Winter Photography: Be Prepared, Be Successful

Winter is arguably one of the prettiest times to be an outdoor photographer; winter white can transform an otherwise lifeless brown landscape into a magical wonderland. However, winter is also one of the most challenging times to be outdoors shooting. Frankly the biggest limiting factor in winter photography is personal comfort (for me anyway, I’m a wus). If you’re not comfortable you won’t be free to think and see creatively [...]

“…If You Can’t Be With The One You Love,…”

By Kurt Budliger | Jan 12, 2012
Posted in: Creativity, Inspiration, Landscape Photography, Vermont |

12 Comments

“…If You Can’t Be With The One You Love,…”

“…Honey, Love The One You’re With” (Stephen Stills). I’ll leave it up to you guys to do your own dit, dit, dits. And I do apologize in advance if the song gets stuck in your head, it’s pretty catchy. It seems as though I’m into the mantra thing lately (see my previous post Just Do It!), especially if it relates to improving one’s photography. As many of you already know, I [...]

By Kurt Budliger | Jan 5, 2012
Posted in: General, Inspiration, Landscape Photography, Vermont |

7 Comments

Just Do It!

I don’t have any New Year’s Resolutions or great epiphany to share at the close of 2011 and I’m about to celebrate (if you can call it that) my 42nd birthday on Monday. Don’t worry, I’ll include my shipping address below so you can send gifts. That means I grew up in the ‘80s and am a Gen X’er (whatever the hell that means). I watched Dukes of Hazard on [...]

By Kurt Budliger | Dec 22, 2011
Posted in: General, Inspiration, New Hampshire, Tech Tips |

10 Comments

How Photography is like Tequila

For some they both can be an acquired taste, a little bitter at first but after a while starts to get easier to swallow. Just think about the first time you tried to shoot an epic sunset and came home with nothing but washed out skies or blocked up foreground details. I don’t think I need to remind you about the first time you drank tequila, or maybe someone does? [...]

Want Your Images to Look Different? (part 2)

By Kurt Budliger | Dec 12, 2011
Posted in: Acadia National Park, Creativity, General, Tech Tips |

4 Comments

Want Your Images to Look Different? (part 2)

In part one of this series I offered 5 strategies for jumpstarting your creative juices and beginning the journey toward creating unique or different images. Part one can be found here and is probably worth reading in conjunction with this post. 6) Incorporate motion. Many of the techniques we’ve learned as nature photographers have been geared toward maximizing sharpness in our images. We use tripods, small apertures for depth of field, [...]

By Ian Plant | Sep 27, 2010
Posted in: General, Patagonia |

8 Comments

Shoot what inspires you

This one is short and sweet. Don’t worry too much about creating photographs that are beautiful and inspiring. Don’t worry too much about getting oohs and aahs. Don’t worry too much about ensuring that your work is original or creative. Don’t worry too much about whether your photos are “art” or not. Don’t worry too much about whether your photos will sell or if people will like them or if A-list celebrities will hang them on the walls of their [...]

By Ian Plant | Sep 24, 2010
Posted in: Mt. Rainier, Waterfalls |

Comments Off

Carter Falls, Mt. Rainier National Park

Getting back to my series of Mt. Rainier photos, here’s one of Carter Falls, one of the park’s “smaller” waterfalls. It’s actually a fairly decent-sized falls, but it pales in comparison to the thundering cascades of Comet and Spray Falls. What it lacks in stature, however, it makes up for in adventure—that is, if you want to get to the base of the falls and photograph it from below. Finding the falls is the easy part. [...]

By Ian Plant | Aug 3, 2010
Posted in: Chesapeake Bay |

1 Comment

Simple Pleasures

I spent three years photographing my book Chesapeake: Bay of Light. It was an intensely demanding project, requiring almost full-time effort, but I loved every minute of it. Well, maybe not every minute. There was that day on James Island when the greenheads, horseflies, and deer flies bit me so much my legs were bleeding. Or that ten-mile open water kayak crossing from Smith Island to the mainland during an autumn squall—now that was [...]

By Ian Plant | Jul 23, 2010
Posted in: Wyoming |

9 Comments

Wonderful Wyoming

I recently spent two weeks photographing in Wyoming, including Yellowstone, the Wind River mountains, and the Grand Tetons (yep, it’s true—the Tetons were named by French trappers who thought the peaks looked like massive, pointy breasts—don’t blame me, I didn’t name them). Summer shooting is always the most difficult, and typically the least productive. One has to successfully negotiate long days with little sleep, hordes of tourists, and even larger hordes of biting [...]

By Ian Plant | Jun 25, 2010
Posted in: General |

5 Comments

Desert Dreaming and Spring Cleaning

Some places haunt your dreams and stalk your living memories. I’ve spent a lot of time photographing the desert Southwest in the past few years, so much so that some people erroneously conclude that I live in Arizona (nope—Virginia). I’ve made hundreds of images, but truth be told I’m just beginning to scratch the surface. Every time I go I say to myself, “I’m sick of photographing the desert, this will be my last [...]

By Ian Plant | Jun 10, 2010
Posted in: Ricketts Glen |

6 Comments

Of Wildness and Wet

“What would the world be, once bereft Of wet and of wilderness? Let them be left, O let them be left, wildness and wet; Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.” —Gerard Manley Hopkins With rain in the forecast, I made a four hour drive yesterday to Ricketts Glen in Pennsylvania. Ricketts is a wonderful place, with 21 named waterfalls (and countless other smaller cascades and drops) along a four-mile trail. Although each waterfall is [...]