In the middle of October, I taught a photography workshop in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. After the workshop was over, I drove up the Blue Ridge Parkway with the goal of making it to Marby Mill in Virginia. I hadn’t been to Marby, yet, and wanted to see it. My first stop was…

Glacier National Park, established as a national park in 1910, is considered Crown of the Continent. Early in the park’s history, the Great Northern Railway tried to brand Glacier as the Little Switzerland of the United States. They constructed lodges and remote mountain chalets throughout the park. The Going-to-the-Sun Road, completed in 1932, is one of…

Sign the petition: https://chn.ge/2vRshPp The Fall River enters Lake Superior a few miles west of town (heading south on Highway 61). There used to be a rest area and parking lot at the location, but it was removed years ago. Before the river enters the big lake it plunges over a 25-foot waterfall. There’s a pool…

The research vessel Kiyi comes to Grand Marais only a few times a year. It usually stays one day before it ships back out onto the big lake. On this visit, the sky had interesting clouds and the crisp, early-spring air kept the haze from forming over Lake Superior like it does as the temps…

The Found Bike Project began on May 16, 2016. I found an old-but-well-maintained bike on the North House Folk School campus and photographed it with a 35mm f/1.4 lens. After posting it on the Internet, those that saw it encouraged me to take more pictures of found bikes. The project was born. I estimated it…

If I had to pick one national park as a favorite, I’d pick the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. There wouldn’t be any hesitation or delay in my answer. It is by far my favorite park. If I had to pick one season, I’d pick Fall in the Smoky Mountains (or spring). I really couldn’t pick…

Plein air painter Neil Sherman first told me the name of The Tombolo. He heard it from painter Howard Sivertson. I can imagine Howard walking the beach in his red suspenders to paint the spot. The Tombolo is one of three iconic north shore islands on Lake Superior in Minnesota. The most famous is Hollow Rock…

My first strong memory of a canoe was paddling a beat-up, old, fiberglass canoe on the backwaters of the Mississippi River. Many adventures ensued. Kirk Wipper, the founder of the Canadian Canoe Museum, captured what a canoe means to me when he said, “You have to do what you can, do your best with what you are.…

We all have to learn somewhere and somehow and this summer I’ve been learning how to shoot in infrared. I was gifted a Sony A7II camera with a super color conversion from LifePixels. This conversion converted the camera to shoot multi-color infrared images. While interesting, I’ve found that I don’t care to the multi-color infrared…

Selecting filters for outdoor photography has always been complicated, especially for photographers just learning how to use filters. In recent years, more companies have gotten into the market and the selection has grown even larger. In addition to that, lenses have changed. Almost everyone that buys a lens beyond a kit lens ends up getting…