Landscape photography from the field

Camera Settings

What the Darkness Is Actually Doing to Your Camera (And How to Work With It)
Technique

What the Darkness Is Actually Doing to Your Camera (And How to Work With It)

The Shot That Changed How I Think About Darkness A few years back I drove six hours to a location in southeastern Oregon to photograph the Milky Way over a particular rock formation I’d been scouting on maps for months. I arrived to two solid days of fog. I came home with one usable frame, taken at 3am on the second night when the fog broke for about forty minutes. That image is now my best-selling print.

The Landscape Photography Rules I Wish Someone Had Told Me to Break Sooner
Video Tutorials

The Landscape Photography Rules I Wish Someone Had Told Me to Break Sooner

There’s a particular kind of confidence that comes from being told the rules early. You hear them enough times, they start to feel like gravity. Shoot in manual mode. Buy the graduated ND filters. Own your gear before you own your style. I followed every single one of those rules when I started, and some of them cost me real money and, worse, real creative momentum. Twenty years of standing in rivers at 5am with a camera has a way of sorting out what actually matters from what just sounds authoritative.

The Composition Move That Changed How I Read a Woodland Scene
Video Tutorials

The Composition Move That Changed How I Read a Woodland Scene

There’s a particular kind of frustration that comes from standing in front of a genuinely beautiful scene and feeling completely stuck. The light is decent. The subject is there. And yet something about the frame feels soft, unfocused, like you haven’t quite figured out what the photograph is actually about. I’ve been shooting landscapes full-time for two decades and I still walk into that wall more often than I’d like to admit.

Five Camera Features I Stopped Ignoring (And Why My Forest Shots Finally Got Better)
Video Tutorials

Five Camera Features I Stopped Ignoring (And Why My Forest Shots Finally Got Better)

There’s a particular kind of humbling that happens when you’ve been shooting landscapes for two decades and a tutorial still makes you stop and rethink your defaults. I’ve logged thousands of pre-dawn mornings, stood in enough freezing rivers to qualify for some kind of aquatic endurance record, and I still catch myself bypassing camera features I’ve labeled as “not for serious work.” That instinct, it turns out, can quietly cost you shots.

How to Use Flash in Full Sun for Outdoor Portraits (And Why Landscape Photographers Should Know This)
Video Tutorials

How to Use Flash in Full Sun for Outdoor Portraits (And Why Landscape Photographers Should Know This)

Most of my work is landscape and nature photography. No subjects, no strobes, no reflectors. Just me, the land, and whatever light the sky decides to offer. But I run workshops, and workshops mean people in the frame. And people in the frame at 1pm in a sun-drenched high desert meadow outside Bend? That’s a different problem entirely. For years I defaulted to shade. Overcast days. Golden hour. Anything to avoid the flat, squinting, harsh-shadowed mess that midday sun creates on a human face.

Three Spots That Make Bryce Canyon Worth the Pre-Dawn Drive
Video Tutorials

Three Spots That Make Bryce Canyon Worth the Pre-Dawn Drive

There are parks where you can wander and find something worthwhile around every bend, and then there are parks that reward the photographer who knows exactly where to stand. Bryce Canyon is firmly the second kind. The first time I visited without a plan, I spent the better part of a morning walking rim trails and came back with technically competent, emotionally flat images. I had been everywhere, which meant I had really been nowhere.

From Moorland to Print: What a Day in the Field with a 400mm Lens Taught Me About Patience and Settings
Video Tutorials

From Moorland to Print: What a Day in the Field with a 400mm Lens Taught Me About Patience and Settings

There’s a particular kind of frustration that comes from standing in front of a beautiful scene and watching it fall apart in the frame. A bird that won’t sit still. Light that changes faster than you can dial in your exposure. A background that looked perfect until you checked the LCD and realized the subject was a blurry smear against the heather. I’ve been making photographs for twenty years, and that frustration never fully goes away.

Back to the Roots: 5 Landscape Photography Essentials That Still Hold Up After 20 Years
Video Tutorials

Back to the Roots: 5 Landscape Photography Essentials That Still Hold Up After 20 Years

There’s a particular kind of rut that sneaks up on you slowly. You stop noticing the light the way you used to. You drive to a location on autopilot, set up in the same spot, and wonder why the images feel flat. It happened to me earlier this spring, somewhere between my fourth consecutive grey morning at Smith Rock and a hard drive full of shots I didn’t feel like editing.

Why Your Milky Way Shots Look Muddy (And What I Changed to Fix It)
Night Photography

Why Your Milky Way Shots Look Muddy (And What I Changed to Fix It)

I used to come home from night shoots with a memory card full of images that looked like someone had smeared petroleum jelly on the lens. Soft stars. A sky that looked more gray than black. A Milky Way core that was technically there if you squinted, but carried none of the drama I’d seen standing in the field at 2am. I was doing what most photographers do when they first point a camera at the stars: maxing out the ISO, opening the aperture as wide as it would go, and hoping the histogram told a happy story.

What Aerial Photography Over the Australian Outback Taught Me About Shooting in Chaos
Video Tutorials

What Aerial Photography Over the Australian Outback Taught Me About Shooting in Chaos

There are landscapes that genuinely resist you. Not because the light is wrong or the season is off, but because the sheer scale and strangeness of the place makes your usual toolkit feel inadequate. I’ve stood in the Columbia River Gorge at first light thinking I had everything figured out, only to realize the scene demanded something I hadn’t practiced. That’s the feeling I got watching William Patino’s aerial photography session over the Western Australian desert.

Get Out the Door: The One-Step Game Plan That Actually Makes Better Landscape Photos
Video Tutorials

Get Out the Door: The One-Step Game Plan That Actually Makes Better Landscape Photos

There’s a particular kind of paralysis that sets in when conditions look ugly. I’ve stood at my truck window more times than I can count, watching rain streak the glass, debating whether it’s worth dragging gear through the mud for what might be nothing. Twenty years of doing this for a living, and that hesitation still shows up. What I’ve learned — slowly, and mostly the hard way — is that the decision to go is itself the creative act.

Shooting the Geminid Meteor Shower: A Field Guide to Capturing Meteors on Location
Video Tutorials

Shooting the Geminid Meteor Shower: A Field Guide to Capturing Meteors on Location

Meteor showers sit in a strange category for me. They’re one of those events where the window is fixed, the weather is indifferent, and luck plays a bigger role than I’d like to admit. I’ve stood in fields at 2am watching the sky deliver nothing, and I’ve also caught a streak of light I nearly missed because I was pouring coffee from a thermos. The challenge has always been reducing the luck and increasing the odds through better preparation and smarter technique.