I’ve been to this location at least a dozen times now, and each time it is different. I love that. The new groves of olive trees are adding texture to the sloped around the house, and the foreground field had beautiful purple-rose colors of clover. It added a lot to the scene, along with the soft ground mist from morning dew. We photographed around Pienza for two days and now, we’re in Umbria, having fun visiting the hill towns of this region. Afternoon cloudy skies have meant afternoon light has eluded us to some degree, but we’re finding plenty to photograph regardless. Perugia is amazingly quiet at night, for being a university town, so sleep has been easy with open windows. Heading to Assisi this afternoon to explore and photograph through the later light of the day.

Here I come, dear!

Yesterday, in the midst of packing to head out to Yosemite, I just had to squeeze in a few hours in the morning to go photograph. Anything to avoid doing the less fun things of packing, updating software, organizing the car…But it was for a great reason that I broke from my routine tasks. I had heard about this urban rookery in the heart of Santa Rosa, and now that I live up here, I just had to go and see it for myself.  It’s an amazing opportunity, with Great Egrets, Snowy Egrets, Cattle Egrets and Black-crowned night herons all building nests in about four trees. You don’t find that happening very often in a city with about 150,000 residents. I didn’t want to miss the nest-building phase, so I went. Here are a few images from my first visit.

I made these pictures using a Canon EOS 7D and the Canon 100-400mm f4.5-5.6, so I had the equivalent of a 160-640mm lens. In many cases I was too close when they were right overhead, with the Great egrets, they have such a large wing span; zooming in and out gave my arm a workout as I adjusted during flight to frame the bird as well as possible. Even so, this is a very slight crop from the original – I was so concerned about losing a wing that I gave a bit more space. If I were a full-time bird photographer I’ve had this ‘nailed’ but lately it’s been more landscape photography and your skills get rusty fast! Still, out of 16+ gigabytes, I will have a good collection of keepers, from what I quickly saw. And admittedly a good collection of ‘losers’ too!

Got a lot of in flight images, against a beautiful blue sky that morning. Yet I also tried to get some different images, just for fun.

Is this how it’s done?

Funny image of the bird in ungainly flight position perhaps. But loved the light coming through the feathers and the semi-silhouetted shape against the sky.

Honey, I’m home!

I wanted to also capture the moment the bird landed on the branch – but really wish I had framed it to get the other mate in the frame a bit more than just a hint of it. I was so focused on the bird landing to get the timing with it’s mouth open squawking and wings poised, that I never even saw the mate until it was over. But that’s why you make a lot of photographs of stuff like this, hopefully you get another chance at it.

When I get back from Yosemite/Italy, end of May, I’ll go again and get photos of the chicks and feeding activity. Meanwhile, it’s on to meet the group on Wednesday in Yosemite and looking forward to capturing images of Spring in the Valley and beyond. Rumor has it the road to Glacier Point is open, an unusual opportunity for a Spring workshop!

Think Tank is always redefining and refining how we carry our gear when we go out to photograph. This new product sounds exciting – my back’s been getting more tired these days with a loaded backpack, and rolling a bag through the airports is great – provided it’s light enough (empty), and it sounds like this one is! To get on their e-mail notification of the release in May, click here:

I walked by this garden for several weeks before the tree blossomed. I had seen the stone ‘river’ and liked the s-curve, but it wasn’t a photo – yet. It was too plain, things hadn’t greened up, and it just wasn’t working photographically. Until Spring hit- and the tree bloomed, and the blossoms rained down on top of the river of stones like confetti. I was walking the dog when I saw it then, and had my phone with me to capture it. I planned to come back in a day to use my Canon DSLR, but a windy day took all the blossoms down and it was too much! But I had seen it, and it proved the point of quote I put on the image. You can really see something different each time on the everyday paths you take in life.

I can’t recall where I shared the iphone Hipstamatic version of this lampshade, but it struck me as interesting enough that day that I also made a picture with my Panasonic Lumix. I love this little camera! It’s almost always with me when the big cameras aren’t, like my iphone. So why then if I was at home, was I using it? Because it’s just simpler, faster, and fits with the Miksang style of photography I’ve enjoyed in between my other style of photographic work. What struck me most was the light – in our new place, a bungalow, we have cross-lighting with windows on all sides vs. the townhouse we had before. This has allowed us different types of light throughout the day and we are enjoying that so much. This was the light in January; I will have to wait until next year for light like this on the lamp again as the sun has now shifted and doesn’t do the same thing in this window. So I’m really glad I made the picture when I did!

“It’s just a lampshade”, you might say – but then again, it’s art! Lines, patterns, shapes and forms – it’s all there in one monochromatic photograph. That’s what I saw – beyond the fact that it’s a lampshade.

The color-yet-almost-black-and-white image was converted using Nik’s Silver Efex Pro via Lightroom. If you like working with black and white conversions, this is excellent software to do this. Easy interface, highly selective control over the results. It’s indispensable in my workflow for black and white images. Save 15% by clicking on the product name here and entering the code BTHARP at checkout. This discount works for all their products.

I love photographing people, and I really love photographing people in the landscape or scene. As part of the scene, they bring life and meaning to the image, but do I need to show their face for that? Or can I incorporate them successfully without the face?

In the image above, I was very excited about the overall scene with all the stuff in the boats. I noticed in particular all the circular shapes that were repeating. I made many picture with the woman included while she was looking up/out at people in other boats or on the bank of the canal. See the image below). But what intrigued me with this one was that her hat became yet another circular shape in the scene – and it added to the design that was already strong. She was part of the scene blending within the pattern of circular shapes. It also added an anonymity to the image – she now represented all vendors in the boats. I loved that her hat broke outside the edge of her boat, making the shape stand out from the rest, and helping to fill in the otherwise dull space of water there. Of the two the above image is my favorite. But the image below works, too. Now though, you want to ‘see’ who she is (and in fact her face could stand a little lightening up here in post-processing but since I favored the other picture I made a quick sync of settings to match the two). As is often the case, once the face is introduced, we look at that with more interest perhaps than the overall scene…

In the end, they both work – which do you prefer? Leave your thoughts, comments, when you can and thanks!

OK, so it’s a play on words, but I found this juxtaposition funny while walking past a house in Bhutan! The triangular shaped things are tsa-tsa – little prayer-filled mud objects that you place in places where you are making offerings to the gods for good wishes. We saw them all over the hillsides in rocky areas on narrow roads, outside of houses, etc., on our photo tour, but this time, they were sitting next to insoles! Was it a wish for healthy happy feet? Most likely just a functional place to dry out the newly washed insoles, but I thought it made a fun picture that expressed both the functional and spiritual life of Bhutan.

We were on Canyon Road in Santa Fe. I had given an assignment to the group to capture the ‘essence’ of Canyon Road, but also the stipulation that you couldn’t just photograph the outdoor artwork, as that was someone else’s ‘art. You had to incorporate it into your own picture, if you photographed it at all.

So when I discovered this along with a few other students, it fit the ‘bill’. We worked it different angles, and with different framing. This is the one I liked of mine the best with the window on the right. The vigas (wooden poles coming out of the wall) shadows were angled in the downward right direction so it felt balanced to place the window on the right.

This is a case where dappled light can work – rare, but on this adobe wall, the pattern from the dappled light was soft enough as it came through the trees that I liked the overall effect. The sculpture in the window made the picture sort of eerie but it was a great focal point!

Ah, Springtime! Even in Santa Fe, it’s starting to happen. My short time there provided glimpses of confetti-like blossoms hanging delicately on trees planted against adobe walls. I managed to find and create this image before the strong New Mexican sun struck, giving me softer details to match the delicate aspect of the flowers. I had to get up at 6 AM to do it, but I’m not complaining.

I applied a tiny bit of Topaz Simplify adjustments to this image to add a painterly quality to it. I’ll be giving a webinar on April 17th at 2 PM PST on how I use Topaz to enhance and add artistic effects to my images. It will be fun and I hope to ‘see’ you there!

To join up, click here

Hitting the airways towards Santa Fe and my upcoming full workshop that starts Wednesday. Threads of a song “Lights of Santa Fe” by Eliza Gylkinson running through my head…I love Santa Fe!! Great architecture, graphics, details, light and color. Will post more during the next few days…about to board my roomy-HA- regional jet…can you say crammed in?! Actually not bad but carryon is a challenge sometimes.

More later!