What Vermont lacks in terms of size and population it more than makes up for in character and diversity.  Thousands of acres of forest link the Adirondacks to the west with New Hampshire and the great north woods of Maine to the east.  Countless rivers, streams and brooks wind their way from the high country to fertile valley floors, providing the lifeblood of this rich landscape.  There are over 300 inland lakes and ponds comprising 366 square miles of water, not bad considering the state ranks 45^th in terms of land area.  You could spend a lifetime exploring the approximately 8,000 miles of dirt roads that link these amazing resources.

One of the best times to visit and photograph Vermont is undoubtedly in Autumn.  With forests dominated by maple, birch, beech and poplar the pallet of reds, oranges, yellows and even purples is truly something to behold.  With cool nights early light is often softened by valley fog and mist making the morning shoots rich with atmosphere.  Each year I offer an Autumn in Vermont Workshop based in central Vermont.  It’s an excellent jumping off place to visit areas around Stowe, Waitsfield, Warren, Woodstock, Groton State Forest, parts of the Northeast Kingdom and even Lake Champlain.

The dates for this year’s workshop are September 28 – October 2, 2013.  There are spaces still available, so if visiting New England for the annual autumn display has been on your bucket list 2013 is the year to make it happen!  More information and online registration can be found at Green Mountain Photographic Workshops – Autumn in Vermont.

About the Image:  This image was made several years ago in Vermont and still stands as one of my all time favorite photographs.  It’s typical of the kind of image ripe for the making when you get off the well-worn path of icon-ography and explore the intimate landscape with your camera, and there’s no better place to do it than in Vermont!

Technical Details:  Canon 5DII, 17-40 f4L, f16 @ 13 sec. ISO 100 polarizer

For me, its go time. The high heat is the catalyst that brings my absolute favorite time of the year – the monsoon season. The high heat sucks up the moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, bringing along all those things that add drama to the land. Cumulus and Thunderstorms and Rainbows, Oh My!  Of course, just like living in the desert has a flip side, so does shooting the monsoon. And I’m pretty sure you already know what that is – dealing with the brutal heat, just without air conditioning. With the solstice a week away, the days are just about as long as they can be, leaving little time for actual sleeping. (I have a hard time drifting off in a pool of sweat; but thats just me..)

Still, I can barely contain my excitement as I wait for the much anticipated moisture to arrive. Temps are finally appropriate, and so in the spirit of the season, I give you some of my favorite monsoon images.

Canon 5DMII, 17-40L @ 22mm; F11 @ 1/2 second 3 stop NDG

Depending on what time of the afternoon or evening the monsoon rolls through, clouds or even a storm may still be present at sunrise. Its certainly far from the norm, but was the case for “Colorado River Sunrise”.

Canon 5DMII; 24-105L @30mm; F11 @ 100 second

Deluge at the Ditch was simply a matter of right place, right time. I saw the storm preparing to drift across the canyon while at Mather Point. I immediately decided I wanted to be somewhere else, of course, so I hopped in the truck and drove as fast as park laws allow to Navajo Point to get on the other side of it. (Note to the driver of the RV pulling a car….the middle of the road is not a good place to park while your family gets out to feed the habituated deer….for your own safety)

Canon 5DMII, 24-105L @ 17mm; F11 @ 1/30 second

The Heart of Saturday Night was storm chasing at its finest. I was watching the clouds on the internet and placed myself directly in the path of an intense storm that was charging across the Sonoran National Monument. The leading edge of the monsoon is often dust, and for The Heart I got in front of it literally. This was taken seconds before I was completely overwhelmed by the onrushing dust. Before this storm was through it dumped so much rain that I was stranded behind a torrential wash for an hour after it was over.

Canon 5DMII, 24-105L @ 24mm; F ll @ 1/2 second; polarizer

Don’t Fade Away was a case of “OMG! please let me find some foreground, any foreground, before I lose this rainbow!” Yes, once again I confess to near panic and a good deal of “running around like a chicken”, (in future references on this blog this will be referred to as “Chicken Running”. Oh, and btw, Ian will never admit it, the way he’s always trying to look so cool and composed, but I’ve seen him chicken run….looks pretty funny, he does…) before turning a corner and seeing this boulder. Calling it a boulder is a bit of stretch – it was maybe 18 inches high.

Canon 5DMII; 17-40 L @ 22mm; f11 @ 1/2 second

And last but not least; we are all aware that all along the watchtower, Princes Kept The View. I want to thank Jimi for that, for sure. Princes was another case of the monsoon hanging around for sun rise behind the Desert View Watchtower.

Photographers need a permit to enter the town, which can be obtained in the tourism office in nearby Lüderitz. Kolmanskop is best photographed in the early morning or late afternoon, when light from outside is reflected within the buildings, giving the rooms a colorful glow (although the light can be contrasty and I sometimes needed to blend exposures in order to capture the entire dynamic range of a given scene). Care must be taken, as many of the building are literally falling apart, and there are sharp ends, broken glass, and exposed nails everywhere. In terms of equipment, a wide angle lens is the best way to go. Actually, the Canon Tilt/Shift TS-E 17mm f/4 would be the ideal lens to use here, as it allows the photographer to correct for the distortion which occurs when pointing a wide angle lens up or down (alas, I do not own one at the moment). Footprints can be a significant challenge when photographing Kolmanskop, so be careful where you step to avoid leaving tracks in what could otherwise be a great composition. Many tourists visit the area so there are a lot of footprints, which if you are looking for pristine sand, may limit your shot options.

Here are five of my favorite photos from my shoot at Kolmanskop.

1. “The Yellow Room”

Most of the buildings in the town have brightly painted walls, and the bold yellow in this particular room is certainly quite eye-catching. I was also attracted to the curving ripples of the sand, and the animal tracks in the foreground. Wide-angle distortion is quite evident in this shot, but I used it to my advantage, creating energetic diagonal lines (which in my opinion enhances the composition). Canon EOS 5D Mark III Digital Camera, Nikon AF-S Zoom Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8G ED AF Lens, Novoflex EOS/NIK-NT Lens Adapter for Nikon G Type Lenses to Canon EOS DSLR Cameras, ISO 100, f/14, 3.2 seconds.

2. “The Blue Room”

This is possibly my favorite building in the complex. I really like the alternating colors, the heavy sand, and the fact that you can see four separate rooms from this vantage point. The room I was in was deep in shadow, so I did a double exposure blend to extend my camera’s dynamic range and capture extra detail. Canon EOS 5D Mark III Digital Camera, Tamron SP 24-70mm f/2.8 DI VC USD Lens for Canon Cameras, ISO 400, f/14, double exposure blend of 2 seconds and 8 seconds. 

3. “Asylum”

This was taken in the town hospital. I was attracted to the colorful green walls and the bright light seeping in from the outside (I purposefully over-exposed the light coming in through the windows in the distance in order to create an eye-catching vanishing point for the composition). I partially closed the doors to make the composition more dynamic by creating radiating diagonal lines. I just wish I had a broom with me to sweep away the footprints! Canon EOS 5D Mark III Digital Camera, Nikon AF-S Zoom Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8G ED AF Lens, Novoflex EOS/NIK-NT Lens Adapter for Nikon G Type Lenses to Canon EOS DSLR Cameras, ISO 100, f/14, double exposure blend of 5 seconds and 20 seconds.

4. “Endless Mirror”

I really liked the alternating blue/yellow color scheme for this scene—it kind of reminds me of the effect you get when you place two mirrors opposite each other. I kicked some sand into the scene to cover up footprints. Canon EOS 5D Mark III Digital Camera, Nikon AF-S Zoom Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8G ED AF Lens, Novoflex EOS/NIK-NT Lens Adapter for Nikon G Type Lenses to Canon EOS DSLR Cameras, ISO 100, f/11, 1.6 seconds.

5. “The Pink Dune”

For this image, I was attracted to the shapely dune and the soft pastel colors. The radiating pattern of shadows in the upper left mirrored the pattern of rippled sand in the lower right, so I placed the two visual elements in a counterpoint relationship (something I discuss in detail in my book Visual Flow: Mastering the Art of Composition). Canon EOS 5D Mark III Digital Camera, Nikon AF-S Zoom Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8G ED AF Lens, Novoflex EOS/NIK-NT Lens Adapter for Nikon G Type Lenses to Canon EOS DSLR Cameras, ISO 100, f/11, 5 seconds.

Creativity gets talked about a lot these days. It seems that every photographer (including me) admonishes others to be creative, and we all like to talk about how creative we are—especially when photographing something that has been photographed many times before. And no matter how derivative our work might be compared to the many shots that have come before ours, we always somehow find a way to explain how our work is in fact fresh, new, unique, and . . . creative. Sometimes I wonder how I do it with a straight face—I always imagine crossing my fingers behind my back whenever I talk about creativity.

So let’s try something different, and be brutally honest about creativity for a moment.

The truth is, it is very difficult to be truly creative these days as a nature photographer. Nature photography, in many way, has become a “been there, done that” sort of thing. The art form is very mature (it has been around in one form or another for over a century), and these days everyone is doing it. People have been all over the planet taking photos, and there really aren’t many photographic frontiers left. Trust me, I’ve seen (and taken) a lot of nature photos in my twenty years as a photographer—most of which, I’m afraid to admit, have been done over and over again. Arguably, much of the photographic creativity we’ve seen in recent years has come from the digital camera revolution and an increased reliance on Photoshop techniques—a technology-inspired creativity boost that has been interesting to watch, but I’m not sure it has fundamentally altered any of the old artistic paradigms. I don’t mean to sound gloomy, but anyone who tells you that creativity is easy is trying to sell you something.

Most art forms, as they mature, end up scrambling to diverge from what’s been done before, sometimes leading to truly weird (and awful) results. The music of Yoko Ono immediately springs to mind (I know she has her loyal fans, but after 30 seconds of Don’t Worry, Kyoko I was ready to stick a screwdriver into my brain to end the pain). The recent and oft-maligned ”grunge HDR” fad is an example that is closer to home for most of us. Sometimes it’s better to color inside the lines.

Of course, it is ”coloring inside the lines” which is part of the reason why nature photography has arguably become somewhat static, creatively speaking. Take landscape photography, for example. The vast majority of landscape photographers (myself included) are trapped in the Ansel Adams paradigm of crisply-focused near to far images; even with the Photoshop-fueled hyper-landscape images we often see today, the basic template is still the same. Technical perfection has been elevated in a way that is far out of proportion with the rest of the art world, which has been moving deeply for centuries into increasingly abstract representation. But how does one break free from the traditional landscape paradigm without being faddish—and without creating the visual equivalent of primal screaming?

The truth is, all of our work is derivative to some extent or another, and we’re all standing on the shoulders of those who came before us. So what? That doesn’t mean we should enjoy what we do any less. And it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try our very best to be creative, no matter how difficult it might be to achieve truly unique results. Looking at the world in a way that is different from most other people is the basis of the process of photographic transformation, by which the photographer converts the everyday into the extraordinary. This is the very essence of art: the collision of reality, imagination, and a creative impulse yearning for expression. If you approach every image you make with this attitude, there’s no telling what you will come up with.

So yes, in many ways it has all been done before. Breaking free from traditional approaches may lead us to some pretty weird places. Then again—with any luck—it might lead to something extraordinary. I’m skeptical that we’ll ever get there, but I’m looking forward to being proven wrong by each and every one of you.

Creativity is dead. Long live creativity!

“Dance of the Dead”—Dead Vlei, Namib-Naukluft National Park, Namibia.  Canon EOS 5D Mark III Digital Camera, Tamron SP 70-200mm f/2.8 Di VC USD Zoom Lens for Canon, ISO 100, f/18, 0.5 seconds.

(Note that for the sake of ease, I’m going to exclude medium format digital cameras from the commonly used “DSLR” moniker—although medium format cameras technically are DSLRs, when most people think of DSLRs they think of full frame 35mm sized cameras and smaller formats such as APS-C and the like.)

Scenes with a lot of detail could certainly benefit from the extra-large sensor size offered by medium format digital systems—but is the juice worth the squeeze? “Faerie Grove”—Olympic National Park, USA. Canon EOS 5D Mark III Digital Camera, Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II, polarizer filter, ISO 100, f/11, 0.3 seconds.

These days, digital large format hasn’t really emerged as a viable option for nature photographers, but medium format manufacturers have been able to (marginally) stay in the game. If you have $30,000+ burning a hole in your pocket, then you can get a whopping 80 megapixels from the latest medium format cameras. Of course, that’s just for the camera, expect to pay several thousands (or even tens of thousands) more for a full complement of lenses, putting your total for a medium format system somewhere in the range of $50,000. So, if money isn’t an issue for you, why not shoot medium format? Here’s a list of the pros and cons of using a medium format digital system. Let’s start with the pros:

• Fantastic image quality. We’re talking “holy crap!” levels of quality here. If you plan on making wall-sized prints, medium format digital is the way to go.

I love using my DSLR for night photography, such as with this moonlit scene above. Are medium format digital cameras up to the task? “Moon Storm”—Torres del Paine National Park, Chile. Canon EOS 5D Mark III Digital Camera, Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II, ISO 400, f/5, 2 minutes.

Well, that’s about it for the pros. Here come the cons—you might want to get comfortable, this might take some time:

• More weight. Expect to be breaking your back lugging around a medium format camera and a few lenses. Okay, it’s not really that bad, but a medium format system will be heavier than a comparable DSLR system.
• Less lens flexibility. Don’t expect to be covering a wide range of focal lengths with zoom lenses if you are shooting medium format. You’re more likely to have to get by with a few primes. You can also pretty much forget ultra-wide and most telephoto options. You won’t have many options for specialty lenses either, such as tilt-shifts or wide open 2.8 lenses.
• Poor low light and high ISO performance. At least as of a few years ago (the last time I checked), medium format sensors had a tough time handling low light and high ISO exposures. They simply were too noisy compared to DSLR cameras. So don’t expect to be doing long twilight and night exposures with your medium format system.
• Less accessories. DSLR systems are supported by a wide range of accessories which make life easier. Your options will be much less with a medium format system.
• Less responsive to fast changing conditions. Let’s face it, nothing beats a DSLR for responding quick to fast-changing light or dynamic scenes.
• Less depth of field. Medium format lenses have a longer focal length than their DSLR equivalents. For example, a 24mm lens on a medium format system is equivalent to an 18mm DSLR lens. So you get a little less depth of field, requiring the use of smaller apertures, which means longer exposures (which can be a problem in windy conditions, for example).
• The quality gap isn’t as significant as you might think. When it comes right down to it, DSLR image quality is amazing, and more than sufficient for most uses, including making large prints. If you expect to be making billboard-sized prints, then medium format might be the way to go. Or, you can just easily stitch multiple images together with your DSLR and get even more image quality than medium format, for a fraction of the price.

And, I almost forgot: your medium format system will likely cost you A LOT OF MONEY—we’re talking “holy crap!” levels of money! $50,000 can pay for a lot of trips to exotic shooting locations.

You can pretty much forget about shooting wildlife with a medium format system! “Hide and Seek”—Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge, USA. Canon EOS 5D Mark III Digital Camera, Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS Lens, Canon 1.4x EF Extender III (Teleconverter), ISO 400, f/5.6, 1/400 second.

So, what’s the bottom line? Personally, even if I were offered a medium format digital system for free, I probably wouldn’t use it that much. Frankly, I’ve grown addicted to the speed and flexibility that a 35mm format digital system offers, and the quality is more than sufficient for the vast majority of my needs. And I’m not the only one who has come to this conclusion—I don’t personally know any pro nature photographer who uses medium format digital (I know there are a few medium format nature shooters out there, but I don’t personally know them). If you’re super rich, then by all means, splurge on a medium format digital system. But will it really allow you to make better photos? For all of the reasons I have outlined above, I really don’t think that it will. At this point in the evolution of digital camera technology, size really doesn’t matter as much as it used to.

Otherwise, my 2013 workshops are completely full. And 2014 looks like it is going to fill up fast. The only workshop currently on the schedule for 2014, my Ultimate Patagonia Tour, has only two spots left. I’ll soon be listing full details for my 2014 Wild Namibia Tour with Richard Bernabe, scheduled for May 18-29. Rich and I have already received a number of inquiries about this tour, so we expect it to book quickly. We hope to have full details and a price in the next week or two, so stay tuned!

If you are interested in reserving a spot on the Namibia tour, or registering for Patagonia or Smith Island, shoot me an email (ianplantphoto@gmail.com). My workshops are always a ton of fun (as the photo below from last year’s Acadia workshop demonstrates—everyone in the photo exudes happiness and learning), so I can guarantee you’ll learn a lot and have a great time. Hope to see you soon!

We spent three days photographing a quiver tree forest near Keetmanshoop. Quiver “trees” aren’t really trees at all, but rather a species of aloe, a flowering succulent plant. Their evocative shapes make great photographic subjects, although it can sometimes be a challenge to find a coherent composition amidst the chaos of the forest. On our first evening there, storm clouds moved in and stayed for several days, which came as quite a pleasant surprise to us, as we expected unrelenting fair weather. The clouds gave us some interesting opportunities.

For this image, I had some interesting cloud action, and a nice collection of visual elements—but no light. So I waited until the setting sun broke through the clouds. Since I only had a few moments before the light went away, I moved quickly, experimenting with several different compositions. I finally settled on this progression of elements starting with the first rock in the foreground, moving on to the second rock in the middle-ground, and finally moving to the tree in the background with the clouds in the sky above. I discuss using a progression of visual elements in more detail in my ebook Visual Flow: Mastering the Art of Composition. Here, the progression of elements helps lead the eye through the image. “Giant’s Playground”—Quiver Tree Forest, Namibia. Canon EOS 5D Mark III Digital Camera, Nikon AF-S Zoom Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8G ED AF Lens, Novoflex EOS/NIK-NT Lens Adapter for Nikon G Type Lenses to Canon EOS DSLR Cameras, ISO 100, f/8, 1/15 second.

We had some decent light at sunset, but things got really interesting when the sun went down. I took the shot above during twilight. I got close with a wide-angle lens to an interesting plant on the ground, juxtaposing the foreground plant with the prominent tree in the background. I used my headlamp to add some fill light to the foreground, shining the light on my t-shirt (essentially turning it into a reflector) rather than shining the light directly on to the plant. This softened the light, giving the foreground plant a diffused glow. “Old and New”—Quiver Tree Forest, Namibia. Canon EOS 5D Mark III Digital Camera, Nikon AF-S Zoom Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8G ED AF Lens, Novoflex EOS/NIK-NT Lens Adapter for Nikon G Type Lenses to Canon EOS DSLR Cameras, ISO 800, f/16, 30 seconds.

I’ve been doing night photography for well over a decade, but I’ve gotten rather bored with it as of late, especially now that the Internet has become inundated with images of the Milky Way hovering over all sorts of landscape features (including quiver trees). Static star shots and star trail images just don’t do much for me these days, but give me some fast-moving clouds and the moon in the sky, and I’m ready to shoot! I spent hours exploring the forest by headlamp looking for interesting compositions. This is one of my favorites, created using a wide angle perspective. I used a thirty second exposure to streak the motion of the moonlit clouds across the night sky. Luckily, the clouds were coming right at me, creating a radiating pattern. The entire forest was softly lit by lights from a nearby campsite, giving the landscape an orange glow that, although barely apparent to the eye, came out strong during the long exposure. “Kneel Before Zod”—Quiver Tree Forest, Namibia. Canon EOS 5D Mark III Digital Camera, Nikon AF-S Zoom Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8G ED AF Lens, Novoflex EOS/NIK-NT Lens Adapter for Nikon G Type Lenses to Canon EOS DSLR Cameras, ISO 800, f/5.6, 30 seconds. (By the way, the title for this image was inspired by one of the best lines ever uttered by a super villain, as spoken by Terrance Stamp playing General Zod in Superman II. I don’t know why I thought of Zod when I photographed this tree, but I did and the name stuck.)

For this final image, I stood under a quiver tree, using its arching branches to frame the scene and add foreground interest to the top of the image frame. The foreground branches help lead the eye deeper into the composition. In order to add further visual emphasis to the tree in the middle, I stood behind the tree during the long exposure and illuminated it from behind with my headlamp. This increased the ”visual mass” of the tree (another concept discussed in detail in Visual Flow: Mastering the Art of Composition), making it the center of attention. “The Here and Now”—Quiver Tree Forest, Namibia. Canon EOS 5D Mark III Digital Camera, Nikon AF-S Zoom Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8G ED AF Lens, Novoflex EOS/NIK-NT Lens Adapter for Nikon G Type Lenses to Canon EOS DSLR Cameras, ISO 1600, f/5.6, 30 seconds.

Stay tuned! I’ll be presenting more Namibia images in the coming weeks.

I always use the Liveview display of my camera when doing black and white images. I just change the picture style setting to B&W and by shooting RAW I get a black and white preview on the display but the picture imported into lightroom will be in color. I still need the RAW file in colour in order to make a better B&W convertion of the image.

However, there is one problem left to solve. In order to be able to do a good square composition I would like to see the picture in that format but my camera can unfortunately only produce 2×3 and 4×5 fomats but not 1×1.
I have thought for some time that I should try to use duct tape on my camera display to help me see and compose my images in square format. It can sometimes be hard to do good B&W images in the outdoors, but by seeing the picture in B&W, and in my case square format, on the screen helps a lot.

Giving my self this kind of assignments helps me to get out of my comfort zone and it also makes me a lot more creative since I need to think more before I press the shutter button. It is so easy to get stuck in old habits and many photographers are doing the same kind of images over and over again. I don’t want to get stuck, I want to try new things and constantly develop myself as a photographer.

How do you stay creative? If you haven’t already experimented with new techniques I challenge you to do so. Sometimes it is as easy as putting some black duct tape on your cameras screen.

About the image: it´s taken in a small nature preserve outside of Malmö in southern Sweden. The light was hard but I waited for a cloud to pass by to even out the contrast in the scene. I was drawn to the incredible shape of the oak. Nikon D800E, 24-70mm @31, F13, 1/13 sec and some tape as you can se in the picture below.

Heres some more from my last shoot.

Canon 5DMII, 17-40L @ F16; iso 100; 1/4 second; no NDG

Canon 5DMII: 17-40L @ 17mm; F16 @1/25th

Canon 5DMII; 24-105L @ 38mm; F11 @ 1/30th second

After a close look at the clouds real time as well as the wrong-up-to-this-point-forecast, I decided to cut and run for the southern edge of the storm, so I headed to the sandstone in N. Arizona. After a hard days drive I arrived to what appeared to be the same weather as I had seen in Utah….puffy white clouds perching wonderfully in the sky. Not a dark cloud anywhere. I gleefully grabbed my camera and headed out, making sure to grab the raincoat as well.

I was happily playing in the brainrock when sure enough, about 4 in the afternoon a large black cloud formed in the southwest and began advancing on my position, becoming more threatening by the minute. A glance to the western horizon however was incredibly exciting, because it was clear as a bell without a single cloud.

Of course, events seldom progress as we hope they will, or should I say, as well as I  hope they will, so by the time the storm became applicable to my efforts, a great deal of cloudage had formed on the western horizon, leaving but one convenient break with the sun scheduled to reach it about 30 minutes before sunset. So it wasn’t the best light I could have had, but after 5 days of beating my head against the overcast I was like a pig in slop. (Not having showered in a few days made that expression a bit more appropriate then I might have liked)

Canon 5DMII: 17-40L @ 30 mm F11