The National Park Service turns 100 today, and everyone can take part in the celebration! The centennial will kick off a second century of stewardship of America’s national parks and engaging communities through recreation, conservation, and historic preservation programs.
The National Park Service will be offering free admission to all 412 National Parks for their birthday weekend,Thursday August 25th through Sunday the 28th!
Find your park and discover the parks and programs in your own backyard!
A few spots still remain for our Palouse workshop coming up August 25th through the 28th! Capture the rolling landscapes and the old-world feel of this beautiful location. Wheat-topped hills and sporadic old barns compose a landscape seemingly frozen in time. The purity of the landscape, untouched by the modern irrigation systems that generally detract from otherwise beautiful farmland vistas, will allow you to capture truly unique images you won’t find anywhere else.
Visit the events page for more information, and to sign up for this visit to the Palouse!
Oregon is home to one of the most scenic and beautiful coastlines in America. Two spots remain to travel with Art, where you will not only explore the location but also your creativity as he describes new ways to visualize and compose your images from a conceptual perspective that will make your captures unique and personal. On top of experiencing this stunning locale, you will take away techniques that will enhance and personalize your photographic endeavors to come.
I started doing workshops in Glacier Bay back in the 1980s and this remains one of my favorite trips of the year. The small boat experience in the midst of a wilderness wonderland cannot be beaten. We saw more orcas than I have in a long time and I even added a new species to my list, the endangered marbled murrelet.
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My recent trip to Tanzania included a visit to Lake Natron, where I hoped to capture the colonies of lesser and greater flamingos who rely on the area as one of its few consistent breeding grounds in East Africa. As you’ll see from the slide show, our subjects did not disappoint! The salt water lake is home to organisms that manage to thrive in the high salinity and ultimately give the water the rich and varied hues, providing a beautiful backdrop for our shoot.
Pelicans and other birds also made an appearance, and zebras kicked up dust as they traveled through the same region. As mentioned in my previous post – this trip was short but satisfyingly productive and well worth the aggressive travel schedule. I feel this is my strongest work yet in this region, and I hope you enjoy these images!
I have just returned from a short, but very productive, trip to Tanzania. First up: photos from Ngorongoro Crater, which is the world’s largest inactive caldera covering an area of 100 square miles. The crater is a highly productive grassland, home to thousands of large animals, including wildebeest, zebra, buffalo, rhinos, lions, servals, and hyenas.
1) Check the Olympic National Park off your bucket list. Do you have a National Parks passport? Maybe it’s time to get one and start visiting the sites of “America’s Best Idea.” The park system is marking its 100th anniversary this year.
2) Check a workshop with Art Wolfe off your bucket list. A UNESCO world heritage site combined with a world renowned photographer, who also happens to be a great teacher and inspiration? Check!
3) The trees. The temperate rainforest has a living standing biomass which may be the highest anywhere in the world. And it is stunningly gorgeous.
4) The coast. The rocky headlands, beaches, tidepools nurturing a living rainbow of colors and textures, offshore sea stacks of the park’s 73-mile wilderness coastline is a rare treasure.
5) Assistants. I am accompanied by terrific assistants to assure that your photographic experience is as rich as your surroundings. The Quinault retreat is manned by my workshop coordinator Libby as well as two experts in Leica cameras, who will have equipment on hand for you to use; Libby, Bill, Yuri, and Anthony will be working the Olympic Peninsula workshop.
6) Friendship. I don’t know how many friendships have formed as a result of these workshops in particular.
7) Vampires. They’re sexy.
8) Water. Water defines Olympic National Park. There’s a reason why the trees are massive and the moss lush; why the rivers are highways of life; why the glaciers are there to sculpt the massive peaks.
9) Wildlife. We may get lucky and see the huge Roosevelt elk that make the Olympics home.
10) Adventuresome learning. I work hard to make sure everyone comes away from these multiday workshops feeling better about and more enriched by their photography skills.
The last leg of our trip to the Galapagos included Isabela & Espanola islands. Here we were able to capture a variety of the inhabitants of the the islands, from the usual suspects such as groups of boobies and marine iguanas to spotted eagle-rays and the colorful hawksbill turtle, which I photographed above water using my polarizer in the shallow mangrove estuaries. Pairs of albatross and a dynamic Galapagos hawk rounded out this part of our journey.
At San Cristobal & Floreana Islands I was able to capture some wonderful shots of the local bird life, and the Galapagos sea lions were all too willing to show off for the camera. I purchased a generic light weight camera housing along the way to ensure I could get these under water shots, although I was admittedly a little weary of putting my new Canon 1DX into the water in a setup that I hadn’t tested before and trust it would not leak, but no guts no glory! The payoff made the risky endeavor worth while as the sea lions gave us quite a show. I also managed to capture schools of fish as well as some boobies looking for a meal.
I couldn’t be happier with what we were able to find on this trip. The local wildlife has been an incredible host for our group.
Thus far on our trip the marine iguanas have managed to steal the show, but never so much as our trip to Fernandina Island, where their masses carpeted the coastline. Some of my favorite shots so far come from these groupings, photographed from a low angle with the landscape in the background. I also managed to juxtapose some of the smaller iconic species of the Galápagos, namely lava lizards and Sally Lightfoot crabs, crawling over the lethargic marine iguanas.
