Hello my friend,

I’m writing this from the Smoky Mountains, right in the middle of my spring workshops, where everything feels like it’s waking up at once. The light gets softer, the colors come back, and the opportunities start showing up faster than you can keep up with.

If you’ve been waiting for spring to show up, this is your moment.

And before you get into it, I tucked something in below that I’ve been hinting at over the past couple weeks. It’s built around one of the most unforgettable landscape & wildlife experiences I’ve ever had behind the camera, and if it’s even remotely on your radar, it’s worth a look.

As always, thanks for being here - Mark

📺 MY NEW VIDEOS

You're Giving Too Much Space to the Wrong Parts of Your Photo

If you’ve ever looked at the back of your camera and felt like something about your photo just wasn’t working, even though the light was good and the settings were right, the problem might not be your exposure, your lens, or the conditions. It might be how much of your frame you’re giving to parts of the scene that aren’t actually helping the photo. In this video, I’m going to show you a simple way to think about framing your composition in the field so every part of your image has a purpose.

Fixing White Balance Makes Photos Worse - Here's the Fix

Fixing white balance seems like the responsible thing to do when editing your photos, but in many situations it can actually make your images look worse. This is especially true during blue hour and golden hour, when the color in the scene is not a mistake to be corrected but a mood to be preserved. In this video, I’ll show you why tools like Auto White Balance and the eyedropper can sometimes remove the very color that made you take the photo in the first place, and more importantly, how to recognize when white balance should be adjusted and when it should be left alone.

🚀 NEW EXPERIENCE COMING SOON

Something special is landing next week, and it is easily one of the most rare wildlife experiences I've ever put together. This is not a typical photography trip. It is limited, remote, and built around getting you in front of wild brown bears in a way very few photographers ever experience.
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If that even remotely interests you, make sure you are watching your inbox closely next week. This one will not stick around..

🔓 VAULT FAVORITES

That's Why Your Handheld Photos Aren't Sharp

I recently returned home from my Greenland Workshop where we were photographing in some of the most difficult handheld conditions imaginable - low light during blue hour on a moving sailboat all handheld, doesn't get more difficult than that! And in this video, I'll walk you through the techniques I worked with the participants on in order to get sharp handheld photographs.​​

📖 GOOD READS Exposure Bracketing: A Guide to Perfectly Exposed Photos For years, exposure bracketing has been celebrated as the foolproof method to ensure optimal exposure in challenging lighting conditions. However, as technology continues to advance and photographers refine their skills, it's becoming increasingly evident that exposure bracketing isn't always a necessary step. In this comprehensive guide, we'll explore the nuances of exposure bracketing: when it's essential, when it's optional, and when it's simply unnecessary. Photos That Don't Require Bracketing: Let's begin by jumping into scenes that typically don't require exposure bracketing. Picture yourself in a beautiful mountain scene, on a crisp & cloudy fall morning. In scenes where the dynamic range isn't extreme and rather flat, exposure bracketing may often feel like an unnecessary complication. By understanding your camera's limitations and learning to read the histogram with precision, you can confidently capture perfectly exposed images without the need for bracketing. Photos That May Require Bracketing: Next, lets consider scenes that may warrant exposure bracketing. Imagine a landscape where dappled sunlight filters through, casting intricate patterns of light and shadow. In these nuanced environments, your histogram may reveal spikes on both ends, indicating a challenge in achieving a balanced exposure. While it's still possible to capture a usable image in a single shot, exposure bracketing can provide insurance against blown-out highlights or crushed shadows, resulting in a cleaner final image that truly does justice to the scene's beauty. Photos That Do Require Bracketing: Now, let's turn our attention to scenes where exposure bracketing is not just beneficial but essential. Envision a dramatic sunset casting fiery hues across the sky, while the landscape below is shrouded in deep shadows. In these instances, your histogram serves as a crucial tool for determining the need for bracketing. >> Read More​