Since my last post, I have been on a number of trips and thought I’d share some images from them. Each of these long exposure images has something in common, the Singh-Ray Vari-ND and the Mor-Slo 5-Stop ND Filter. I was in the Sierras to attend the memorial of an old friend and mentor when I created this image. John was on my mind as I spent several days reminiscing about our times together and missing him. He loved the …
Wet weather failed to dampen a well-planned visit to Olympic National Park
The next day, I met up with Dustin, a photographer buddy of mine from the Sacramento area. We jumped on the Bainbridge Ferry and headed to the Port Angeles and Olympic National Park area. Driving from the ferry to Second Beach in a heavy downpour, I wasn’t at all confident that I could capture any images. From the parking lot, we hiked about a mile through mud, rain and flimsy wooden bridges to reach Second Beach. What a sight! As …
Capturing a number of well-earned images of the residents of Salisbury Plain
I can not adequately describe how mind-blowing my visit was with these adorable king penguins. After spending a week sailing in horrendous seas with terrible weather, I finally arrived at my dream photography destination. Upon landing, most of the king penguins were somewhat skittish, but these guys walked right up to greet me! Oh, boy. It was cold, too. The fresh snow on the normally rocky beach, however, helped make this already dramatic scene even more photogenic. In order to photograph this spectacle, I …
Adventures in Costa Rica’s rain and cloud forests
What would be different about this particular trip, was that — despite the incredible photographic opportunities presented by Costa Rica’s vast biodiversity of wildlife — my focus would be on capturing landscapes of the rain and cloud forests of Monteverde. Our journey would also include a brief jaunt into the northern tropical dry forest area of Guanacaste and Santa Rosa National Park. Finding strong compositions within the tropical rain and cloud forests is challenging. Simply put, these forests are busy. There …
Iceland’s Jokulsarlon Glacial Lagoon
As I was packing for my trip to Iceland last winter, I decided at the very last second to include my Singh-Ray Vari-ND. I thought that maybe it would come in handy on some waterfalls. One of the major highlights of any trip to Iceland is visiting the magnificent Glacial Lagoon called Jokulsarlon on the southeastern shores of this island nation. This is an area where Europe’s largest Glacier, Vatnajokul, has an arm that extends toward the North Atlantic and …
How super-simple it is to create extremely-long exposures with the new 10-Stop Mor-Slo ND filter
There have been so many times when I’ve found myself at an impressive river scene or rocky coast line with the mid-day sun beaming straight down. Very bright light creates a challenge for me since I like to shoot rivers, streams, water falls, and seashore surf at very slow shutter speeds to get that soft-silky look to the moving water. In such situations, I like to expose my image for 10 seconds or longer. But even if I set my …
Report on shooting ‘volcano-scapes’ in South Africa’s Pilanberg National Park
Pilanesberg is a ‘super-seven’ park meaning that it has the ‘big-five’ animals (buffalo, elephant, leopard, lion, and rhino) plus cheetah and wild dogs, making up the seven animals most visitors want to see and photograph, but I have found this park to also be a prime spot for shooting landscapes — or what I call volcano-scapes. The park is situated on the remains of an extinct volcano that was active just a few thousand years ago. Unlike the Ngorongoro Crater …
Several recent trips add many new high-resolution images to a website gallery
As a result of all that travel and shooting, I have been able to post over 150 photos in the New Images section on my website. That would include the image above of sunrise through fog with boats at Newport Harbor, Oregon. Here I used my Pentax 645D with a three-stop soft-step Graduated ND filter over the sky. I like the softness and moodiness of the image. I have also posted another 130 images that have been ‘reprocessed.’ These are …
To improve his digital landscapes, all this student needed was a Next Level workshop and two Singh-Ray Filters
Next Level Workshop instructors Darrell Moll and Rod Brown freely admit that landscape photography is a nice escape from the business of running their regular studios. “If the truth be known,” says Darrell, “we would prefer to do nothing else but take pictures of the great American landscape and share our images and knowledge with others, but that may still be a few years down the road.” “There is no place I’d rather be in mid-April than in the Smoky …
It was not a very lucky day for Susan and Neil Silverman to visit the Racetrack in Death Valley
Co-Authored by: Neil Silverman For anyone visiting Death Valley National Park, one of the intriguing attractions is the Racetrack Playa. This is an area in an ancient dry-lake bed where mysteriously moving rocks make tracks in the mud surface of the lakebed. Endless studies have been made, attempting to determine what force is actually moving the rocks. Getting out to the Racetrack is no easy matter — as in 27 miles of tough ‘washboard’ driving on primitive dirt road. We …