UPCOMING 2010 WORKSHOPS:

Summer Big Sur Photo Workshop - August, 17-20, 2010 (Workshop Sold Out)
Arches/Canyonlands Photo Workshop - November 3-7, 2010 (Workshop Sold Out)
Winter Big Sur Photo Workshop - Magic Light and The Pfeiffer Beach Arch - January 11-14, 2011 (space available)
Northern Arizona Photo Workshop - Grand Canyon, Upper Antelope Canyon, Horseshoe Bend and Sedona - March 16-20, 2011 (space available)
Spring Big Sur Workshop - 4th Annual Wildflowers and Color - April 17-20, 2011 (space available)
Springtime in Lake Tahoe and the Mokelumne Wilderness - May 14-17, 2011 (space available)
Northern California - 3rd Annual Redwoods and Mendocino Photo Workshop - May 23-26, 2011 (just added)
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New Article on my Website: First Look at Photoshop CS5 - Content Aware Fill

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Books Available for Purchase on my Website:
Refined Vision: 50 Lessons Designed to Improve Your Digital Landscape Photography (e-book and printed versions - 160 pages)
The Photographer's Guide to the Big Sur Coast (e-book version - 102 pages)
On the Edge (printed version - softcover and hardcover - 120 pages)
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Idyllic island scenes seem embedded in all our memories. Perhaps from the bombardment of imagery spawned by magazines, movies, television, and even more recently, the internet, a new location can be viewed and imprinted into our internal visual system similar any learned subject. Yet oftentimes reality does not match the imagined.

Finding idyllic island scenes, like any type of successful landscape photography, requires the correct alignment of elements and light. Sometimes the scene can be discovered but requires many return visits until the light cooperates. Rarely when traveling to faraway venues does one have that luxury. Most times it is find a scene and hope the light cooperates.

But there are types of light that can increase one's odds of matching elements, and clouds/fog is at the top of the list. The soft light produced by such times makes even the simplest scene look good and all the tonal values fit nicely into the 6-stop capture range of one's camera sensor.. While concluding a shoot on the Big Island's Akaka State Park, I stumbled onto one of those scenes where light perfectly matched subject (and this was in the middle of the day)! The heavy cloud cover had produced some showers earlier and then the air got very still (and humid). After shooting along a loop trail that essentially took one through a rain forest complete with towering waterfalls, I exited out to the parking area and there in front of me was a stoic-shaped Koa tree on a hillside overlooking the azure-blue Pacific.

I scrambled to come up with a composition that would include these colorful Ti plants and decided to compress foreground and background with the help of my 70-200 mmL lens. I purposely set the aperture to f/11 to keep the foreground Ti leaves and tree sharp, but to intentionally defocus the ocean and sky to allow the blur of color to serve as my background. Koa trees are very stately looking and are abundant on both the islands of Kauai and Hawaii. I'm not sure what the yellow flowering bush was, if someone out there does please let me know.

One final thought about foreground elements. They serve a purpose in a number of positive ways, mainly, as a starting point for the eye, an extra layer to help create depth, and as a framing device for adding perspective to a scene. Yet to simply place any element into a scene as a foreground can be detrimental to the overall success of an image. Foreground elements must work in harmony with other elements in the scene. Lines and shapes must still be paramount to the overall composition and must mesh together in a cohesive fashion. As said, the foreground must be a starting point for the viewer's eye to travel through the image. If it is an element that is out of place, it will look unnatural. Some scenes actually work better without a foreground element, but one should train their eye to at least seek out a suitable foreground. Don't be content with simply finding a scene (as I did here with the Koa tree), move around and find other elements that can help create depth for your image. Remember, you are working in a 2-dimensional medium and part of the job of the photographer is render a 3-dimensional look to the scene. Foregrounds that work in harmony with the scene can do this, those that can't should be eliminated.