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Hi Reader,
We hope you're enjoying the fall season! We're home in Denver for a while, catching up on work and finally spending some time with our photographs from a busy September.
It was a wonderful month, with one big exception. During the Out of Grand Teton conference, we stayed at the lodge and left our trailer at a campsite in the park. We checked on it every day, but on the very last night, mice got in and had a party. We hooked up as soon as we saw the damage and drove 10 hours home that night. Then we spent the next week cleaning everything and replacing much of our food and supplies. It was miserable, but the trailer is sparkling clean now and better organized than it's ever been.
Jennifer pushed a little too hard during all this, helping me haul the mattress and everything else in and out of the trailer. Her surgeon gave her another four weeks of rest, so she's taking it easy until she reaches the 12-week mark in a few weeks. Other than that small setback, her recovery has gone as smoothly as it could, and she's looking forward to getting back to hiking.
In this issue: photos from our Yellowstone group, an idea we kept coming back to all fall, a moving ebook from our friend Tamar, a look at the Moab Photography Symposium, and the spots still available on our workshop calendar.
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Yellowstone Night and Day |
A Week in Yellowstone With a Wonderful Group
We had a great group in Yellowstone this September. We had two clear nights early in the week for night photography, a foggy morning, and some beautiful sunsets.
What I loved most was how open everyone was to seeing differently. They weren't just after the grand views. They wanted to make photographs that felt personal and expressive, and you could see it happen over the week. People got better at their craft and had more fun doing it. That's our favorite kind of group to work with and teach!
Here are a few photographs from the group.
From the Group
"Especially helpful for me was the work we did with smaller scenes, and I could sense myself noticing and seeing these landscapes differently by the end of the workshop."
— Catherine Heberding "We spent a couple nights out under the stars in various locations in the park. Both David and Jennifer helped our group look for scenes in the darkness and offered continuing assistance all evening."
— Angie Precure "Hearing from Jennifer in the field about why the colors were present and what caused the features we were seeing was a big bonus, helping to connect to the places we went."
— Doug Werner |
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Storm Light in the Tetons
After the Yellowstone workshop, we had a few days on our own, camping in the park and then in the Tetons. One evening the clouds cleared, and we got a beautiful rainbow.
Then it was time for the Out of Grand Teton conference. Jennifer helped coordinate the conference (her last coordination with Out of Chicago! Bittersweet, but she's ready to spend more time on her business and craft), and I enjoyed teaching on the creative track with Michael Frye.
On the first day, it poured rain. We got everyone out anyway and waited it out, and the storm broke with low clouds wrapped around the peaks, along with dramatic low clouds and fog on the second morning.
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What Is Your Photograph About?
There's a question we kept asking people in Yellowstone and in the Tetons: "what is your photograph about?" That's a different question from "what is it a photograph of?"
The subject is where it starts: a foggy meadow, a steam vent, or a cloud on a peak. But a photograph can be about something else entirely. You bring your whole life experience to the landscape, and that changes what you notice and how you photograph it.
A photograph of clouds can be about a feeling you had that morning. A photograph of a dead tree in steam can be about something you lost, or something you're still waiting on. The viewer may never know what it means to you, and that's fine. They'll still feel that it means something.
You can see it in Doug's photograph above. It's steam and the setting sun, and it isn't really about either one.
When people stop trying to describe a place and start responding to it, their photographs change. They get simpler and more personal.
Try This: A Twenty-Minute Walk With Your Phone
This is the exercise Michael and I led each day at the conference. It's where we start when we help people find what they're personally drawn to.
- Leave your camera behind and take your phone. With just a phone, you won't feel like you have to make an interesting composition.
- Wander without an agenda. Notice what's around you, but don't go looking for something to photograph.
- Wait for a flash of perception. That's the moment something catches your eye. When it happens, stop and make a quick snapshot. Don't overthink it or try to make a good photo. Then move on and keep wandering.
- After twenty minutes, come back and look at what you made. What did you notice? Do any of the snapshots have something in common?
We have so much coming into our minds all the time, and we choose what we pay attention to. Noticing what you find personally interesting is the first step toward making photographs that are personal, meaningful, and expressive. We think of it as GAP: being grounded, aware, and present.
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Fighting the Darkness, by Tamar Aharony
Our friend Tamar Aharony has written a short ebook about living with depression and the part nature photography played in finding her way through it.
She writes about a period about 30 years ago when getting out of bed was hard, about hiding it behind a "functioning" face, and about the slow path back. Photography, and later black-and-white work, became part of how she found hope and understood herself. The book is full of her photographs and writing.
I found it powerful and moving. She doesn't pretend there's an easy answer. In her words, "Awareness and acceptance are the key."
If you're struggling right now, or need a reminder of what photography can do for us, please read it. And if you know someone who might need it, please pass it along. Tamar wrote it to help people.
Read Tamar's Ebook →
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Latest in Nature Photography |
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by David duChemin
Someone online claimed every lens is sharpest two stops down from wide open, and David takes it apart. Modern lenses are more than sharp enough, and corner sharpness has never moved anyone. Pick your aperture for how you want the photograph to look and feel. I love this one. My favorite line: "We are drowning in those sharp pictures of fuzzy concepts."
Read David's Essay →
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by Fabrizio Fortuna
Fabrizio spent years making hyperrealist drawings and oil paintings before he picked up a camera. He writes about a trip to the stone pillars of Manpupuner in Russia's Ural Mountains, with storms, fog, and dawn color, and what it taught him: "I didn't learn anything new about technique. I relearned how to look without haste."
Read Fabrizio's Story on NPN →
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by Michael Frye
Michael was in Yellowstone this September too, and he made these on cold mornings when the sun broke through the steam over the geyser basins. It's a short post, mostly photographs, with a note on how he bracketed and merged exposures to handle the contrast of photographing into the sun. I love seeing how he responded to the same conditions our group had.
See Michael's Photographs →
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Moab Photography Symposium |
What Moab Is About This Year
Everything we've been teaching this fall is also what the Moab Photography Symposium is built around in 2027: the idea that a photograph can be about more than what's in front of the camera.
Chuck Kimmerle will open with a keynote on what photography really is, looking back at the photographers who first asked that question. Bruce Hucko, who founded the Symposium, will close it with a talk about what his photographs are about, more than where he made them.
All eight presenters are building their talks around this same thread. We'll share their topics in an upcoming newsletter.
🗓️ April 26–29, 2027 · Moab, Utah
16 of 72 places remain · $1,995
Reserve Your Place in Moab →
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Join Us for a Workshop
Most of our Death Valley workshops this season are full, so we're excited to offer another way for you to join us in Death Valley's landscapes. In February, Jennifer and I are leading a three-day workshop for the Death Valley Natural History Association, a nonprofit that supports Death Valley National Park. It's shorter and less expensive than our usual workshops, and when you sign up, you're helping the park, too. We'll photograph two sunrises, two sunsets, and a night under the stars, with a group of no more than 10.
A lot of our 2027 and 2028 workshops have filled since we opened them in April. Here's what still has room.
Workshops with Space Available
2027
2028
Several more are sold out, but spots open up occasionally.
See the Full List and Join a Waitlist →
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So that's our fall so far. Big weather, great people, one awful week with our travel trailer, and a lot of time at home with our photographs. We're staying close to home for now (with current diesel prices, ugh!). Our next trip on the calendar is Death Valley in December, and we hope to fit in a mini-trip or vacation before then.
One more thing: I just released Rethink Essentials, a free version of Rethink for Lightroom with 34 short lessons. We'll send a proper email about it soon, or you can get it here.
If you try the twenty-minute walk, we'd love to hear what you noticed! Just hit reply.
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