape p[presents numerous photographic opportunities. This was shot from Steptoe Butte where elevated views change the way you see this countryside.