See How To Help Preserve The Pinelands With Your Photography Of all the seasons to be photographing the New Jersey Pinelands, summer can be the most challenging. It's not just the heat or the bugs, the landscape also changes drastically and may not look the same as it does in the other seasons. Plus the long days mean waking up early for [...]
I enjoy hiking and photographing from late afternoon into the evening so headed out to the Franklin Parker Preserve, a favorite spot in the New Jersey Pinelands
For the Love of Lava While there are many reasons to visit Hawaii, for me it was the lava. As someone who often gets a lot of peace out of the quiet, settled natural landscape of New Jersey, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that it was formed thousands of years ago by some powerful and violent forces of [...]
Composition is a Form of Communication Composition is an elusive thing for many photographers. On the other hand, the technical aspects of photography are fairly straight forward and systematic. One camera setting affects another in a logical way. Once that is learned, the photographer understands how a camera processes light coming through the lens and can create a well exposed photograph. This [...]
Some recent photographs Something about the magic of the New Jersey Pine Barrens keeps calling you back. This wilderness area features a long human and natural history. The result is a landscape whose magic reveals itself to the artist who gets out and explores a bit. That's were I can help by guiding you to some very special places during my one day [...]
Finding the Wonder in the Simple The Tucquan Glen Nature Preserve is located in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. I was surprised at how beautiful this little preserve is as it follows the cascading Tucquan Creek down to the Susquehanna River. The hiking trails look well traveled so I was happy to be there on a cold weekday that was free of the weekend and [...]
We all can use some serenity, right? When color landscape photography is posted on social media, it is the colorful, over-saturated and dramatically composed images that seem to rack up the likes. Here is an interesting fact. Scientific studies show that while images, photographic or otherwise, with intense color catch the attention immediately, they tend to not be remembered in the long term. I'm [...]
Mixing Hiking and Photography When it is time to clear one's head or just find a little peace and quiet, the woods are the best place to be. Around here, that woods is the New Jersey Pine Barrens. After spending weeks preparing for my first solo exhibition of photographs from the Franklin Parker Preserve in the Pine Barrens, I felt a [...]
When Ordinary Becomes Beautiful Cold Winter Light by Richard Lewis 2017 It doesn't snow much in the New Jersey Pine Barrens, so when it does, it's time to head out to find something to photograph. This old bog in the Franklin Parker Preserve seemed like a nice place to look. Usually the stumps of these old cedar trees look like abstract designs, however [...]
The Struggle Between the Inner Artist and Inner Engineer Fading Winter Light by Richard Lewis 2017 I love going out on New Year's Day to hike to get a first photo of the year. This year the first photograph of 2017 was made on January 8. Why? Because I've been feverishly preparing for a solo exhibition of my New Jersey Pine [...]
Missouri's Rugged, Beautiful Landscape Here are more photographs from my trip to the Ozark Mountains in Southern Missouri with photographer Craig McCord. In my previous post I showed the old mills we visited which were set in a beautiful and rugged landscape. The photographs below show more of that landscape. There were not a lot of opportunities to photograph the grand landscape of the Ozark [...]
The Old Mills and Landscape of Southern Missouri When I signed up for Craig McCord's photography workshop in the Ozark Mountains, he probably thought I made a mistake. Why would a guy from New Jersey go to southern Missouri to take pictures? Shouldn't I be going to the Grand Canyon, the Grand Tetons or some other place with grand in its name for great photography? Well, I [...]
An aimless pursuit of beauty. What do you do when a day of scouting for photography locations doesn't yield anything? That happened recently on a trip to the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area. We spent the afternoon hiking the Cliff and other trails to check out overlooks and waterfalls. My plan was to find the best ones and spend the next few [...]
Being on the top of that mountain taught me to experience sunrises and sunsets in a different way. I've always looked for that decisive moment when the light is at it's peak. Now I realize that a sunrise is a story that starts at first light and ends when the dawn colors fade.
Happy 100th Anniversary to the National Parks The US National Park system may be the best thing our government has ever done. Preserving some of our best American landscapes has been going on for a hundred years. In spite of some parks being overcrowded with visitors, having an overworked National Park Service staff, and many other challenges, the beautiful landscapes remain relatively unchanged [...]
Why wake up at 4am to hike up a mountain? One of the things I love about being a photographer, and a hiker, is the challenge to find unique places to experience nature at its best. In Virginia's Shenandoah National Park that meant hiking up a mountain in the dark before the sun came up. On a beautiful afternoon my wife and I hiked [...]