Between editing software and artificial intelligence, photographs are no longer trusted as presenting an absolute truth. It’s a different world from the one nearly 150 years ago when Eadweard Muybridge showed racehorses can briefly fly through the air. But even an unedited photo represents only one version of the truth. That’s because there is no such thing as a completely unedited photo.
Fibrous strands of red swayed just below the water's surface with the motion of the incoming tide. I loved the color. I loved the lines. I loved the serenity. As I stood up to my knees in the saltwater of Puget Sound, I was struck by the beauty before me.
But none of it was supposed to be there.
You will sometimes hear photographers talk about getting “the shot” — they captured what they wanted to get. If you were to compare photography to the way we commonly think about education, this picture is the equivalent of the diploma. It’s the reward. The achievement is complete. We’re done here.
This concept has some precedence in art history. Henri Cartier-Bresson was a French photographer of candid scenes and he was known for capturing “the decisive moment.” The elements in his photographs were so perfectly arranged that a picture taken even a split second earlier or later would appear obviously inferior.
There’s a saying about how Earth becomes smaller every passing year. There is an element of literal truth to that. Each day, several hundred tons of hydrogen, helium, and oxygen leak out of our atmosphere, more than offsetting the 40-some tons of asteroid debris and other space dust that enters. But the saying is really about how technology makes our world feel smaller.
With the internet, information travels across the planet at light speed. Commercial jetliners allow us to get virtually anywhere in under a day. But as the world feels smaller, we may feel smaller still. While the shrinking world puts more within reach, our influence seems to be shrinking, too. There are plenty of factors that make us feel personally insignificant.
Most of the time I’m in nature I’m thinking. About the meaning of life. About how everything is connected to everything else. How all of us — human, plant, or animal — are just trying to get by.
If, right this moment, I could be anywhere in the world, I might choose to be in a national park in an exotic country. But I’m at home, in front of my computer. And I just got back from taking a walk in my neighborhood.
My route is largely the same every time I do it, and I try to walk it at least every other day. Someone I regularly see on these walks asked me once why I don’t choose a different path. “I would be so bored,” she said.
Photography is one of the tools I use to satisfy my curiosity about the natural world. But while 99 percent of my photos are taken from land, more than 70 percent of Earth’s surface is covered by water. Life is short and nobody can see everything, of course, but my choice of subjects had significantly limited my worldview.
It’s a discrepancy that I’ve been trying to resolve off and on over the past decade or so. Just over a year ago, I made my greatest effort yet to explore the world beneath the waves as I explored the lagoons surrounding three of the Cook Islands in the South Pacific.
My goal with any time in nature — as it is with my photography — is to get closer to the world around me. To make connections. To see something I never noticed before.
Here in the northern hemisphere, we’re now in the midst of our longest nights of the year. While some bemoan perpetual darkness — where I am nearly two-thirds of the day is night — I’m finding myself staying out late more often.
One of the things I love most about nature photography is that every moment is a fleeting moment. The scenery is in a state of constant change. I was reminded of that recently while hiking in La Vera, a valley-filled region in the mountains of western Spain.
I was there during heavy rainstorms, though I escaped the worst. In the eastern part of the country, 229 people died in the worst flooding to hit the country in years. You can donate to relief efforts here.
The vast majority of my images are taken during the light of day, but that doesn’t mean I do not enjoy the night. So when there was a chance to photograph a comet that hasn’t passed by Earth in 80,000 years, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity.
Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) was discovered in early 2023 by astronomers using telescopes at the Tsuchinshan Observatory in China and the ATLAS survey using a reflector in South Africa. At the time, it was nearly 700 million miles from the sun and already showing a tail. It made its closest approach to the sun at the end of last month, and became the brightest comet to grace our night sky in 27 years.
When curators talk about the artistic vision behind a photograph, they sometimes start by explaining how the picture represents a singular moment of time and space. The artist found something special right there and then and crafted the image to capture and share that feeling.
By extension, this means that that particular moment was over by the time the film was developed or the file saved to the camera’s memory card. For the picture to represent a truly unique slice of time, everything must ultimately be ephemeral.
Photography is all about light. Its very name comes from Greek words that mean “painting with light.”
Often when we think of photography, we speak of ‘light’ in literal terms. That’s partly because without light, any photograph would be but a solid block of black. But quantity of light is just one component.
