Outdoor/Travel

My great-grandparents homesteaded in the northern part of the Black Hills around the turn of the 20th century, but found the environment too inhospitable for traditional farming and moved to eastern South Dakota. But that bond to the Black Hills continues to be passed down through my family, and I’ve visited the area on a regular basis since I was a little boy. My earliest travels with a camera were to the Black Hills during my early teens on family vacations, with resulting photos that failed to show how the area made me feel. As my photographic skills improved I’ve returned many times, but have only yet begun to scratch the surface of the numerous natural wonders located in the Black Hills.

Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, located in the Colorado Desert (two hours east of San Diego and three hours south of Los Angeles), is California’s largest state park. It’s also a World Biosphere Reserve meant to demonstrate a balanced relationship between man and nature.

The park encompasses 600,000 acres containing 500 miles of dirt roads, 12 wilderness...

Ten years ago, when I was primarily a fashion photographer, I did a shoot in Cuba. Normally I’d have used medium and long telephoto lenses, but because the narrow streets I was shooting on featured colorfully painted walls, I switched to a 35mm lens. With that lens I was able to show not only the models but also the background, which revealed a bit about the location. Equally important, I...

My wife and I live in an alternate universe. It’s called “RV Land.” We inhabit a vibrant subculture in which people live full-time in various types of recreational vehicles. An RV is a little home on wheels, able to carry computers and camera gear along with a full life support system. It requires a diet of gasoline but the expense seems trivial as we pass hundreds of motels...

I just dumped more sand out of my camera bag. This has been a fairly regular activity of mine for the last couple of months, ever since I visited Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve in Colorado during a nasty wind. The physical exhaustion caused by climbing North America’s tallest dunes (750 feet, nearly straight up, in sand), the feeling of sand in my eyes and the resurfacing of...

As I kneel on the ground looking through my viewfinder at a particularly pleasing collection of tulips, it occurs to me that nothing grabs my attention more quickly than a display of nature’s bright colors, especially after a long, gray winter. And if color, flowers, and other photogenic subjects are what you crave, The Netherlands’ Lowlands—a swath approximately 35 miles long...