Talking Pictures

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Staff  |  Jul 01, 2009  | 

Every time I glance at my two favorite images of this ostentatious peacock, taken at the Los Angeles Arboretum & Botanic Garden, I am reminded of the irreplaceable gift that has been given to us. What could have motivated Mother Nature to design such glorious colors and intricate patterns? We humans may never have the answer, but I am inclined to believe that it was simply to soothe the soul;...

Shutterbug Staff  |  Dec 01, 2003  | 

The Photographer's Travel Guide

I have had the good fortune to travel to Ireland on several occasions. I spied this Volkswagen hiding behind a tombstone almost by accident. It was a chilly (cold, actually) November day and I had spent several pleasant hours...

Staff  |  Mar 01, 2009  | 

I awoke at 4:30am with plans to climb a mountain to photograph the sunrise. We were at a bed and breakfast in the Catskill Mountains for a three-day photography course. The fog was dense that summer morning, so the majority of the photographers went back to bed. I borrowed a Nikkor VR 70-200mm f/2.8G and walked down to the edge of the river, where I quietly sat for the sunrise. One deer, then...

Shutterbug Staff  |  Feb 01, 2011  | 

My commute to and from work took me past this massive tree nearly every day for three years. The tree always commanded my attention, particularly during the winter months when its scraggly, barren limbs were highlighted by the latest snowfall. Though the tree had been dead for many years, it continued to stand as the patriarch of the park. A long-abandoned school remains on the park’s...

Shutterbug Staff  |  Aug 01, 2004  | 

Sometimes our lives are so hectic that the peace and tranquility we crave escapes us. As I was walking around a very busy little town, I noticed this scene in a churchyard and thought that it was a very calming area in the middle of all the hustle and...

Shutterbug Staff  |  Mar 01, 2004  | 

It was my third day in Paris...I was exhausted from miles of walking, the temperatures had dropped to near freezing, and all I wanted to do was get back to the hotel. I had seen this advertisement numerous times around the city but, for some reason, had not...

Staff  |  Oct 01, 2009  | 

Moored at the abandoned Alameda naval base is the USS Hornet aircraft carrier. I decided to explore this floating museum while my wife attended a nearby antiques fair.

Climbing down the steep ladders, I became fascinated by the chambers and hallways, each compartment separated by a sculptural door. As I wandered the empty halls and rooms on my own, with the smell of oil in the...

Shutterbug Staff  |  Nov 01, 2004  | 

I encountered this gentleman while making a wildlife documentary film in Tanzania, East Africa. His Masai village or "manyatta" was near the famous Olduvai Gorge on the Serengeti Plain. Even though the whole village was well compensated for the privilege of shooting still pictures and videotapes, this warrior still seemed to maintain a healthy suspicion of the...

Shutterbug Staff  |  Aug 01, 2010  | 

It is a popular belief that the predator cats of Africa do not swim and avoid water. Several extremely rainy years in the mountains that feed Botswana’s Okavango Delta region have shown that to be a great misconception. Water has overflowed the usual waterways of the world’s largest inland delta to cover grasslands and roadways. Yet, the wildlife of Botswana continues to thrive.
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Staff  |  Nov 01, 2008  | 

I return to Ireland each year, since my parents were born there and most of my family reside there. I try to capture the essence of this beautiful island year after year, mostly through landscape photos of Ireland’s emerald green patchwork fields, majestic mountains, and glorious scenery. One day, this window caught my eye, and to me, captured everything that Ireland appears to be: a nation...

Shutterbug Staff  |  Feb 01, 2007  | 

During the summer of 2005, I attended a photography course in Prague in the Czech Republic. One Saturday we took a field trip to the town of Ceské Budejovice near the Czech border with Austria. There, one of my fellow photographers hurriedly summoned me to the scene of this moody photograph, which I have to come to call "Bike Boy." The boy played with sticks and...

Shutterbug Staff  |  Jul 01, 2007  | 

"Budding Photographer?"
While cleaning the yard last summer, I came across a baby praying mantis. Excited, I carefully picked him up and placed him in my wildflower area. I ran in the house to get my camera and tripod, then set up and fired off a couple of exposures.

Realizing that I wanted to get some fill light, I ran back into my house...

Shutterbug Staff  |  May 01, 2010  | 

My family and I were visiting the Cincinnati (Ohio) Museum Center at Union Terminal during the end of their dinosaur exhibit. As part of the exhibit, they had a life-sized dinosaur outside the museum facing away from the building.

When we left the museum, I noticed how the dinosaur was facing the downtown Cincinnati skyline, so I positioned myself to frame the scene without the...

Shutterbug Staff  |  Dec 01, 2007  | 

My wife and I visited Prague, in the Czech Republic, in November 2006. It is a simply beautiful city, full of color, with sculptures around and at the top of a very large number of buildings. It is a great city to walk around and just look at the beauty--and the people. We went for walks every day for six days and nights, sometimes riding the tram to get farther out, and I...

Shutterbug Staff  |  Jan 01, 2008  | 

On vacation in Abaco, Bahamas, we were painting buoys we found to hang on the trees of my sister's vacation home. After just a few minutes I noticed my niece's hands and it became obvious the shot I needed to take. I had her hold her hands out so I could shoot a few frames at various apertures. The result, I felt, captured exactly what I intended. The photograph...

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