Adventure Reflection

“Stoopid photographers!” I yelled to no one, because there was no one there to hear. In reviewing my adventures, I find the most fun, exhilarating, and rewarding ones have one thing in common: I find myself saying, often in a stupor from cold, or…

In Search of the Larch

We were supposed to backpack to The Enchantment Lakes area, having jumped through all the hoops to secure a set of coveted passes for the restricted, fragile, high alpine region. This was the weekend we wanted because the change of season brings a very…

How Photographers Hike

Went on a hike to see pretty things and get a little exercise. But it was a photographer’s hike, which means doing it during hours that don’t make sense to most people. And the people it does make sense to are either mountain climbers…

Following Ansel’s Path

Way back in 1989, I had to declare a major in college. I toyed with an architecture major, but the prof for the prerequisite: History of Cities was horrific and scared me from that path. I considered math (very briefly) before settling on Fine…

The One That Got Away

My last post lamented a bunch of photos I’d lost due to file corruption. This is another. It would have been submitted to Nat Geo if I’d been able to retrieve the RAW file. As it is, it’s a JPEG only and unsubmitable (they…

Just a Skeleton

The other day I got all psyched up to enter the annual Nat Geo photo contest. In case you’ve never done that, it takes a lot of small print reading, a lot of picking through files, and a lot of nerve. If you ever…

Digital Surprise

I have a confession to make. I never finished going through my 4000 photos and 250 videos from my Nepal trip in 2013. Part of the reason was because when I first went though them after I got home, my first batch (out of…

Impressionable Everyday Photos

How would your impression of a faraway place be different if you saw photos of everyday life there instead of the stories that the photographers and journalists want you to see? Think about that for a minute. You have all sorts of impressions of…

Failure=Salvation

This weekend I attended a photography conference in Seattle, called Collaborators for Cause. One of the keynote speakers was Aaron Huey. He’s a cultural photographer and activist and he blew me away for several reasons. Most of it was specific to the way he connected…

Hometown History

While it also has the monikers City of Lakes and The Mini Apple, a name I never knew while I lived there was Mill City. Only once I went back to visit and became a tourist in my hometown did I realize how much…