Two Focal Lengths Changed How I Think About a Location (And Neither One Is What You'd Expect)

Two Focal Lengths Changed How I Think About a Location (And Neither One Is What You'd Expect)

There’s a habit I carried for years that cost me more good light than I’d like to admit. I’d arrive at a location before dawn, find a composition I liked, lock in my tripod, and then just… stay there. Same frame, same angle, same focal length, shooting variations of the same image until the light died. I told myself I was being disciplined. Really, I was being afraid. Afraid that if I moved, I’d miss the shot.

Finding Order in the Australian Bush: A Woodland Photography Walkthrough

Finding Order in the Australian Bush: A Woodland Photography Walkthrough

Forest and woodland photography has humbled me more times than I care to admit. After twenty years of working mostly in the American West, where I’ve learned to read sagebrush flats and volcanic ridgelines, I still find dense tree environments genuinely difficult. There’s no clean horizon line, no obvious subject, and the light behaves like it has its own agenda. I’ve stood in old-growth Douglas fir stands at golden hour feeling completely lost despite having a camera in my hands since my mid-twenties.