Whew! April was a busy month here for me with the release of Shoot + Share: Getting Your Photographs Out Into the World, my new ebook from Craft & Vision, along with the final sessions of my digital photography class for this semester at Cornerstone Center for the Arts. For May, I feel like I need to provide everyone with more of a feeling of calm; something to gaze at each day that relaxes us. A boat, perhaps, resting in calm waters, reflecting the bright blue sky above it. Yes, that’s the ticket.

I feel better already. Just click the image above for your own 2560 x 1600 pixels of peace and quiet. Enjoy.

“It takes a lot of nerve to show your dreams to someone else.” – Erma Bombeck

I thought you’d like to know that today Craft & Vision is releasing my newest ebook, Shoot + Share: Getting Your Photographs Out Into the World. As with Close to Home, I’m both excited and a little bit terrified. My biggest goal is that you find it useful to you and your work.

I feel deeply that photography is a gift that is best shared, and this book is designed to help you decide where that works best for you, whether you intend to sell your work or not. At it’s core, it’s a guide to help you figure one thing: how to put your photographs in places where the people you want to see them will be able to. Whether that’s your family and friends or major art collectors, the book helps you figure a plan to reach your photographic audience, both on- and offline. It’s written to help you navigate the numerous places for posting your photographs—Facebook, Flickr, 500px, etc.—and for talking about them through social media and other channels. In addition, I’ve pulled examples from my current approach to sharing my work as examples throughout the book.

Of course a Craft & Vision book isn’t complete without an abundance of photographs, and there are many in this book to serve as examples that I’ve shared along the way… and even a few that may be new to you. There’s also a bonus section at the end of the book about sharing your knowledge of photography with others through teaching. Whether you lead a photo walk in your neighborhood or formally teach classes at your local art center, sharing your experience with those who need a little help is a very rewarding experience… for both of you.

As always, I’m grateful to many others for the help and encouragement they’ve given me in writing and publishing this book. Of course, the folks at Craft & Vision have been terrific in helping me put together a quality product for you. My friends, Sabrina Henry and Ray Ketcham read early versions of the book and offered valuable counsel as it progressed, and Justin Van Leeuwen was gracious enough to allow me to use his experience on Flickr as an example in the book. Merci beaucoup, Justin!

And, of course, my thanks to my wife, JoEllen, who talked me into first sharing my images publicly a couple of years ago. Sometimes we all need a little push, and for nearly 30 years, she’s always been the one willing to do that for me.

I look forward to seeing your work out in the world.

Special Offer on PDFs
For the next five days only, use the promotional code SHARE4 when you checkout so you can have the PDF version of SHOOT + SHARE for only $4 OR use the code SHARE20 to get 20% off when you buy 5+ PDF eBooks from the Craft & Vision collection. These codes expire at 11:59pm PST April 28, 2012.

Knock, knock.

Who’s there?

Orange and Black and White.

“Orange and Black and White” who?

Orange you glad I didn’t post another black and white wallpaper?

I sat on my front porch this evening and made some photographs of how it felt to me when the daylight faded and the stars eventually came out. I thought you might enjoy them, too, so take a little break, put your feet up, and hang out with me for a bit while the sun sets and casts shadows across the land.

A little late once again, but here’s a new wallpaper for you for March. This one is from the creek in the woods behind my house. These rocks were conveniently arranged in an appealing pattern and the reflection of the sky through the trees that appeared on the water also reflected the arc of the rocks. Reflection inception, perhaps? Well, at any rate, it makes a pretty good desktop for this month. To get it, simply click on the image above to get a full 2560 x 1600 version to use. I hope you enjoy it.

Already a month gone by in this new year of 2012. Sheesh. So, that means it’s time for a new wallpaper for your desktop, and here it is.

This is a Jesuit Cemetery in West Baden Springs, Indiana. West Baden Springs Hotel is a beautiful resort in southern Indiana that’s been around since the turn of the century—the turn of the last century, that is. It began as luxury resort, built around the natural springs and salt licks in the area. It fell on hard times after the Great Depression and changed hands quite often, at one point serving as a Jesuit College from 1934 to 1964. This cemetery was begun during that period and now contains the remains of 39 Jesuit priests. The cemetery itself is still owned by the Jesuits and is maintained by the local Catholic Church.

A little drama and a little history, all wrapped up into your February wallpaper. Simply click on the image to download the full 2560 x 1600 version, suitable for your computer, tablet or phone. I hope you like it.

A couple of weeks ago, in response to the comments about the launch of this site, I posted on Twitter that my goal for the new year was focus. Like many of us, I get too easily distracted by shiny things. Not just gear, though I suffer from that in spades, but by all of the ways to broadcast my work to all of you. This site—and the dissolution of several other sites/accounts—is my answer to that problem.

However, I think it’s only a partial solution. A more complete answer is cultivating a broader perspective; viewing the world around me with a keener eye. In addition to being easily distracted, it’s too easy for me to be drawn into responding to others’ perspectives, rather than holding my own. I don’t mean that I always know better than others, or that I shouldn’t listen to other points of view, even if I’m pretty sure I disagree with them. In my opinion, listening to solid, thoughtful opposition is an essential ingredient to being a good human being, but there are times when I get drawn down a rabbit hole into a much narrower world; a world where I lose perspective.

(A short digression here, folks. For the love of Funk and Wagnalls, the word is lose, not loose. Look it up. This epidemic must be stopped.)

What was I talking about? Heading down rabbit holes and trying to keep perspective? Ah, right.

We do sometimes recognize when we’re losing perspective. My Twitter feed is occasionally littered with the #firstworldproblem hashtag, meaning that person understands their problem is a pretty minor thing in the greater scheme of things. In a world where some people don’t have any idea where their next meal is going to come from or where they’re going to sleep tonight, it’s a good idea to pay attention to just how small some of our problems are. We can get caught in a bubble of narrow perspective where these smaller problems can seem much larger, and when we limit ourselves to discussing it with people who mostly agree with us, it becomes an echo chamber where we only become more convinced we’re doing the right thing. In the end, it leads to the well-known arguments of Mac vs. PC, Nikon vs. Canon, and more recently, gear vs. vision.

What does this have to do with photography? Well… a lot. Refusing to listen to people who disagree with you, or who at least have a different point of view, stunts your growth as a human being and as a photographer. You need to take all of what the world has to offer—good and bad—to really understand what you have to give it in return. A narrow perspective usually leads to a limited imagination and, of course, imagination is key to photography—or any art for that matter.

But a broader perspective is also important in the way we approach our use of photography. We talk a lot about how to convey intent in a photograph, but there’s a much larger picture here (pun definitely intended). Author Wes Cecil asked all of the participants at ART, “Why this?” In other words, why do we photograph? Why spend our time on it? What are we trying to say as a human to other humans? If, as a photographer, your goal is to effect change, you must broaden your perspective of what photography is to you.

Focusing only on gear is a shallow pursuit. Focusing only on technique is a shallow pursuit. Focusing only on making money with your camera is a shallow pursuit. Our “passion”, as it stands, cannot be just photography itself. Most great photographers—the ones who helped make significant changes in our lives, and the ones we remember—were obsessed with social, cultural, and political issues that affected them. They used photography to show the rest of us how they felt about it and to push for change. Lewis Hine, Dorothea Lange, Tim Hetherington, Peter Magubane, Donna Ferrato, and even Ansel Adams used photography as their chosen vehicle for change—the change they wanted to see in the world.

Many photographers have been ignored, banned, jailed, beaten, and even killed by people and societies who were afraid of what would happen when others saw the things that photographer was exposing, or who simply weren’t ready to see it. These photographers didn’t always expect to make these kinds of sacrifices and they certainly didn’t go looking for them, but they continued their work in spite of the danger to themselves. Deciding whether film or digital is better or whether or not to use HDR was nowhere on their radar of things to worry about.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton famously wrote, “Beneath the rule of men entirely great, the pen is mightier than the sword.” If a photograph is worth a thousand words, how much can it accomplish? If we want to change the world, we have to tell the stories that need to be told. We need to examine and understand the reasons we are making photographs, and then keep pushing ourselves to make the best photographs that carry out that purpose. We can’t limit ourselves to a narrow perspective and fall into the rabbit hole of photography only for photography’s sake. We, as photographers, don’t really matter. Photography, as an art and a craft, doesn’t really matter. It’s the photographs that do.

A little bit late—but as they say, better than never—here’s the new desktop wallpaper for January 2012. You’ll notice a few changes from my previous designs, including the addition of my new logo and a change in the calendar design. I almost left the calendar off this year, but I like having one nearby that I can quickly glance at to find the date, so it’s staying for now. I’m also only posting the desktop version of the image. I’d rather you be able to experience the image as I made it, rather than cropping it to fit on an iPad or iPhone. It will, of course, still work on those devices and you can choose how you’d like it cropped if you decide to use it there.

For this month’s image, I reached into the Wayback Machine to pluck a scene from my visit to my good friend Jeff Fielding in San Francisco. This was shot during our return trip to San Francisco from our 3-day stay in Yosemite National Park. As we were driving home, I noticed these low-hanging clouds dipping down to touch the tops of the rolling hills around us.The road was pretty narrow here and we had no opportunity to pull over, so I shot a few frames from the car while Jeff drove as slowly as he safely could. Pretty sure we got yelled at a couple times, too.

So, risking life and limb, from me to you, the January 2012 desktop wallpaper. Simply click on the image to download the full 2560 x 1600 px file. Enjoy :-)

Simply put, you’ll see my work here, on this site. If it’s published elsewhere, I’ll be sure to mention it, but this is the place to discover what I’m doing and what I have to say about it. I think that makes it much easier for everyone. I’ll also continue to blog here, and hopefully a little more frequently than I have been recently. I think I have some interesting topics to cover, so stay tuned.

This means that a few other things will be changing, too. The Light Without will also disappear from Facebook and I’ll be using my social network accounts (Facebook, Google+, Twitter) simply as a way to make connections, which I think is what they’re best at. My Flickr account will also change and become simply a way to share some of the photographs I make with friends and family. My 500px and Zenfolio accounts will go away, as will any other photo sharing accounts I have. Again, you’ll find my work here.

As well as this web site, my photographic life has changed significantly since I first started The Light Without blog over two years ago. I’ve sold prints, written a book, taught classes, and led a workshop—all of which has been extremely gratifying. And I have bigger plans for 2012 and beyond, which hopefully, you’ll begin to see shortly. This site, of course, is one of those new things, but there are others in the works. I’m excited to be working with the folks at Rear Curtain and looking forward to helping with the site and the next issue of the magazine. I’m in the process of writing a new book for Craft & Vision (no, really), and I’m beginning a new semester teaching at the Cornerstone Center for the Arts. All in all, 2012 is looking very promising.

Mostly, though, I’m simply excited about photography. I’ve learned so much over the last couple of years and I think I’ve grown more as a photographer than I ever have. Most of that is due to you. Yes, you—everyone who is reading these words. My friends, my colleagues, my mentors, my family, and so many more have made me think and feel and stretch and grow to become a better photographer and a better human being.

My sincere thanks to all of you and my fondest wishes for a rewarding 2012.

This one is from the commute home after a rather long day at work. It was a cold and wet fall evening, and the wind was blowing away the last leaves on the trees. The road was littered with mostly yellow leaves and the rain really brought out the colors that appeared in my headlights. I had made a similar photograph during my One Camera/One Lens/One Month experiment, so I had an idea of the kind of photograph I might get. I held the camera in front of the steering wheel with one hand and fired off a few shots, using a slow shutter speed to blur the motion from the car. This particular shot was to me the best of the bunch. I hope you like it, too.

December 2011 wallpaper — Desktop (2560 x 1600)
December 2011 wallpaper — iPad (1024 x 1024)
December 2011 wallpaper — iPhone (640 x 960)