Scouting Locations

Video Tutorials

When the Sky Won't Cooperate: A Field Guide to Shooting Cloudless Summer Landscapes

There’s a particular kind of stubbornness that keeps landscape photographers moving even when the conditions look terrible on paper. No clouds, summer haze thick enough to taste, and a sky the color of bleached denim. Most photographers I know would stay in the car. I’ve learned, over two decades of waking up before the alarm goes off and dragging gear up mountains that didn’t ask for the company, that the days that look worst on paper often teach you the most.

October 17, 2026

Video Tutorials

Why the Best Shot of My Career Came From Knowing When to Walk Away

A mentor told me once, early in my career, that the mountain doesn’t care about your schedule. I was frustrated, standing in a flat gray drizzle at some overlook in central Oregon that I’d driven four hours to reach. He just shrugged and said we’d come back. We did, three weeks later, and the image I got that second morning is still one I’m proud of. That lesson took years to fully sink in.

September 27, 2026

Video Tutorials

Your Phone Is Your Most Powerful Photography Tool — Here's How to Use It Like a Pro

I’ve been doing this long enough to remember when planning a landscape shoot meant a paper map, a printed tide table, and a phone call to the local pub to ask what the weather was doing. Twenty years in, my camera bag has barely changed. My phone has changed everything. Not the camera on it, though that’s impressive enough. The apps. The ability to stand in a car park at 5am in the dark and know, within a few minutes, whether the light is going to break over the ridge the way I need it to, whether the cloud base is sitting at the right elevation, and exactly where the sun will rise relative to that ridge.

September 24, 2026