As you can probably tell from all my posts, I’m a polar guy. I love the Polar regions and feel right at home in these locations. This image was made by a number of fellow photographers, and I was waiting like a patient fisherman for this gigantic glacier to calve. After a short time, we heard a boom and saw this calving happening. I shot a dozen or show images quickly, and this was the best shot. Some of those pieces of ice are the size of a car. This was made on one of my trips to Svalbard.
Zion National Park is one of my favorite places to visit. It never disappoints. As a photographer, there are loads of possibilities for great landscapes. The park has been super crowded over the last few years and there is no vehicle traffic allowed until after November 1st. Some of my best landscapes have been made at this park.
One of the popular locations is the bridge overlook. It looks down a river to beautiful mountains and a setting sun late in the day. Throw in some clouds and it quite magnificent. Many photographers would get to this location hours in advance to get a spot on the bridge. There can be a hundred or more photographers and tourists trying to get a spot on this bridge. These days I just bypass the bridge and head to some of my other spots. The park doesn’t allow photography from this bridge now, as it is a safety hazard for pedestrians and cars. Oh well, it was good while it lasted.
If you visit Zion, the fall is the best time to go. The crowds are smaller and the colors are just exploding. You’ll find a ton of like-minded photographers there so beware. I have been fortunate enough with the numerous images I have of Zion to feel I have it pretty well covered. However, I do look forward to visiting again.
Please Visit . . .
If you are interested in seeing more work by Kevin Raber and purchasing his work for your own, please visit RaberEYES.com
Kevin also runs workshops for photographers all over the world at Rockhopper Workshops
Kevin also has. a major website for all photography enthusiasts with articles, forums, tutorials, community, and more at photoPXL.com
I have traveled a lot and photographed hundreds of humpback whales and whale tails. Here a whale tail from my recent trip to Svalbard. We had a real good whale encounter and this is one of the many images I made while the sun was starting its trip to the horizon.
Here’s an interesting fact. You can identify a whale by its tail. There is a website called Happy Whale and you send the images you have of whale tails. They will put the photo in their database a report back if the whale has been spotted before and where. They will also send you an email if someone else identifies the same whale. You can see on a map where the whale has been. Pretty fun stuff.
Please Visit . . .
If you are interested in seeing more work by Kevin Raber and purchasing his work for your own, please visit RaberEYES.com
Kevin also runs workshops for photographers all over the world at Rockhopper Workshops
Kevin also has. a major website for all photography enthusiasts with articles, forums, tutorials, community, and more at photoPXL.com
This was shot a few weeks ago as we traveled along the Austfonna Glacier. This Glacier is huge and goes on for hundreds of kilometers. Our plan was to travel along the whole edge of the glacier but we had to turn around. The glacier had progressed out by quite a bit and the tracks needed for navigation would have taken us through the glacier. It was good to see this glacier growing while so many others have been retreating.
This really is a site to behold and I felt privileged to photograph this magnificent wonder.
Please Visit . . .
If you are interested in seeing more work by Kevin Raber and purchasing his work for your own, please visit RaberEYES.com
Kevin also runs workshops for photographers all over the world at Rockhopper Workshops
Kevin also has. a major website for all photography enthusiasts with articles, forums, tutorials, community, and more at photoPXL.com
My friend Seth Resnick has been posting images for the last month or so and instead of just saying what it is he shares the story behind it. I think this is a great idea and so from here on my images posted here will be a bit wordy with the story behind the photo. What I was thinking, why I saw the image this way and what I did in post processing to make the image what I wanted it to be.
I love abandoned places and rusty things and for many years I visited Silo City in Buffalo, New York to find a place that had both. My adventures here made me thrilled. My friend Mark Maio would arrange a yearly weekend shoot at this location. Silo City was a network of giant grain silos that were an important stepping stone in the last century to move grain harvests from the west to places on the east.
As photographers, they granted us access to the entire complex. There we lots of stairs, conveyors, pipes and machines throughout the complex. It was a dangerous place, to say the least. Silo City, for the most part, has now been sold off and under commercial development. I consider myself fortunate to have visited this location as many times as I had.
Photographing abandoned things, places, cars and houses is a passion of mine. These places tell stories and it is part of my personal mission to tell those stories with my photography. I also like to try different things with my images and in a lot of cases as with this image use symmetry as part of the composition.
There were a lot of things happening in this picture and I wanted the viewer to explore the angles and dangles as well as try to understand what they were looking at. I used the receding lines of the columns and the “V” shape at the top of the columns to drive the viewers’ eye through the image. As you explore the image you see many diagonal that transport the eye through the photo as well. And, I loved the dangling light bulb.
Many photographers may have contemplated this shot for a while. For me I am a fast contemplator. I moved around as well as up and down until I saw the scene balance itself out. I was already thinking as I shot the photo how I would post process it. It needed to be monochrome. In the end I added a slight tint of sepia to it to accent the abandoned feel to it.
In post processing, I also increased to contrast and stricture a bit to bring out the textures in the concrete and the rust in the metal conveyors.
I’ll share more from Silo City soon. I also did a shoot where I used a model to interact with the machines there. As far as the technical, this was shot with a Nikon D800 and a 24-70mm zoom at f/16 to keep depth of field.
I have sold numerous prints of this image and it looks beautiful as a print and the print allows to viewer to explore all the little nuances in the image.
I graduated in 1972 from Radnor High School. This year is our 50th reunion—fifty Fxxxing years. I never thought I would make it this far. I went back for the 40th reunion and had a blast. I took Debra with me, and she got to meet all my old friends and visit the firehouse I worked out of. Radnor Fire Company in Wayne, PA, was the first fire company in America to have a motorized fire truck. I was a firefighter, Fireman of the year, and assistant chief during my many years there. Those years were some of the finest in my life. While we were there, I went on a nostalgic ride on the 1954 Mack, Wayne 2. This truck was there when I joined in 1972 and then was sold to a fire company in Vermont. The Radnor Fire Company repurchased it and restored it. It’s a genuine fire truck. Noisy, open cab was what fire trucks were all about. My friends there took the truck out while I was there. Debra got to ride in the cab, and I rode on the back step with Don Wood, a past chief and my Physics teacher in high school. Oh what fun that ride was.
The reunion was fun as I caught up with many old friends. But, showing Debra, where I grew up and sharing my experiences, were excellent. We go back this August for the 50th reunion, and I am sure I’ll have some great photos from that trip.
In my travels, I enjoy walking around cities. I do this for a few reasons. First, I love to do street photography. This is a chance to shoot people and the environment to show spontaneous and candid life. The other is looking at the architecture and trying to find abstracts in unique and beautiful buildings.
In this series of buildings, I found so much it was crazy. This is the opera house in Iceland. Known as Harpa it is an amazing building both inside and outside. If you ever get to Iceland make sure you spend some time photographing this building. Iceland is one of the most photo-rich lands you can visit. It’s pretty easy to get a good photo there.
Please Visit . . .
If you are interested in seeing more work by Kevin Raber and purchasing his work for your own, please visit RaberEYES.com
Kevin also runs workshops for photographers all over the world at Rockhopper Workshops
Kevin also has. a major website for all photography enthusiasts with articles, forums, tutorials, community, and more at photoPXL.com
Kevin also shares his work daily on Facebook and Instagram
Prior to the pandemic, I was doing a lot of travel. There is so much to see and photograph in this world. My friend Miles from the UK had called and asked if I’d like to meet up with him in Charleston, SC, and do some photography. I was already going to do a trip to the Smokies, and Black Rock, NC, so I added a new destination as well as continued on and make a trip to Naples, FL.
Miles and I had a fun time exploring many areas in and around Charleston. We got some good images. We heard there was an interesting town called Mayesville that might be worth visiting. Mayesville, it turns out, is a town that time forgot. Pretty much abandoned and falling down except for a cotton mill that is chugging along and probably the only business still there.
This image is just one of the hundreds I took in Mayesville and I intend to do a story on PhotoPXL about this trip soon. I’ll post something here when I have it posted.
I am really beginning to feel the effects of cabin fever. I usually travel a few weeks each month when we were normal. It’s been over 15 months since I last put a foot in an airplane. I start to travel in June with a 2 week workshop and I can’t even tell you how excited I am to get back out there. Meanwhile, I can look back at my files and think about the days when I went where ever I wanted whenever I wanted. These images are from the Slot Canyons in Page, AZ. They will be from the Upper and Lower Antelope canyons. The light poking its way into these canyons is so beautiful and has its own way to make these places magical.
One of my favorite cities to photograph is Chicago. It’s been a while since I was there due to the pandemic but that doesn’t stop me from going through my files. Here are a few gems from some of my last trips. I hope by the spring I can visit there again.
