Welcome to My View

Hello and welome to My View for Monday, June 23, 2009.

Hello Everyone,

I hope you had a great weekend.

Craig Tanner, a fantastic teacher and great friend with whom I work teaching workshops and on The Mindful Eye, and I spent the weekend with a great group of people here in Atlanta at our first Inspirational Weekend with The Mindful Eye. It was a lot of fun, we saw many old friends and made some new ones. Thank you to all who participated!!

Today’s image is a whimsical shot I took in Death Valley earlier this year in the days after the Death Valley Workshop when I was out shooting for myself. I came across this piece of wood in the desert near the Devil’s Corn Field area and immediately laughed out loud when I saw it — crazy woman, standing in the middle of the desert, laughing to herself!!

I keep coming back to this image as I scan images for preparing workshop presentations or for My View. Today, I’m in a lighthearted mood and decided to post it for your amusement.

As always, your comments and critiques are most welcome.

Death Valley Dragon

Death Valley, CA
Canon 1Ds Mark II, Canon 16-35 2.8L lens at 16mm, ISO 100, f/8, 1/45 sec, Bogen Neotec tripod.

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Hello and welome to My View for Wednesday, March 18, 2009.

Who Makes the Image

Hello Everyone,

A belated Happy St. Patrick’s Day to you all!!

Later this week, Craig Tanner and I will conduct our first Next Step workshop for 2009. This is a special workshop that is all about creativity and finding the fears that hold you back as an artist, and one that Craig and I both enjoy teaching immeasurably.

As I prepare for this workshop, one of the things that came to mind was the question “Who Makes the Image?” Does your camera create the image you captured? Did you create this image? Did it come from somewhere outside of the person that is you? These are questions that artists have posed for some time now — where does the creativity come from?

As I pondered these thoughts on this beautiful spring day in Atlanta, I was reminded of an image I snapped during our recent Death Valley workshop, attended by an amazing group of photographers. We were photographing a gorgeous sunset from Dante’s View, high (5475 feet) along the crest of the Black Mountains of the Armagosa Mountain Range that form the east wall of Death Valley. From this peak, one can see the lowest point in the park, Badwater at 282 feet below sea level, to the highest point, Telescope Peak at 11,331 across the Valley in the Panamint Mountain Range.

One of our participants had been photographing this brilliant sunset and stepped away from the camera for a moment, leaving me wondering who was creating the image.

As always, your comments and critiques are most welcome.

Who Makes the Image

For a larger view

Dante’s View, Death Valley National Park
Death Valley, California
Canon 1Ds Mark II, Canon 28-70mm L lens at 38mm, ISO 1600, 1/250 sec, f/8 and a half, handheld.

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Hello and welome to My View for Monday September 1, 2008.

As I continue work on the workshops scheduled for 2009, I reviewed a lot of images from previous trips to our venues last week. I was looking for images that showed an aspect of each venue that one doesn’t normally see in publicity photos.

I found this image of the sun setting on the cliffs above Golden Canyon in Death Valley National Park that l like. It is an image that shows something other than the salt flats and the dunes. I hope you enjoy seeing another view of this magical and exotic park.

Your comments and suggestions are most welcome as they help me grow as a photographer and a person.

Thank you for visiting My View.

Golden Canyon

From down in Golden Canyon, Death Valley National Park, November 2005
Canon 5D, 28-70 mm 2.8L lens at 28mm , f/11, 1/2 sec, ISO 100, camera mounted on tripod

Golden Canyon Alternative (see my post below)

Hello and welome to My View for Sunday, March 16, 2008.

This week’s post is a continuation of images from the recent Death Valley workshop that I taught with Craig Tanner for Radiant Vista.

The skies of Death Valley are, very often, severely clear. On this particular day, Thursday evening of the workshop, we left the group in the field just a bit early to make reservations in the dining room so that we could all eat together on the last night of the workshop. As we left the our shooting location, we wondered if the clouds in the sky were going to “pop” at sunset for the workshop participants. When we approached Stovepipe Wells, where we were staying, the sky started changing to reflect the sunset light in the amazing clouds that were present that evening.

As instructors, do not shoot on workshop sessions for ourselves. We are there for the participants, not to do our own photography work. When this sky started to change, we realized that we were “without participants” and quickly stopped on the side of the road and captured a “grab shot”.

Sometimes the universe just simply graces us with gifts. And, I am always extremely grateful for every one of them.

As always, your comments and critiques are most welcome.

Thank you for visiting My View.

“Fire on the Panamints”

Canon 1Ds Mark II, 70-200 mm 2.8 L lens at 190mm; f/4.0 at 1/45 second, ISO 800; hand held

Hello and Welcome to My View for Thursday, March 13, 2008

Each day, no matter what is going on in my life, I try to set aside some time to express my gratitude to the universe for all that I’ve been given, for all the close friends who support me on my journey to become a better photographer and teacher of photography, for everything in my life..

Last week, I had the pleasure of teaching a photography workshop in Death Valley with Craig Tanner. For this, I’m most grateful. I’m even more grateful for the participants of this workshop. Each and every one of them brought their own skills and energy to the workshop, and graciously shared with everyone.

One of the most meaningful things that happened was the standing ovation Craig and I received at the end of the workshop. This is the second year in a row where this happened on the Death Valley workshop and I am extremely touched. To each and every one of the participants in this year’s March workshop, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

My presentation to the workshop was on alternate ways to shoot landscapes. One of my favorite ways is to pan across a landscape, using a slow shutter speed. This shot was taken at the Mesquite Flats Sand Dunes on March 7, the last morning of the workshop.

Your comments and critiques are always appreciated and welcomed.

Thank you for visiting My View.

“Mesquite Flat Pan” Death Valley National Park, March 2008

Canon 1Ds Mark II, 50 mm 1.4 lens; f/22 at 1/3 second panning camera while shutter open.

I am traveling back to Atlanta from Death Valley by car with Craig Tanner. We are in Port Aransas, Texas for a couple of days where Craig is finishing shots for a commercial job. I’ll post some about this trip in the next few days.

Welcome to My View for Friday, February 29, 2008

How often do we find ourselves struggling and fighting with life? How often is it that we keep pushing in one direction, no matter what? How often are we determined to control our lives — damn the torpodoes, full speed ahead!

Very often, in our determination to have things happen exactly as we want them to, we encounter endless struggles, banging our heads against the wall that always seems to be there. At times like these, perhaps it would benefit us to just relax, to surrender to what life just might have to offer us.

This image, taken in Death Valley National Park in 2005, serves as a reminder to me to get out of my own way at just such times and allow life to happen to me. It was sunrise in the Cow Creek area of the park. Not much was happening in the sky facing the east. I was struggling to try to make something out of very little in the way of a dramatic sunrise. Out of frustration more than anything else, I turned away from the east to catch a glimpse of the scene directly behind me. I barely had time to move, lower my tripod, change lenses and fire off a few shots before this amazing scene was gone. Rather than struggling so hard with what I thought I wanted to capture, all I had to do was stop, take a deep breath, listen to that small whisper of frustration and turn around to capture something far more beautiful than anything I could have captured with continuing my struggle that morning.

Your comments and critiques are always appreciated and welcomed.

Thank you for visiting My View.

“Let life happen to you. Believe me; life is in the right, always.” Rainer Maria Rilke

“Cow Creek Sunrise” Death Valley National Park, November 2005

Canon 5D, 16-35 mm 2.8 lens at 16mm; f/8.0 (combination of two images shot at 1/4 sec and 1/6 sec).

This post is a few days early this week because late Friday afternoon, I will be on my way to Las Vegas for the start of my spring photography workshop season. I will be teaching with Craig Tanner in Death Valley all next week. The post for My View for Sunday, March 9, will be delayed a few days.

Have a good week, everyone!