Impure Thoughts

Please note: I am taking a (perhaps permanent) break from teaching workshops in 2025. If you would like to join Michael Gordon and me on our Visionary Death Valley workshop, don’t wait. We only have a few seats remaining in 2024. I delight in photographs I delight in words I delight in mixing both To... Continue Reading →

Not That Kind

The idea of an art detached from its creator is not only outmoded; it is false. —Albert Camus In recent weeks, I was asked by two different people for advice on how to become a professional landscape photographer. One was an ambitious and precocious young teenager who, at age 13, had already decided that this... Continue Reading →

The Pitfalls of Previsualization

This is an edited version of an article originally published in LensWork Magazine. I've had the great privilege of contributing to LensWork regularly for nearly a decade. I consider it the finest print magazine available today for creative photographers. I hope you consider subscribing. The state of mind of the photographer while creating is a... Continue Reading →

Art as Adventure

The photographs that excite me are photographs that say something in a new manner; not for the sake of being different, but ones that are different because the individual is different and the individual expresses himself. I realize that we all do express ourselves, but those who express that which is always being done are... Continue Reading →

Winter Camp Soliloquy

Dear reader, if you have read any of my books, please take a moment to rate and review them on Amazon. (Amazon will let you do so even if you purchased the book elsewhere.) There is only one inborn error, and that is the notion that we exist in order to be happy. —Arthur Schopenhauer... Continue Reading →

Art and Science

The fine arts and the hard sciences have more in common than most people believe, because both are driven by dopamine. The poet composing lines about a hopeless lover is not so different from the physicist scribbling formulas about excited electrons. They both require the ability to look beyond the world of the senses into... Continue Reading →

The Search

Searching is everything—going beyond what you know. And the test of the search is really in the things themselves, the things you seek to understand. What is important is not what you think about them, but how they enlarge you. —Wynn Bullock Winter invites reflection. For some, such end-of-year reflection is tied with traditions or... Continue Reading →

Experience First

Dear reader, I can use your help. I have never been a good promoter of my work, but I've always believed that by making the highest quality of photographs and writings I can, I could (can) count on sufficient sales to make ends meet. Becoming a celebrity has never been my goal and is not... Continue Reading →

Deep Work

Contrary to what we usually believe, moments like these, the best moments in our lives, are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times—although such experiences can also be enjoyable, if we have worked hard to attain them. The best moments usually occur when a person's body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary... Continue Reading →

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