The time has come, the walrus famously said, to talk of many things (thanks, Lewis Carroll). Rather than shoes, ships, sealing wax, cabbages, and kings, I tend to talk about digital photography. When I came back to photography, I had no idea that the techniques and aesthetics of this wonderful new medium would take over my life. I used a...

I photographed this interesting mixed Lily bouquet on black velvet, with natural daylight and a tungsten spot. As always in these situations, it pays to "under expose" the photo for a proper "creative" exposure---so the flowers become more saturated and the black background goes truly black. Creative exposures are explained in Light & Exposure for Digital Photographers, pages 118-121. Asiatic...

Rick Smolan gave me a coupon for a version of his book America at Home with a custom cover, and I put Julian and Nicky in the design (see below). Rick is famous for his Day in the Life series of photography books. Like many of Rick's projects, America at Home is extraordinarily creative in concept. Essentially, the notion of...

Finley Eversole contacted me for permission to use one of my chambered nautilus images in his book Art, Death and Transformation, to be published by Inner Traditions in 2009. Based on my conversation with Finley, he's a man with personal experience of the abstract expressionists. I gather that his book is about the relationalship of the spiritual to art,...

The fishing trawler Point Reyes is forever aground on a Tomales Bay mud bank behind the Inverness, California general store. Along with the Point Reyes Lighthouse, this wrecked ship is a cannonical photostop on the Point Reyes tour, just as McWay Creek Falls attracts photographers visiting Big Sur. In the same way, Tunnel View in Yosemite is nearly always crowded...

Two things are special to me about wandering the night with my digital camera. The first is the way I experience night. The second is the way a digital sensor can reveal colors and shapes in spite of apparent darkness. As a wanderer in the darkness, I enjoy more freedom of the hills than those who must rush back to...

I'll be giving two workshops in 2008 under the auspices of the Point Reyes National Seashore Association. Please consider joining me on Saturday, June 14 for a one day intensive seminar in digital landscape photography (on-line course registration). The weekend of September 12-14 will see us rocking to the music of the stars in a great location for night photography...

In Greek mythology, Calypso was a water nymph. In ancient Greek, calypso (Καλυψώ) was a form of the verb "to conceal" (or "to hide") meaning "I will conceal." Calypso kept Odysseus imprisoned for seven years on an ocean island; it's easy to read Homer to take this as a kind of sexual slavery, and according to some accounts (e.g., Hesiod)...

The photo below is a dream-like image of what it may feel like after the wedding is over and bride and groom face reality a/k/a the descending spiral of an endless stair. Of course, there's a ton of photography of weddings, brides, and grooms. But wedding photography is seldom as apparently unintentional as this photo. Even "candid" wedding portraiture is...

I've written about using noise for aesthetic purposes. I've also explored the possibility that noise generated by boosting a camera's sensitivity (ISO) will become a historical artifact and thing of the past. I've also explained my strategies for effective noise post processing. It's time to take a look at a technical challenge that decreased noise generation at higher ISOs solves....