All you can hear is the breeze, the waves, the birds. Silence promotes calm. Calm brings about refection and realization. Recognized many times before but confirmed through repetition: Although there are those who try to create chaos in the world, it’s up to me to decide whether I want to respond in kind or to disagree with an automatic knee jerk and maintain my own conviction that the basic good in the majority of people […]
Yes, it is. As a matter of fact, it’s a view from about five hundred feet above sea level off the side of southbound California Highway 1 in Sonoma County. Originally shot in December 2013, this image sat in my archives for years. It didn’t sit there because I particularly wanted it to. It sat there because there’s evidence of a nasty lens aberration in the RAW file that several previous attempts at RAW processing […]
It’s True Confession time. On Monday, April 1, I put up the original post of this shot, with the rather cryptic commentary: California Highway 1 is one of the most beautiful — and thrilling — roads in the world. I also said that there was no editing in Photoshop. I received a fair number of comments complimenting me on the shot and agreeing that it is a spectacular road. I should have felt great. I […]
California Highway 1 is one of the most beautiful — and thrilling — roads in the world. (Sony RX100. RAW processing in DxO Pro; no editing in Adobe Photoshop.)
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 […]
(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
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 […]
(Canon G7X II. RAW processing in DxO PhotoLab 2; final editing in Adobe Photoshop.) More fine-art photography: www.amagaphoto.com
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 […]
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: 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 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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
December 24, 2018, Sonoma County Coast. I took a walk on the bluffs on Christmas Eve. A little while before sunset, sunbeams drew a broad “A” behind a rapidly moving, billowing cloud bank. It looked promising. “Don’t quite like how it looks? Think it could improve?” I asked myself rhetorically. “Wait five seconds.” I did—and it just kept getting better. Over the next few minutes, many exposures were made. One was chosen. On this Christmas […]
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