I arrived in Death Valley the day prior to the start of the workshop.  There were a couple of locations I wanted to explore and you don’t get a chance to do that during the hectic pace of the workshop.

One location that was becoming more and more interesting the more I learned about it was Golden Canyon.  It is literally on the back side of Zabriskie Point.  In fact, the upper end of Golden Canyon passes beneath Manley Beacon, the iconic formation so often photographed from Zabriskie Point.

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But see for yourself.  Remember, this is Death Valley, the hottest place in the US.

Telescope Peak, Winter 2009

A week of shooting in Southern Utah with Alain Briot and Tony Sweet resulted in new visions and techniques added to my photography toolbox.

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I’ve been searching for the perfect GPS for landscape photographers.  I could use it for geo-tagging, sure enough and that may be a good side benefit.  But what i really wanted was a GPS that would tell me two things – what time the sun was coming up and, here’s the kicker, where.

A lot of GPS’s boast that they have the sun and moon tables that provide sunrise and sunset, moonrise and moonset (is that a word?) times.  And if you think about it, with a device that knows your location on the face of Mother Earth and it knows the date, it should be no big deal to determine when the sun rises and sets and the same goes for the moon.  And like I said, a lot of GPS’s do just that.  What they don’t do is tell you where which shouldn’t be any more difficult than telling you when.

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If you sell fine art photography you hear this a lot, “I don’t need to buy your photographs.  I’ll go there myself and take my own pictures.”

Sure, why not?  We all have digital cameras these days that do a great job of producing really fine pictures – some of the time.  I would never argue with a person with this attitude but even if you’re a great photographer there are good reasons for purchasing other photographer’s works.

I don’t think anyone would argue that it would be a wonder to own an Edward Weston original platinum print.  But let’s look at some factors that are more down to earth.

Let’s start with capturing the best light.  A landscape photograph is nothing without great light.  Usually that’s early in the morning or late in the afternoon although good light can occur any time of day.  Is our intrepid photographer going to be on site a half hour or more before sunrise?  I know from lots of personal experience that you pretty much have a location to yourself before sunrise.  It’s funny to see people just starting to show up, cameras and tripods in hand, after we’ve shot through the best light and now that it’s gone we’re ready for breakfast.

How about subject selection and composition?  We all have our own personal ways of seeing and interacting with the world around us.  How we choose to select a subject, isolate it and place it along with other components into a composition is a very individual process.  The end result says as much about the photographer as it does about the subject, maybe more.  So each work is a unique expression of an individual with his or her own very personal viewpoint.  You see this very clearly at workshops when the participants gather around to share their work.  The diversity is enlightening.

Then we come to post processing.  This is where the photographer’s personality comes forth even more strongly and loudly.  There are many decisions that come between uploading the RAW file and producing the final print.  I’m plagued with false starts in which I have to go back to the RAW file and begin again from square one.  There is a large variation in the techniques different photographers will apply in post processing and hence a large variation in the results.

So, why would a photographer want to by other photographers’ works?  Because there is so much to learn from the photographers you admire and one good way to learn it is to have their works around you every day.