Landscape photography from the field

Location Scouting

How to Scout New Landscape Locations Before You Ever Leave the House
Video Tutorials

How to Scout New Landscape Locations Before You Ever Leave the House

There’s a particular kind of dread that comes from showing up somewhere you’ve never been with no plan and golden light already fading. I’ve done it more times than I’d like to admit. Twenty years into this work and I still feel the pull to just drive toward something beautiful and figure it out when I get there. The problem is that impulse costs you shots. The photographers who consistently come home with strong, original images aren’t necessarily the ones with the best gear or the best luck.

How I Prepare for Every Landscape Photography Trip (And Why It Takes Less Than 20 Minutes)
Video Tutorials

How I Prepare for Every Landscape Photography Trip (And Why It Takes Less Than 20 Minutes)

There’s a particular kind of anxiety that comes from arriving at a location you’ve never shot before, watching the golden light begin to move, and realizing you have no idea where to stand. I’ve been doing this for two decades and I still feel it when I skip my prep. The difference between a session where I’m working with intention and one where I’m scrambling is almost never about gear or even experience.

What Nigel Danson's Extreme Printing Experiment Taught Me About Shooting in Remote Locations
Video Tutorials

What Nigel Danson's Extreme Printing Experiment Taught Me About Shooting in Remote Locations

There’s a particular kind of clarity that comes when you make the work harder than it needs to be. I’ve stood in freezing rivers at 4am more times than I can count, and every time my kids ask me why I don’t just wait until the light is reasonable and the ground is dry, I tell them the same thing: the difficult conditions are usually the point. So when I came across a recent Nigel Danson tutorial where he and the team from Photo Speed haul a 25-kilogram printer up a Scottish mountain at dawn to print photographs on location, I didn’t watch it because the stunt was funny.

How to Shoot Beautiful Outdoor Portraits in Natural Light (Lessons from a Fashion Photographer's Workflow)
Video Tutorials

How to Shoot Beautiful Outdoor Portraits in Natural Light (Lessons from a Fashion Photographer's Workflow)

Most of my working life, I point the camera at mountains and rivers. But landscape photography teaches you to read light and location fast, and those same instincts translate directly into portraits the moment you step outside with a person instead of a peak. The problem I kept running into when I started collaborating with other photographers on composite projects and workshop shoots was this: I could find a beautiful location, but I didn’t have a systematic approach to moving a human subject through it efficiently and intentionally.

How to Plan a Landscape Photography Trip When You're Not Actually on a Photography Trip
Video Tutorials

How to Plan a Landscape Photography Trip When You're Not Actually on a Photography Trip

Most of my best-planned shoots have happened on trips that weren’t really photography trips at all. A week in the Cascades with the kids. A long weekend in coastal Oregon that my wife organized. A family jaunt to the coast where I had maybe three mornings to myself before anyone else was awake. Those constraints are real, and if you’ve ever stood in a parking lot at golden hour, half-guilty that you’re not back at the cabin making dinner, you know exactly what I mean.

One Photo, One Mission: How Mark Denney Plans and Executes a Lighthouse Sunrise
Video Tutorials

One Photo, One Mission: How Mark Denney Plans and Executes a Lighthouse Sunrise

There’s a question I get at almost every workshop I run: how do you know when a shot is worth the effort? My honest answer is that the math rarely adds up on paper. A 4-hour drive, a night sleeping in the cold, an alarm set before civilization wakes up - none of that pencils out unless you’ve made your peace with the fact that sometimes the image is the whole point.

Planning the Perfect Landscape Shot: Location Scouting 101
Planning

Planning the Perfect Landscape Shot: Location Scouting 101

Every memorable landscape photograph begins long before the shutter clicks. It starts with research, reconnaissance, and a willingness to return to the same spot more than once. Here is how I approach location scouting, and how you can build the same habit into your own work. Start with Research Before driving anywhere, I spend time with maps. Google Earth is indispensable for understanding terrain, elevation changes, and how light will fall across a scene at different times of day.

A New Tool for Keeping Your Shooting Locations Clean and Pristine
News

A New Tool for Keeping Your Shooting Locations Clean and Pristine

Finding Clarity in the Field As landscape photographers, we’re constantly seeking the perfect conditions to capture nature at its finest. We arrive at sunrise, scout our compositions, and wait for that magical light. But what happens when fallen leaves, dust, and debris obscure the foreground we’ve carefully framed? I recently discovered that a new generation of versatile cleaning tools might be worth considering for our photography kits. When Your Location Needs a Fresh Canvas I’ve been in countless situations where my ideal composition was compromised by unwanted debris.