Exploring Over 1,000,000 acres My last blog post was about fall mist in the New Jersey Pine Barrens, but the 2020 fall season had a lot more to it then a few misty mornings. It's been a busy one. Pandemic restrictions lifted enough to so I could start holding small photography workshops. My webinar on photographing the New Jersey Pine Barrens for [...]
Mist in the Pine Barrens briefly changes the world. Our landscape is beautiful in a rugged and sometimes harsh way. It's a world teaming with life and water which can show some rough edges. Mist changes that. For an hour or two on misty mornings the Pine Barrens soften into a mystical and surreal place.
One of those things was to review and organize my older photographs. That lead to the photographs below and the realization that for photographers, our passion, art and creative voice are housed in a small metal box of spinning disks called a hard drive. Only the best of these escape to be printed and framed or placed on a website for the world to see.
Composition and the Art of Seeing The New Jersey Pine Barrens are probably one of the most challenging places to photograph landscapes. Which means it is one of the best place to photograph landscapes. Why? Because the landscape is not obvious. I say this a lot, so forgive the repetition. The Pines are a flat sandy coastal plain with lots of hidden [...]
Savannas in New Jersey? Aren't they large grassy plains in Africa loaded with wildlife? Well, here in they are small, very wet, open grassy areas that can be home to wildflowers like orchids and carnivorous plants.
Next to a camera, a tripod is the landscape photographer's best friend. It holds the camera steady so you can control your exposure and composition. What if you want to photograph a landscape from a place where using a tripod is not feasible, like a kayak?
How A Landscape Can Be More Than Just Terrain Photographs of a flat landscape like the New Jersey Pine Barrens made with very wide angle lenses tend to be more about the sky than the landscape. I've photographed quite a few scenes like this one under all sorts of dramatic skies and now tend to photograph more intimate scenes. More trees, less [...]
The Home Field Advantage Landscape photography is a crowded field. When I first started out in the 1980's, there were a couple of dozen well known landscape photographers out there. Now you can't go to a scenic spot in a national park without having to work your way through a sea of tripods. Do a web search on those places and the [...]
Exploring A Special Swamp Note: All of the images in this post were made before the New Jersey closed the parks and state forests. One of the most unusual features of the New Jersey Pine Barrens are the swamps. Atlantic White Cedar swamps in particular. These are dark and wet places. Being in one is like entering a timeless, eerie and mystical [...]
Big Sur California We first visited Big Sur California in 2012 and recently made a second trip there. More than one person I know emphatically states that Big Sur is the most beautiful place in the world. I'll just let the images speak for themselves. Usually these posts have an instructional element to them, but with this one it felt better to [...]
Photographing Mist and Fog My friend Ron recently coined a new spelling for mysticism. It's "Mistycism" which describes what misty mornings do to the New Jersey Pine Barrens landscape. It tends to turn that landscape, especially the cedar swamps into a mystical, or "mistycal" world. Here are some examples and a bit of a tutorial on photographing mist and fog. Soft backlit [...]
As a photographer, 2019 was pretty significant for me. It was successful for print sales, workshops and speaking engagements, but I'm most happy with my growth as a photographer. Instead of just showing my favorite photographs from 2019, I'd like to share why they were made which may help you on your journey as a photographer and artist. . Inspiration This year, [...]
Fall Cedars by Richard Lewis 2019 A Week on the Mullica River Fall in the New Jersey Barrens is special. The leaves on the deciduous trees that grow among the pines turn beautiful shades of red, orange and yellow making the Pine Barrens look like it is gift wrapped. This year Fall came a little early and didn't stick around [...]
As landscape photographers, sometimes we need to let the landscape tell the story and provide our interpretation in how we compose our photographs.
Do No Harm With Your Photography Lancaster County in Pennsylvania is known for its Amish and Mennonite religious sects. The Amish are a closed sect that shun the modern trappings of life and choose to live without electricity and the machinery driven by it. They farm with horses and travel in horse drawn buggies which makes them particularly attractive to photographers. But, [...]
As landscape photographers, sometimes we need to let the landscape tell the story and provide our interpretation in how we compose our photographs.