I just read a great email from Brian Peterson, founder of The Perfect Picture School of Photography.  He ran an unscientific opinion pole on whether photographers felt it was OK to dramatically alter photographs in Photoshop.  Now, by ‘dramatically alter,’ Brian means to add major elements to an image that were not present in the original scene or make other major changes that alter the content of the image. 

He has a provocative blog post with the title that starts, “Every photograph is a ‘lie,…’,  In it he raises the excellent point that even those photographs that aren’t altered in Photoshop are still an abstraction of reality and thus a ‘lie.’  I recommend you read it.

What were the results of his opinion pole?  Brian reports that 41% of photographers felt that it is OK to dramatically alter images in Photoshop and NOT tell anyone unless asked.  And if asked, some would say, “It’s none of your business.”  The reason photographers felt this way boiled down to two words – Artistic License.

I have my own thoughts on “artistic license” and would like to share them with you.

Read the rest of this entry »

A remote area of Queen Valley in Joshua Tree National Park was the location for the next print of the month.  This towering spire defies the imagination.  Besides its imposing beauty, one wonders how it could possibly have formed.

Read the rest of this entry »

I had an interesting experience at the Encinitas Street Faire this past  year.  Very often people will enter my booth, look at my photographs and turn to me and ask, “Are you the photographer?”  My answer is always, “Yes I am.”

But on this weekend a woman asked, “Are you the artist.”

I was honored and told her so.  So often the relationship between photography and art is a tenuous one in many peoples’ minds.  These are the people that ask if the colors are real or if I manipulate my photographs.  But an artist by definition would manipulate a photograph.  Why?  Well, for several reasons.

Art is communication and artists have something to say.  A work of art carries the personal stamp of the artist.  The artist’s personal style comes through.  The stronger the artist’s personal style is, the more clearly it shows in her or his art.

Art is interpretation.  We think of art as being a creative process.  Landscape art is challenging because it is difficult to visit an iconic location and produce a work that says something new about it.  And isn’t that an important aspect of creativity – saying something new about familiar things?  But a successful work of art does just that, provides a fresh look as we see something familiar through the artist’s eyes.

I like to explore this aspect of photography in my workshops, providing insight into the artistic process and how it applies to photographers.

Photography can be so many things that sometimes we lose sight of it as a powerful medium for artistic expression.  And clearly, not all photography is art.  But to the photographer artist, photography is an eloquent medium.

Join us on one of our photography workshops for personal attention and great photogrpahy.

To see more of my work, click here.

Join us on Facebook and become a fan.

Announcing the February Print of the Month – Upper Antelope Canyon 4.

Nearly every landscape photographer aspires to photograph the Upper and Lower Antelope Canyons.  And thousands have.  For the February Print of the Month I have chosen a photograph I took back in February of last year.  I think it’s different from the typical Antelope Canyon photograph you see – no shaft of light, no tortuous corridor, but rather a glorious, dramatic portal into another existence.

Upper Antelope Canyon #4 (2008)

Upper Antelope Canyon #4 is available for the month of February, 2009 for 1/3 the normal price.  This applies to 16X20 open edition prints, both matted and framed.  Click here to find out more.

Click here for more Print of the Month photographs.

Click here to go to the Gallery.

Photo Review is a new program offered by Ralph Nordstrom Photography.  It is a way by which photographers can get their photographs reviewed by their peers.  This is unlike most photography sites in that the reviews are anonymous and moderated.  This encourages more honest and constructive feedback.  The results are published on the web in a password protected page.

If you are curious about Photo Review you can get more information from these links:

Photo Review Goals

Photo Review Submission Guidelines

We just published the last review.  If you would like to check it out to see a good example of how it works, just sign up for my newsletters in the form to the right.  I’ll email you the link and password.

When it comes to evaluating our own photographs we’re probably the worst ones to do so.  That’s not surprising because we’re so emotionally tied up in every aspect – the subject, the feelings we had when we got the shot, the work we’ve done on it in the digital darkroom.

Read the rest of this entry »

I vividly recall avidly reading Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, savoring every idea, every concept, every technique they discussed.  I guess I’m a zone system kind of guy at heart.

One thing they both said that baffled me were their comments on previsualization.  Seeing the final image in one’s mind’s eye before snapping the shutter was beyond my ability.  Boy, was that ever intimidating.

Well, umpteen years and thousands of photographs later I still feel challenged by the notion of previsualization.  But I think I may be getting a glimmer of a hint.

Read the rest of this entry »

I was listening tonight to a conversation between Jim Svejda and the amazing Hilary Hahn on Classical KUSC, my favorite radio station here in Southern California.  For those who don’t now, Jim Svejda is the most knowledgeable person on classical music probably on the planet and hosts several absolutely fascinating programs on KUSC.  And Hilary Hahn, at the age of 28, is one of the most phenomenal violinist on the current scene and certainly destined to be one of the great violinists of all time if not already so.

Their conversation delved into two dimensions of classical music performance – technique and interpretation.  It went something along these lines – composers don’t write compositions that are difficult to perform to give the performer a chance to display their technique.  Composers write compositions, difficult or easy, because they have something to say.  And performers haven’t mastered the composition when they’ve mastered the challenges of technique.  It is only when they also master the interpretation that they create music.

Hilary Hahn used a phrase that caught my attention – ‘Interpretive decisions.’  It was delivered in the context of discussing a very abstract, technical, even mathematical violin concerto by Arnold Schoenberg, a piece that’s a challenge to listen to not to mention the challenge it is to perform.  Hahn said that there were ‘interpretive decisions’ that added meaning to or subtracted it from the piece.  That makes a lot of sense.  A poorly interpreted piece, no matter how great, is boring whereas a richly interpreted piece, while being very simple, can be captivating.

What does all this have to do with a photographer’s personal style.  Well, in a word, everything.

Read the rest of this entry »

This image started in a bit of a disaster.  If you’ve ever shot in Upper Antelope Canyon outside Page, AZ you know that you park your car, get into your guide’s truck and are carried about three miles up a dry wash to the canyon entrance.  It wasn’t until we arrived and were in the darkness of the canyon that I discovered the ball head on my tripod was frozen.  Our guide had dropped us off and returned to the parking lot so I was forced to deal with the situation and ‘work with what I have,’ (my motto).

Read the rest of this entry »

In the first posting on personal style I discussed how the tools we choose affect the finished photograph and thus our personal style.  There’s one more aspect of tool selection that needs to be mentioned.

Read the rest of this entry »