One of the hottest and driest places on Earth, the Danakil Depression in the northern part of the Afar region in Ethiopia (part of the great East African Rift Valley) is one of the most cruelly inhospitable places on the planet. Much of it lies below sea level, with temperatures as high as 125 degrees…
Following the lead of managing editor Ian Plant and his recent year in review post highlighting his best photos from 2016, I wanted to share my own top 16 photos from 2016. I know it’s a bit late, but I was out in the field for several weeks to start the year – more on…
Ansel Adams once famously said: “Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop.” Of course, Adams was shooting with an old fashioned large format film camera; in this age of fast-paced digital technology, I think we can all do at least slightly better than twelve good photos a year! In 2016, I…
Wow, I can’t believe we’ve made it all the way to the end of the Photo Challenge – what an amazing nine weeks it has been! I hope you have all enjoyed the Challenge, and learned a thing or two along the way. In this final week, it was fun to finally get a chance…
Hi everyone! Although the Photo Challenge is approaching the end (we’ve only got one more week to go!), I’m amazed at the enthusiasm and level of participation from members of the group. It makes it difficult for me to pick some photos to share during the recap—I can’t possibly review them all—so as always, the…
I’ve been traveling in South America for the past few weeks with only limited (and incredibly slow) Internet access, so my sincere apologies for not being able to complete the recap for the Week 7 assignment on time. There were a lot of really amazing photos to go through, but here are a few that…
Hi everyone! The Motion assignment is now complete, and as usual, I saw many really creative photos posted in the Facebook group. You guys continue to impress and inspire me! Here are a few photos that caught my eye this week. This week’s best shots This photo by Michael Nalsky is a good example of…
Hi everyone! The Photo Challenge has been amazing so far, and I want to thank everyone for participating. (If you’re not yet, you can learn more about it and sign up here.) I hope you are all having a great time. We’ve finally come to my absolute favorite assignment (I know, I say that every…
Last week’s assignment—foreground—is in many ways the hardest of all the assignments in the Photo Challenge. Although it is easy to find foregrounds for your photos, most people struggle with finding a really good foreground, one that is both interesting and that leads the viewer, both thematically and compositionally, deeper into the scene. While reviewing…
Wow, this Photo Challenge has been great so far, we’ve seen so many incredible images from participants! Now we’ve come to one of my favorite assignments: motion. We live in a world that is constantly in motion, but when we take a picture, that motion is frozen in a static two-dimensional representation. Our job is…
