I am pleased to share my latest publishing accomplishment.  My “Paradise Wildflowers” image from Mount Rainier National Park is the June 2010 cover on Alaska Airlines!  This is also my 2nd cover with them this year.  This picture is my all-time most successful art print and has been licensed numerous times since I created it in 2003.  Most of my regular readers will know that I shot all of my landscape images up until last year with a Pentax 67 system.  One of the challenges of that system was that I had limited depth-of-field compared to a 35mm system.  In order to overcome that limitation, I created this image with Toyo 4×5 view camera, a Rodenstock 65mm large format lens, and a Horseman 6×9 roll film back.  (Did I lose you, yet?)  With the large format camera, I tilted the lens so that the flowers would be close to the camera while keeping the summit of Mount Rainier in focus.  I also used my Singh-Ray Warming Polarizer and 2-stop Hard Graduated Neutral Density filter with Fuji Velvia film.  I think that the exposure was about 10 seconds at f32, which is a life-time when waiting for a slight breeze to stop rustling the wildflowers.  Now when I photograph flower landscapes like this, I use my Canon 5DmkII with a wide-angle lens with camera settings more like f16, 1/4 second, and 200 ISO.  Since this was the first image that I ever took with my 4×5, I was still learning how to use it that morning.  I mentioned that I used a 6×9 roll film back.  All of my images that I shot were the 6×9 format except for 1 frame that overlapped the frame before it.  That image perfectly cropped itself in the camera to 6×7 which is my favorite photo that you see here.  Beginners luck?

My Reflection Lake Sunrise image is featured prominently in a new Washington State tourism advertisement.  This ad will be shown in markets throughout North America during the next year.  If you are looking for an exciting travel destination, Washington offers an incredibly diverse experience.  It is one of the few places where you can experience islands, beaches, mountains, glaciers, forests, & deserts all during the same trip.  I always recommend early September to first time visitors.  It has the most reliable dry weather and the summer crowds are gone.  Are you ready to experiencewa?

I am pleased to announce that my article about using my own boat to photograph Southeast Alaska is in the May issue of Popular Photography!  The opening double page image is of a humpback whale swimming along with its mouth open after bubble-feeding.  My article features 10 landscape & wildlife images from my last 3 summers in Alaska.  I look forward to working with Popular Photography again in the near future.

Coincidentally, it is almost summer, which means it is time for me to photograph Alaska.  My summer plans include using my boat for several weeks in May-June to visit Icy Bay on the south side of Wrangell-St Elias National Park and Russell Fjord in the Tongass National Forest.  Later in the summer, I will photograph humpback whales, and in August I am shipping it to Whittier where I will base it on Prince William Sound for the next few years.  Wish me luck!

My image “Racetrack Sunset” will be the April cover photo of Outdoor Photographer!  “The Racetrack” is a seasonally dry lake located in the northern part of Death Valley National Park and is famous for its moving rocks.  With the right combination of rain and wind, the rocks move slowly across the surface of the playa, leaving a track as they go.  I photographed this amazing rock at sunset during my first visit to the Racetrack in January 2006.  I was enthralled with the unusual arc that it had created as it was moving.  This rock was still in the same location during my recent Death Valley National Park Tour.

I am pleased to announce that my image Humpback Whale 6 is featured on the cover of the February 2010 issue of Alaska Airlines magazine!  Be sure to check it out if you are on an Alaska Airlines flight this month.  Also, the opening double page image to the humpback whale article was photographed by my friend Brandon Cole during a previous trip that we took together.  I have the exact same image, since we were next to each other in the water when we both almost got run over by a humpback whale mother & calf.  Photographing whales above or below water is my favorite kind of photography.  It also helps that I am comfortable swimming in the open ocean in 10,000 feet of water and enjoy staring down into the blue depths underneath my fins.

This is a great blog post to transition from my dramatic landscape photography to more of my new wildlife images from the last year.  I’ve been tightly editing my image archives the last few weeks and have come across a few keepers that are worth sharing in the days ahead.

For the third time this year, one of my images graces the cover of Backpacker magazine.  The March 2010 issue’s cover shot is my image “Lago Pehoe Fiery Sunrise“.  I also give tips on photographing wide-angle landscape scenes in the article “Shoot Like a Pro” on pages 36-42, and my image “Spray Park Wildflowers 1” is featured on page 37.

In other news, I am currently updating my website to make it is easier to sign up for my photography tours, purchase my fine art prints, and license my images.  The overall design is going to stay the same, I just need to simplify access for my customers.  I also need to add several new galleries and update my older ones with the new images that I have created during the past 16 months.

The November issue of Backpacker is coming out and I have the cover for the 2nd time this year!  I photographed these petroglyphs 4 years ago in Saguaro National Park in Arizona.  I lived in Tucson from 1990-95 while studying at the University of Arizona (I have a BS in Aerospace & Mechanical Engineering, in case anyone wants to know), and while I was a student I spent a lot of time hiking & bike riding in this part of the Tucson Mountains, though I never visited these glyphs.  I have been to this location several times while visiting the last 9 years and this is the nicest morning that I photographed.

My above image, taken in Denali National Park in August 2006, is the cover photo of the 2010 Sierra Club Wilderness calendar!  I’d visited this pond in 2005 but I never got this kind of light, or even saw the mountain.  In 2006 I tried a few times to photograph Denali from this spot, but never got the mountain itself until my perseverance paid off with this dramatic and striking image.  There are hundreds of ponds near the Wonder Lake campground and I’d walked by most of them, deciding that this was the nicest one that framed the mountain.  It is  accessible via a strenuous 1 hour hike southwest of the campground.  I missed the fall colors in Denali this year, but I am flying up to Anchorage on Monday to look for fall colors around the Chugach & Kenai for the next 10 days.  Wish me luck.

Last month, I was contacted by a travel video production company in California.  They are putting together a DVD on Patagonia and were looking for a spectacular image to use on the DVD cover.  After searching the internet and even contacting the late Galen Rowell’s Mountain Light stock photography agency, they decided that my image above was the most spectacular image of Torres del Paine National Park that they could find.  I gave them a reasonable quote of $300 for using it on the cover of up to 5,000 DVDs.  I did not hear back from them until yesterday.  Fortunately, they have decided to go ahead and purchase my image, even though their distribution partners are not going to pay for it and had wanted to use some less interesting images that they found on micro-stock sites for $30 or less.  At least in this case, my client decided that the less expensive option was not worth it, but it highlights the tough reality that we as photographers have to deal with on a daily basis.  Is my photography too expensive?  Are there too many options out there for photo buyers?  What is the value of a photo in the digital age?

I checked my Twitter account this morning, followed a link from @FiNS magazine, and discovered 1 of my tiger shark images being used on-line, possibly without my permission.  You can read the article here.  There is no image credit, but it is no doubt mine.  I sent off an email to the London Evening Standard just a short while ago and am waiting to hear back from them.  They could have gotten it from one of my agents like Alamy or SeaPics, or they could have just used it without permission after finding it on the internet.  We’ll see what happens.

Another case in point.  I was in the Seattle REI this past spring.  They sell my mini prints and I have taught photo classes there.  I saw one of my best images of Mount Rainier being used on a promotional brochure for climbing Mount Rainier.  It took a few days, but I finally tracked down where it came from.  It is still posted here, and is apparently free, even though the site says at the bottom in tiny letters something about respecting copyrights.  The only place that this image could have come from was from the Singh-Ray filters blog where I am occasionally featured.  One of my fans, decided to grab the image and stick it on this website without even giving me credit.  The graphic designer that I now work with directly at REI did not see any copyright information (even though it is in the metadata!) so he thought that he could use it for free.  REI did eventually agree to pay me several hundred dollars for using it.

The internet is an amazing tool.  It allows me to travel the world chasing pictures and work from home.  I have spent a lot of time & money modifying my website to the point that it is Search Engine Optimized (SEO).  I now get hundred’s of visitors every day who find my site simply by typing in a Google search for something that I have photographed.  I am fortunate to be able to pursue my dream full-time.  I could be making more money doing something with my degree or the tangents that I briefly followed, but I made a decision that being stuck in traffic and working in an office was not for me.  I am very grateful that I have been able to make my modest career possible, but my biggest concern in the years ahead is, what if there is no longer any value in my photographs?

My friends and peers who have been in the industry for the last 20-30 years are very pessimistic every time that I talk to them.  There is no doubt that the analog days of the stock industry in the late 80′s and early 90′s was great time to be a photographer.  Distribution was tightly controlled by a few agencies.  Can you imagine having to pay several hundred dollars for a basic research fee every time that you wanted to look something up on Google?  That was what you had to do in order to then have original transparencies Next-Day shipped to you.  Next, you had to pay for using the slide, even if you just took it out of it’s sleeve to consider it for mock-up purposes.  My point here is that those days are long gone.  In this era of technology making our lives ever more spectacular, we as photographers need to be vigilant that we are not being taken advantage of, but we also need the search engines to help people find us in order to make sales.

I get requests all the time from people and organizations that want to use my images for free.  If it is a cause I believe in, I usually have already donated money, but I will consider donating an image in exchange for a credit line and I typically ask for at least a small purchase of one of my prints or note-card sets as an acknowledgment of the value of my photography.  Most of the time people agree to this modest request.  One of my favorite questions that I ask designers that contact me on behalf of someone else, is whether they are working for free for their client?  No is almost always the answer.  So why do they expect me to work for free?

I understand that new photographers are very excited just to have any of their images published and almost always give away their work for free.  My only question is, is that a viable business model that I have not yet learned about?  Most photographers just don’t use their heads when they are giving away their work, but unfortunately, they are the rule now rather than the exception.  Royalty free and micro-stock sites are here to stay, even though I can not justify selling images that take me weeks of effort and sometimes thousands of dollars to produce for those prices. On the consumer side, I understand that a whole generation of people has been brought up thinking that everything on the internet is free.  (I personally never downloaded any music until iTunes came out and my computer software is all paid for.)  I recently followed a blog thread by a well-known underwater photographer who had someone copy and make a painting of one of his images and then offer them for sale without his permission.  He politely asked them to stop doing that.  The person did stop, but not before sending him a long nasty email where she kept referring to his photos as “just stock photography.”  Apparently, “just stock photography” now means it is for free.

Tougher times are ahead my fellow photographers, but I wish you success however you may find it.

In 2008, my image “Wailau Beach Rainbow” and “Johns Hopkins Inlet Sunrise” were part of the Nature’s Best Ocean Views exhibit at the Smithsonian that was featured on AOL’s Pixcetera website.  Because of the trememdous amount of exposure that I received, I was offered the opportunity to have an entire portfolio of my images featured later in the coming year.  Well, it has finally happened and my feature is now up and running on Pixcetera!  Click on the link that maximizes the window and take a look.  Enjoy.