Happy New Year!

Hi everyone, and Happy New Year! I have a few quick announcements. First, I’ve started off the new year with a website redesign. I’ve tried to make the new site more of a personal artistic statement. I’ve also focused my collection of images to include only my very best and personal favorite work. I’m still tweaking a few things here and there but the new look is more or less complete. Please check it out and let me know what you think—I’m always interested in polite feedback. At some point I will focus on upgrading the blog design as well (the current theme is temporary—my intention is to change the blog design to something more modern, more functional, and easier to read and navigate).

Second, I have a new article on Nature Photographers Online Magazine titled Twelve Significant Photographs a Year. I riff off a famous quote from Ansel Adams, and use it to explore the concepts of artistic vision and development. I include in the article what I consider to be my twelve best images of 2011. Please feel free to take a peek!

Third, I want to thank everyone for the warm welcome you have all given my fellow Dreamscapes bloggers Kurt Budliger and George Stocking. They are excellent additions to the team, and their first posts are already rasing the bar around here. I think 2012 is going to be a lot of fun, and will be a personal challenge for me to keep up with their excellent words and images.

The image below was one of the final images I took last year, and although it did not make my top twelve cut, it is an image I am nonetheless pleased with. I made this photograph in Death Valley National Park in California. I was with my friend Ryan Montgomery at the time, who has since written a funny blog post called Amateur Moments which is worth a read. Expecting clear skies in the morning, we had originally planned to photograph Mesquite Flat Dunes, but when we awoke to cloudy skies, we made a mad dash in my rented Nissan Versa to Zabriskie Point, a favorite location of mine. I had made an image there over ten years ago (back in my 4×5 large format days), which has been on my website for years, but I was hoping for something better, something more in line with my current artistic style, to replace the old image for the website redesign. We huffed and puffed as we jogged along a steep ridge for over a mile to reach my favorite vantage of Manly Beacon and the surrounding badlands. Once we got in position, it began to look like the clouds weren’t going to break in time to let in some early morning light, but we got lucky and managed to get the angled light and dramatic sky we were chasing.

Technical details: Canon 5D Mark II camera, 14-24mm lens (@17mm), ISO 100, f/8, 1/200 second.

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About Ian Plant (275 Posts)

Ian Plant's photographs and instructional articles have appeared in a number of books, calendars, and magazines, including Outdoor Photographer and Popular Photography. Ian writes a regular blog column for Outdoor Photographer online, and he is the author of numerous instructional eBooks and digital processing tutorials. Ian leads several photo tours each year.

Tags: death valley

9 Comments

Leigh Catley January 3, 2012 at 2:31 pm

Hi Ian,

I wanted to compliment you on your new website design. I think you have accomplished two very important things with the redesign;

1. Simplicity – Navigation is easy. There is no clutter, the menus are well placed and easy to find without being intrusive.
2. Images are the focus. I love the fact that you made large sized images the focal point of your home page. So often you see websites with a multitude of images on the home page that create clutter and don’t allow the viewer to see and fully appreciate what each individual image has to offer. You site is about your images, congratulations for making them front and centre.
Some constructive feedback with respect to your Collections page. I am not sure what the purpose of the three collections are beyond separating the images in smaller portions. I think I was expecting a common theme for each collection but didn’t really pickup on one. This doesn’t detract for the images themselves or make navigation of the site more difficult, I just found it a bit odd. I wonder how you will manage growth in image count with this format…or maybe your intent is to keep the number of images tight and not expand it?

All in all a great job at creating a site that allows you to display what I think is amazing work. Your images are front and centre and capture my attention immediately, exactly as it should be.

Leigh
- Ian Plant January 3, 2012 at 2:49 pm
  
  Thanks Leigh for your very thoughtful feedback. You are correct, I broke the collection into three different galleries just to keep each manageable in size. I previously had galleries that were loosely based on separate themes, but decided with the redesign to keep the collection focused on the overall “dreamscapes” theme. Truth be told, I haven’t quite figured out how to manage future additions to the collection. I can add new images to the three existing galleries, but only up to a point. I’ll probably have to add new galleries in the future. But yes, I plan on keeping the collection relatively small, and it is likely that some current images will come out to make extra space for new images. Thanks!
Monte Trumbull January 3, 2012 at 2:59 pm

Hi Ian. I really like the new site. It is simple and does achieve your goal of showcasing your outstanding work. I love the images being displayed large and with a description for each. I need to try to do that myself, but I find it hard just to come up with a title! I think it would be a nice option to show the large images in a slideshow. I also agree with Leigh in the three collections. I was thinking they would be a group of like images also. These are just a couple of my nits. I think the new site looks great.

Monte
Lance Warley January 3, 2012 at 3:23 pm

If I hadn’t read Leigh’s post first, you would have had a duplicate. I love the simplicity and the large images. And I wondered about the significance of the three categories. Already asked and answered.

Beautiful work, Ian. Happy NY!

P.S. I always thought the bubbles for the Blog bg was a temp thing.
- Ian Plant January 3, 2012 at 3:35 pm
  
  Hey Lance! For some reason I can’t get rid of the damn bubbles. I actually have the option of uploading to the blog my own background image, which I have done with the same banner used in the rest of the website. The banner appears when I pull up the blog on my android phone, but for some reason it won’t appear when I pull up the blog on my computer or my ipad. I’ve tried everything to fix it but nothing works. It’s really weird and I can’t figure out the problem!
Emily January 3, 2012 at 11:40 pm

I haven’t made it down to twelve yet, but wanted to thank you so much for that post on Nature Photographers Online. I’m not a member or I would comment there. I’ve always had trouble editing down my photos to the best ones, and the advice in your article was EXACTLY what I needed. I actually went back to 2010 to get some real emotional distance from the photos. The point about choosing my favorites rather than the “best” was spot on for me. My collection of faves was a bit surprising to me and I feel like I better understand my artistic vision just from seeing which photos I picked. Armed with that knowledge, I can look for more of those shots in the future.

Going back and analyzing my top picks is something I have never done. For some reason it just never occurred to me, and now it seems so obvious! Thank you, thank you.

And as far as the number twelve… well, once you’ve done all that work, you’ve got a great calendar

I loved your twelve, of course – especially how different they were from each other, while still working beautifully together.
- Ian Plant January 4, 2012 at 8:47 am
  
  Hi Emily, glad you liked the article and found it helpful. Thanks for the kind words, and best wishes for the new year!
Bryan January 13, 2012 at 5:46 pm

Hi Ian,

Thanks for this blog. I am fairly new to nature photography and I find it very interesting. I was just wondering: Do you still shoot with 4×5 large format at times? Is their still an advantage using large format for landscape work?

Thanks for sharing your work.
- Ian Plant January 13, 2012 at 5:49 pm
  
  Hi Bryan, I sold my 4×5 equipment when I made the switch to digital. Large format’s quality advantage has been steadily eroded in recent years. Personally, I don’t think that large format scans look any better than quality digital files from today’s top cameras. And working with digital is so much easier, quicker, and more flexible in terms of lens range, accessories, etc. So, in my opinion, the advantage clearly goes to digital there days.

Happy New Year!

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