It is my pleasure and honor to bring to you each of these great photographers.

I truly enjoy the contrasts of color and form in this Guy Tal abstract. It appears to me to be a totally natural view of a spring tree sandwiched in front of a rock formation. Great artistic vision of a scene, rather than artistic “recreation” of a scene, is to me, true artistry. Guy produces fine art (my opinion) constantly.

Karen Hutton is the photographer who made this beautiful image of sunrise or sunset at Lake Tahoe. Every place is beautiful at the right time. Lake Tahoe I am sure, is naturally beautiful, but heavily visited. If you’re there at the right time, and you know how to hide distractions in the shadows….well you can do anything.

Craig Bill created this shot of Great Sand Dunes in Colorado. One of my favorite spots. Craig managed to capture a view I had never seen at GSDs

I have only one photographic experience with Reddish Egrets back in 2006. I wish I would have had this bird and this light. My bird was pretty scruffy and the light was pretty dull. Marina Scarr was the image maker for this one.

This next picture is a beauty from California. Dustin Penman made the shot. Low angled light and shadows make for beautiful and intriguing images. Then it becomes all about composition.  This image and the previously shown picture from Great Sand Dunes, are both published in the current issue of Landscape Photography Magazine

This nice detail laden shot is that of a Pale-winged Starling. The image was made by Didier in Africa. I know that the European Starlings we have here in the U.S. are a bother at our bird feeders, but starlings are actually a large family of birds found all over the worldBlood Moon

I am sure you have all heard about the “Blood Moon” phase we have been going through recently.  Most of you have seen it and some of you have made pictures of it. I wanted to show a great shot that shows its true effect at full strength…so to speak.  Some photographers are wondering why the Blood Moon isn’t colorful when they photograph it.  Even a Blood Moon needs compressed atmosphere to appear truly colorful.

Kristen Westlake made this awesome image that is both interpretive art, and literal at the same time. I have pasted Kristen’s technical info, in her own words, below.

“Last night’s Full Moon rising.  This isn’t the eclipse moon, but rather the full moon rising last night. It’s just off the horizon here so the color of the moon is intensely yellow/orange/red, picking up the earth’s atmosphere. As it gets higher from the horizon the moon appears white against the dark sky.

I used a 600 mm lens with a 1.7 teleconverter to get the perspective you see here. This is a single exposure (not a multiple). I was standing approximately 4231 feet from the location you see here.

If you take a look at perspective, the further away we are from objects, the closer they appear to one another. If I had the field and pond included in this image and photographed with a shorter lens, the moon would appear smaller in the image. However, because our eyes only register on where my lens focused on nearly a mile away (!) the moon appears as if it were huge compared to the windmill.”

Kudos to Kristen for talking about perspective in general, as well as how it relates to this photo. As most of you know, perspective and depth of field are two of my favorite technical subjects to talk about. I think that is because while it is tech stuff, it is also art stuff. Both perspective and depth of field and how you use them, become a part of your composition, or better said, your artistic interpretation.

I spent most of my younger years in photography not only studying perspective and depth of field, but also the color of light, shadows and how they affect an image, visual compression from lens choice, as well as how to stretch an image, the use of atmospheric haze in photography, and more. There are many great photographers today, but too few teach these things.

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I found the saying below on Facebook. The turtle picture is mine.

“Behold the turtle. He makes progress only when he sticks his neck out.” ~James Bryant Conant

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him, shall not perish but have ever lasting life.” John 3:16

Happy Easter                                                                                                                                   Wayne