Outdoor Photography How To

The photography critic and historian A.D. Coleman once noted that the most common mistake many photographers make is thinking that what they’re experiencing while making a picture is what’s being captured by the camera.

Bill Hatcher was near the park entrance when a wildfire forced the closing of Tioga Pass road into Yosemite National Park last summer. “The fire was threatening to cross the road into Yosemite,” he says, “and helicopters and tankers were being sent out on kind of a bombing run to cut the fire off.”

It’s spring! And after many, many weeks of trudging through a gray and lifeless winter, Nature has opened her bodice of modesty and presented us with all of the colors the snow had denied. It’s time to photograph flowers. No matter what level of flower photography you pursue, here are some tips that will deliver a few more blossoms. 

Located on Havasupai tribal lands, Havasu Falls is in a deep canyon leading to the Colorado River, and requires a 12-mile hike just to get there. The travertine formations at Havasu Falls are created from minerals in the water and over time the water droplets have precipitated away, leaving these intricate formations.

On a recent trip to Jordan I was going through my nightly routine of cleaning the cameras’ sensors and backing up the day’s shoot when it came to me that these two exercises in what you might call preventive maintenance—keeping dust off the sensors and making sure my pictures are safe—are among the things that concern me most as a professional travel photographer.

Ask any photographer to name the iconic image-makers of our time and Ansel Adams is undoubtedly near the top of their list. Ansel’s work is both aspirational and inspirational for all of us.

I travel to take pictures, but sometimes I just happen to be in an interesting area, like last spring in Lexington, Kentucky. Let’s see: Lexington, horse country, the Keeneland racetrack nearby, and me never without my camera gear. Photography was bound to happen.