Our National Parks Odyssey: Time Marches On
By Andrew R. Slaton— There was so much sunshine in those days. The abundant and pillowy cumulus clouds were always present, but they seemed to narrowly skirt obstructing the source of all that light for a suspiciously long amount of time. The cold, dark shadows would come eventually. Open country has always had a way of capturing my full imagination—in an all- encompassing way. It wouldn’t matter what manner or shape of landscape; the...
How Two of My Images Grew Into a 55-foot-wide Mural
By Christine Pentecost— Do you ever see something you want to take a photo of, “some day”? Something, maybe, you see all the time and plan to eventually get around to taking pictures of it? A unique lonely tree in an open field? Poppies waving in the breeze? A neat old building? A beautiful mountain range? And then, the unimaginable happens: the tree falls down, the field of poppies get crushed in a hail storm, that neat old building...
Kah-Wai Lin: Fine Arts Landscape Images
by Arthur H. Bleich— Five years ago, Dr. Kah-Wai-Lin, 38, changed the course of his life dramatically. After graduating from high school in Malaysia, he spent six years in the Ukraine getting his MD and another five in Sweden earning a PhD in medical science. When Princeton University offered him a position as a research scientist, he snapped it up; it would appear all the stars had finally aligned. Except that… AB: In 2016 you...
Documenting Maine’s Penobscot River Wilderness. Part 2
By Zac Durant— The first half of my trip was leisurely paced down the West Branch of the Penobscot and I had time to enjoy and photograph much of the river’s wildlife including an industrious beaver who simply ignored me, an inquisitive moose, and low flying eagles that soared by. And then there was the peculiar jack rabbit who paddled out in the shallows and hopped onto a protruding rock. As I approached, he seemed unconcerned by my...
Documenting Maine’s Penobscot River Wilderness. Part 1
By Zac Durant— The fierce intensity of the wind had carried my canoe out to the middle of the huge lake, where white caps were threatening to capsize it. If it were to succumb to the turbulent waters, I would not be in a very favorable situation. The water was cold, and I was at least a half-mile from shore. While I’m a capable swimmer, I didn’t like those odds very much… It all began in August, 2020 after I’d done a...
46 Photogs + 3 Years = 10,000 Images of NH
By Peter E. Randall— How many photographers does it take to document life in New Hampshire? According to the New Hampshire Society of Photographic Artists (NHSPA), the number is forty-six. At least that is how many professionals and advanced amateurs participated in a unique three-year shoot which will result in a full color hardbound book and exhibits in eight New Hampshire institutions. The book, New Hampshire Now, A Photographic...
Favorite Photo Places: Carlsbad Caverns, NM
By Lon Shelton & Ron Wolfe— Beneath the prickly pear and cholla cactus of the Chihuahuan desert in southeast New Mexico lies a spectacular treasure. Carlsbad Caverns National Park – a complex of 117 caves including the largest accessible cave chamber on our continent– dazzles visitors with its magnificence, its cathedral-like silence, and the sheer scope of its reach. On a normal year, roughly half a million visitors come to see...
Nikola Olic: Dominates Tall Buildings With A Single Lens!
By Albert Chi— Nikola Olic is a lover of photography– a quintessential “amateur” in the classical sense of the word. He’s free to exercise his artistic vision any way he chooses without restraints of time or client demands. “I was born and raised in Belgrade, Serbia,” says Olic, now 47, “and came to the U.S. at 17 as an exchange student to study computer science and engineering.” He was assigned to the University of Texas, Arlington...
Baron Wolman, Iconic Rock Photographer, Dies at 83
By Tony Bonanno— Baron Wolman died peacefully on November 2, 2020 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He was 83. I feel privileged to have been able to call him a good friend for almost two decades. Baron was Rolling Stone magazine’s first photographer and actually had a major role in getting the unique rock music magazine of the Hippie generation off the ground. Although his iconic images are well known, and many of you who are reading...
How Photography Helped Save My Life
By Michael Blanchard— I was arrested in February 2010 in Maine for drunk driving while attempting to drive to Boston to talk to my wife and try to repair the damage from our constant fights. I was the COO at a company in Maine and my wife was living in the city. She was my whole world, and I was losing her. With no other support system I fell apart, with only vodka to hold me together. When I was arrested a second time, in March, for...
Get Your Creative Mojo Back… It’s In The Cards!
By Christine Pentecost— I don’t think I have to explain why I’ve had a hard time feeling creative over the past 11 months. As a photographer, I would usually carry the camera with me in my car wherever I went. Once things started closing down and when, one by one, all my art shows got cancelled, my cameras started collecting dust. I lost all inspiration to photograph anything. With the start of the new year, I knew I needed to get out...
Paul Chaplo: Flyin’ High Over The Texas Plains
By Arthur H. Bleich— Paul Chaplo, 62, is a “a photographers photographer.” His technique is flawless and his clients, mostly commercial biggies in and around Texas, not only love his work, but love working with him. He holds a Master of Fine Arts Photography degree from Rochester Institute of Technology and leaves nothing to chance, which is why his work shines in annual reports, books and other venues. On assignment to shoot more...
Spending the 1958 Winter Solstice in Barrow, Alaska
By Arthur H. Bleich— The Wien Alaska Airlines war-surplus C-47 made a large circle in the dark, noonday sky. All I could see out the window as it began its final approach was the bright moon shining on a small cluster of lighted buildings surrounded by a vast expanse of ice. I lifted my camera to the window, set the focus to infinity and shot a picture at about 1/15th of a second at F-3.5, expecting nothing but a blurred image. Then...
$25 Will Restore A Blind Person’s Sight
By Albert Chi— If you’re a photographer or artist, eyesight is everything. That’s why a recent column in the New York Times by Nicholas Kristof caught my attention when he recommended several charities, one of which he’d personally visited in Nepal called the Cure Blindness Project. I thought it might be of special interest to those who are in, or love, the visual arts and want to make a one-on-one contribution to a cause that...
Our National Parks Odyssey: Heading In A New Direction
By Andrew Slaton— A cloudless, blue sky is excellent for just about everything except making dramatic photos. That’s what I had all summer in Wyoming. But it didn’t much matter to me. Low hanging scrub cedars dominate the immediate landscape. Concrete, ground up by time and pressure surrounds me. We are parked in a sparsely occupied, old RV park near the banks of Lake Whitney, in the Texas Hill Country. The weather is a lovely...
Dawn Wilson: Bears, Eagles, Foxes…and More
By Arthur H. Bleich— Always interested in the outdoors, it was probably preordained that Dawn Wilson, 49, would eventually settle in Colorado and become a renowned wildlife photographer. Growing up in New Jersey, her active and creative life in high school continued through her college and post-graduate years. From an early age she developed a love for the outdoors and wildlife, seriously considering becoming a veterinarian before...
Ghana: An African Portrait Revisited
By Peter E. Randall— Photographing and producing a book on Ghana was not on my mind when I first visited the West African country in 1984 as a United Nations consultant. I was hired to document an improved method of smoking fish, a vital task in a country with little access to refrigeration to preserve the catch. In 1958, Ghana was the first sub-saharan country to become independent. In 1963, President Kwame Nkrumah invited master...
Sloooooow Down For More Creative Images
By Albert Chi— Most photographers dread shooting when poor light levels require slow shutter speeds for proper exposure. Chances are pictures will end up blurred due to camera shake, subject motion, or both. And to compensate, you can only up the ISO so much before running into noise and artifacts. Here are some ways to make slow shutter speeds work for you. In fact, even when you have enough light to use faster speeds, shooting with...
Pros Tell How To “Get The Photos Others Can’t ->”
By Michael Freeman— When you know in advance that a situation forbids photography, you first need to have a very good reason to flout authority, and then you need to plan how to shoot surreptitiously. This is the serious end of investigative photojournalism, and while you’re not likely to be facing the same challenges as Hazel Thompson, there are plenty of valuable lessons to be learned from her remarkable shoot of kids locked up in...
White Pocket: Millions-of-years-old Fantasy World
By Will Keener and Ron Wolfe— White Pocket is photographer’s dreamland; a remote, other-worldly experience in the Vermillion Cliffs National Monument in Arizona that looks like chef whipped up a colorful concoction from chunks of multi-colored fudge. Writers tend to wax poetic in describing White Pocket, seeing visions of gum drops, ice cream cones, dragon’s eyes, and other objects in this altered version of what was once an ancient...
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