Mount Tam
Enveloped in fog. (Nikon D500; Nikon 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR zoom. RAW processing in DxO PhotoLab 2.2; final editing in Adobe Photoshop.)
Author: Michael Scandling
And Then. . .
June 20, 2018; Doubtful Sound, South Island, New Zealand. It was a beautiful day. First day of winter in the Southern Hemisphere. Bright sun. Not a cloud in the sky. Gorgeous. The air was crisp. Clean. Cold. Except this was our one and only day to photograph one of the most dramatic fjords in New Zealand. We wanted clouds. Mist. Fog. Dark dusky drama. Rain squalls. Rainbows. We got none of it. Mother Nature served […]
Wordless Wednesday 2
(Nikon D500, Nikon 200-500mm f/5.6 ED VR zoom. RAW processing in DxO PhotoLab, final editing in Adobe Photoshop.) More fine-art photography: www.amagaphoto.com
What Trader Joe’s Taught Me About a Plum Blossom Photo
February 2019. My back yard and my computer. Every year there are plum blossoms in my yard. Every year — in homage to Japanese art — I photograph them, searching for The One. Over the past few weeks, many gigabytes died on this search. This blossom? That one? One blossom? Many? High-key? Low-key? Simple background? Mottled background? High contrast? Low contrast? Saturated? Muted? On and on and on and on. . . Images fell like […]
Throwback Thursday
July 7, 2002. Bay of Fundy. My love of symmetry around a horizontal line goes way back. In fact, it goes much earlier than this. But this is my first satisfactory rendition using a digital camera. The camera was a Canon G2. Its resolution was a whopping four megapixels and the 34-102mm lens was not wide enough to capture the whole view — this is two shots stitched together in Photoshop 7.0 on a Mac PowerBook […]
Wordless Wednesday 1
(Canon G7X II. RAW processing in DxO PhotoLab 2; final editing in Adobe Photoshop.) More fine-art photography: www.amagaphoto.com
Quiet Cold
I’ve been thinking about cold recently. As with all things, cold is relative. The landscape above shows Fox Glacier on the South Island of New Zealand. That’s cold. Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, the mid-40s in the daytime is cold for most of us. But I do know cold: I grew up in western New York State, where cold is cold. Sub-zero cold. Quiet cold. What got me thinking about cold was some […]
Kiting and Flying Kites
February 17, 2019, San Joaquin River Delta; February 10, 2019, San Francisco Bay. I’m lucky to live in an area where White-tailed Kites are relatively common. Yesterday we went on a birding trip through the San Joaquin River Delta with naturalist David Wimpfheimer on a boat operated by Dolphin Charters. I recommend both. Along the way we saw about sixty species. One standout was this beautiful and cooperative white-tailed kite. He watched us as we slowed […]
Distant Shores
December 7 and 8, 2018, Point Reyes National Seashore. Horizons are beautiful in their simplicity. Engaging in their subtle complexity. Their moods are varied. They have endless color and texture possibilities. For all these reasons I never tire of them. But there’s another reason as well. Horizons are calming. Soothing. Stabilizing. Horizons are therapeutic. Stand on a bluff looking outward over the sea for only a few minutes, and if you’re like most people you’ll […]
Unfinished Turner / Unfinished Turn
June 14, 2011, the Tate Britain, London. If I had to pick one favorite artist, it would be J.M.W. Turner. I think of his work as the bridge between Romanticism and Impressionism and in my opinion he often outdid both. I find his later work, especially, to be transcendent. In June 2011, my wife, nephew, and I went to Europe to visit family, surf (one of us), hike, and absorb culture. The first stop was […]
Scrape
Scrape: To graze across or on something. The sunbeam scraped the sea. Scrape: A difference of opinion or predicament. Is this image literal? Abstract? Impressionistic? (Nikon D850; Nikon 200-500mm f/5.6 ED VR zoom.)
Gulls
Gulls are everywhere. Gulls are a dime a dozen. They’re not special. They’re not particularly beautiful. They’re not evocative. Gulls are a waste of time. I don’t shoot gulls. Yeah. Right. The only statement above that’s even partially true is the first one: they do seem to be almost everywhere. Meet Spot. Spot is a Western Gull of a certain age who hangs out in the vicinity of Tomalas Bay in California. Spot was given […]
Wildlife: A Matter of Viewpoint
January 17, 2019, Point Reyes National Seashore. There he was. Coyote. There I was. Human. As we warily watched each other it occurred to me that each of us thinks the other is wild, unpredictable, and dangerous. We stared. I got my shots. He walked off—impatient to get on with life, but unscathed. I thought he was handsome. I don’t know what he thought. (Nikon D500, Tamron 100-400 f/4.5-6.3 Di VC USD)
Rothko/Reflection
April 10, 2015, Hurricane Point, Big Sur Coast. My dog and I decided that conditions were right for a ride down the coast. Travels with Chewy. And Nikon. We made it as far south as Hurricane Point. Crystal clear. The horizon went halfway to Hawaii. And so did the sunbeam. Chewy and I looked out to sea. He turned and looked to me as if to say, “this is special.” A sea dog. A wise […]
The Blue Muse
This is one of my favorite seascape horizon photographs: How Blue Can You Get? Some photos present themselves to me on a platter. Some are made. This is both—although in this case the platter was more of a blue plate special. February 7, 2013, Sonoma County Coast. I was driving up the coast with my wife, looking forward to a winter weekend on the bluffs. The driver in me was trying to beat an impending […]
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