John Gerlach - Digital Landscape Photography

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ISBN: 978-0-240-81093-5

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About the Author

John and Barbara Gerlach have been professional nature photographers for more than 25 years. Their beautiful nature photographs are publish in magazines, calendars, and books worldwide. They travel the globe leading photographic safaris to terrific wildlife destinations and teach field workshops on landscape, close-up, and hummingbird photography. More than 50,000 people have attended their intensive 1-day nature photography instructional seminars. Both love to teach others how to make their own fine photographs. They enjoy living in the mountains near Yellowstone National Park and frequently ride their horses in the backcountry to photograph. For details about their instructional nature photography field programs, please go to www.gerlachnaturephoto.com.

Acknowledgments

We dedicate this book to a fantastic group of skilled landscape photographers whom we know personally or vicariously through their photo books that find a home on our bookshelves. This list includes Ansel Adams, Ian Adams, Craig Blacklock, Willard Clay, Carr Clifton, Jack Dykinga, John Fielder, Tim Fitzharris, David Muench, William Neill, Pat OHara, Galen Rowell, John Shaw, Tom Till, Larry Ulrich, and many others. Their wonderful images of the landscape inspired us to visit many of the places they photographed. We know it was seeing so many awesome landscape images, especially of the American West, that encouraged us to settle close to Yellowstone National Park in 1993.

You wouldnt be holding this book were it not for the help and encouragement of the super staff at Focal Press. Paul Gottehrer, a Senior Project Manager at Elsevier, attended our one-day photo seminar. At the end of the seminar he asked us to send a book proposal to his company, which we did shortly thereafter. That proposal led to our first book, Digital Nature Photography The Art and the Science. Cara Anderson, Carlin Reagan, and Valerie Geary at Focal Press were our primary contacts throughout the process of creating this book. They deserve special thanks for putting up with us spending way too much time in the mountains far away from e-mail and cell phones. They somehow kept us on schedule, even though we were impossible to reach most of the time.

Many of the images in this book were taken around our Idaho mountain home and in nearby Yellowstone National Park. We wish to thank Bill Howell and Clyde Seely for hiring us in 1995 to lead winter photo tours by snowmobile in the park. Over the years, weve thoroughly enjoyed hundreds of winter days in fabulous Yellowstone National Park. Some of the images we captured appear in this book.

Terry and Angie Search who own Yellowstone Mountain Guides helped us pursue our passion for riding horses in the wilderness by hiring us to be their photo wranglers. For several years, weve enjoyed guiding photographers on extended overnight horseback photo trips into the backcountry of Yellowstone National Park and the Lee Metcalf wilderness.

Mike and Mary Sue, Jan and Terry, the two Nolan couples who collectively own the Timber Ridge Lodge, deserve more thanks than we can possibly bestow on them. Since 1988 we have taken over their small motel and lodge thats nestled in the gorgeous northern Michigan woods for weeks at a time. Mary Sue and Jan never once protested when we completely rearranged everything in the lodge to make it more suitable for our photography workshops. When we ask Mary Sue if we can move all of her furniture just one more time, she always cheerfully responds with the most beautiful Yooper accent by saying, you betcha, I need to clean under the couches anyway, eh?

Writing a book is a daunting task with long and lonely hours. One of the hardest parts is finding typos that are obvious when pointed out but nearly impossible to see if you wrote them yourself. A couple of our best photography students offered to read the text over to spot typos, errors, omissions, or anything that wasnt clear. Al Hart and Dan Pater both helped considerably in finding these errors. Al spent incredible amounts of time reworking much of my original writing to make it far more understandable and precise, so we all owe him a huge debt of gratitude. Dan did his best to help control our comma chaos and contributed numerous important advisory comments. Together, these two fine writers helped enormously in making this text so much better for you to read. Edited chapters flew back and forth across the country via e-mail at all hours of the day and night. We all laughed a lot and learned a lot and hope these fine editing commandos will join us for future books! Since both of these excellent photographers shoot Nikon, more Nikon details made it into the text, too. If you do find typos or other problems, I (John) accept responsibility and beg your forgiveness.

Two professional photographers read this manuscript, too. Many thanks to Craig Carlson and Tony Sweet for offering suggestions that make this book better. We appreciate your time and effort greatly!

The fifty thousand or so students who have passed through our photo classes over the decades deserve the most recognition of all. Many have offered advice on where to find magical landscape opportunities and their probing questions have forced us to find crucial answers to questions we havent ever considered. Teaching has always been a two-way street for us. We help our students improve their knowledge and photo skills in the field and they help us deepen our own depth of understanding, too. Its a winwin situation for all. We feel truly blessed for all of the wonderful folks we have met over thirty years of teaching nature photography!

Cindy Koch, one of our gifted students, made this fine image of a New Mexico aspen grove. Remembering our advice, she turned the sun into a star by stopping the lens down to f/22. We love how she balanced the sun with the bear claw marks on the nearest tree!