Photography
Photography is the art of capturing light with a camera’s sensor or a piece of film, combined with a creative aesthetic resulting in a compelling image. The origin of the word, “Photography”, is derived from the Greek words “photos,” meaning light, and “graphos,” meaning drawing. So, photography literally means “drawing with light”.
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Best of 2024 — A Year in Review
The past couple of years have been quieter for my photography. My creative energy has been focused on teaching and building our family’s new home in the mountains—a project I’ve
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Wawona Photography — One hour. One-half acre.
Wawona, California is a small community located entirely within Yosemite National Park’s boundary. Most tourists drive past it without a second glance. They are usually on their way to or
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A Mountain Girl Goes To Death Valley
“Standing there, gaping at this monstrous and inhumane spectacle of rock and cloud and sky and space, I feel a ridiculous greed and possessiveness come over me. I want to
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2021 — A Year of Photography
It’s time again for my annual review of photographs, a year-end tradition now in its tenth year. This scrutiny is an important exercise for any artist — to reflect, examine,
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Canon 5DsR — Still a great camera?
“Ask Charlotte” is my landscape photography advice blog. Have a question about photography? Go ahead. Ask me. I’m delighted to hear from people who share my passion. I’ll do my
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Slow Photography and Working a Scene
Landscape photographers often have an approach to working a landscape scene. My own style is a bit like a slow dance, not about rushing around, although at times changing light
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My best photographs of 2020
It’s that time of year again — time to take a hard look at the best photographs I created over the last 12 months, and boy, what a year it
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Road trip! A photographic journey through seven states in a truck camper.
Journeys begin in all manner of ways. Ours began because of Covid-19. A year ago, I couldn’t have predicted that Gary and I would be happily cloistered in a
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A New Way of Being: Sheltering in Place
We made it through the first two weeks of living under the “shelter in place” restrictions of the Coronavirus pandemic. Gary and I are healthy and fine, hunkered down in
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Human/Nature — A photo essay
People love to love nature. We go through great expense and trouble to leave our cities and put ourselves into natural environments where we can enjoy these beautiful places. In
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Yosemite Renaissance 35
Thirty-five years of exhibits Over the last five years, I have been honored to have eight of my photographs selected for Yosemite Renaissance exhibits. With each submission, I strive to
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Twenty Nineteen: In retrospect
Twenty nineteen. I spent a lot less time creating and more time teaching, speaking, and writing about photography. I said my final goodbyes to my dear sister, Nancy. My husband
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Yosemite Valley Winter Light
A wonder for photographers, artists, and nature lovers December is a quiet month in Yosemite. You won’t find hordes of tourists in the Valley this time of
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What’s the most important piece of gear in your camera bag?
During a Colorado landscape photography workshop last Fall, a student asked for help on her composition. Approaching her, I noticed how she had setup her tripod. I cringed. Her very
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Could Yosemite’s iconic “Ahwahnee Meadow Cottonwoods” be Aspen trees instead?
I recently made another series of photos of the Ahwahnee Meadow Cottonwoods in Yosemite Valley. I’ve photographed this cluster of trees, commonly called “The Ahwahnee Meadow Cottonwoods,” many times spanning
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Revealing the ancient, quiet beauty of the Great Smoky Mountains
When the opportunity presented itself to photograph the Great Smoky Mountains National Park last Spring, the decision to go was an easy one. I had envisioned photographing this place for
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Winter into Spring: Yosemite’s annual transformation explored
Spring is one of my favorite seasons to thoroughly experience Yosemite National Park. Each month brings new, unique conditions and photographic opportunities. The following photographs were made
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Why Black and White Photography is Still Relevant
I’ve been drawn to creating black and white photographs a little more than usual lately. Admittedly, this is likely because I was hanging out with Cole Thompson and Chuck Kimmerle
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A Winter Snowstorm in Yosemite
A stunning four million people visit Yosemite National Park each year. Most plan their visit for the summer months, and the majority of those only spend their time in the
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Yosemite on Fire
The West is on fire. It must be Summer. As a native of Northern California, I grew up accustomed to the smell of forest fires starting in June and lasting
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Photographing a total solar eclipse: What could possibly go wrong?
I hadn’t planned to photograph the total solar eclipse that swept across the United States on August 21, 2017. First of all, I knew nothing about photographing such astronomical events,
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Out of Her Element: A Landscape Photographer Goes to Sea
“Let’s go to Europe this Summer! We’ll travel England and Germany, then head to Spain and spend a week on a yacht, cruising the Mediterranean!” Alas, my husband Gary’s enthusiasm
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What lens is best for astrophotography? Ask Charlotte!
“Ask Charlotte” is my landscape photography advice blog. Have a question about photography? Go ahead. Ask me. I’m delighted to hear from people who share my passion. I’ll do my
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Springtime in Yosemite
Yosemite National Park is a special place to visit any time of year, but it is Springtime when she really puts on a show. The Dogwoods and the Redbud bloom cheerily
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Lightroom & Photoshop Processing Lesson — “Autumn Aglow”
I recently was asked to share some of my processing techniques specific to my image, Autumn Aglow, which I made last Fall in California’s Eastern Sierra. To demonstrate my decision-making process,
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Spring Road Trip: Photographing the Desert
As road trips go, my April trip to Southern Utah and Arizona stacked up to be one of the more memorable ones. My husband and I hit the road with
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The Secret Language of Color and Landscape Photography
As a graphic designer, I use my knowledge of the power of color to create designs that emotionally provoke. For example, if I were designing a logo for a company that
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Creative Landscape Photographs
How do you make better, more meaningful creative landscape photographs? I’ve found some practices that have helped me along my creative path, and after jotting them down, I realized that
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Fundamentals for the Landscape Photographer
There are as many ways to take a picture as there are photographers, and every approach is as individual as the person behind the camera. Still, there is no substitute for understanding
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Japan: Part Four — Eagles
Every winter some very special guests from Russia visit the island of Hokkaido, Japan — magnificent sea eagles. These gigantic birds migrate south from Siberia to spend their winters in a
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Japan: Part Three — Japanese Cranes
Symbolizing luck, longevity, and fidelity, the Red-Crowned Crane, commonly called the Japanese Crane, is beloved in Japan, and other Asian nations. Immortalized in Japanese culture as tanchōzuru (red mountain), it is a
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Japan: Part Two — Whooper Swans
After several days of photographing and observing the fascinating Snow Monkeys on Japan’s mainland, which I wrote about in the first part of this blog series, our small band of photographers
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Japan: Part One — Snow Monkeys
I can’t tell you exactly what I was thinking at the time when I decided to sign up to go on a wildlife tour of Japan. My brother, Tom Hamilton, also a nature photographer, suggested
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Yosemite in Winter
Like many others, my love affair with Yosemite has been lifelong. As such, I’ve spent quite a lot of time there, observing the changes of the seasons, revisiting my favorite sites
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Grace
My followers often ask me about why my photographs have a certain distinctive quality to them. It is a hard question to answer. My first thought is to say, they
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Mono Lake all dressed up in Pink!
Mono Lake is famous for its dramatic sunrises, sunsets and weird tufa formations that rise spookily from the lake bottom. It is an enormous lake, covering more than 43,000 acres,
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Taking Inventory
This Spring, I made my first trip to the Southwest United States, where I spent a week exploring and photographing in and around some of the most famous landscapes in the country.
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Fall in the Eastern Sierras, 2014
While the Fall color is just now beginning to show among the maples, oaks and other deciduous trees here in the Bay Area, these young Aspen trees growing on the
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Surviving Oak in the Fire Zone
As I was taking this picture in a burnt area of Yosemite Valley very early in the morning last week, I heard the sound of wind coming from above, then
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Fall in the Eastern Sierra, 2014
In California, we don’t have the dazzling spectacle of fall color as they do on the East Coast, but on the Eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada, we have Aspen trees. This year,
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Tips for Photographing Trees and Forests
As a nature and landscape photographer, trees are often the central focus of my images or at least play a significant role in the composition. They contain many of the components that
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Pink Sunrise
This day gave me a pink sunrise. I returned to this spot on the Costa Rican coast several times, and the same fisherman was always there, casting his net, catching
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Notes from Costa Rica — Monkeys
During my recent trip to the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica, I was completely enchanted by the abundance of wildlife, but specifically by the monkeys. I’d never observed monkeys in
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Costa Rican Fisherman at Sunrise
A departure from my usual diet of Northern California landscapes, I’ve been in Costa Rica these last two weeks satisfying a very different kind of visual appetite. Today, I
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Winter Sky Reflected With Leaf 2014
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After the Rim Fire
It took me a while to muster the courage to visit the burn area from Yosemite’s massive Rim Fire last Summer. It was not quite what I expected.
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Anza Borrego Desert Sunrise, Winter 2014
A fun fact: Anza-Borrego is the largest state park in California and, after New York’s Adirondack Park, and the second largest in the continental United States. It includes 500 miles
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Cottonwoods in Winter Light
Although Yosemite draws hordes of visitors every Spring and Summer, I prefer to visit in the Winter, when you can see the exposed bones of the trees and
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Portrait of an Oak Tree, Napa Valley, Feb. 2013
Trees are one of my favorite subjects to photograph. They contain all the elements one needs to make a composition — form, texture, shape, color. This old soul lives at
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Ice and Frozen Bubbles
In mid-February, I spent some time in Yosemite Valley. At the first of the week, I was fortunate enough to bear witness to a clearing storm and captured some of
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Moonrise Over Half Dome — Tips for Photographing the Full Moon
If you read my blog yesterday, I featured a photo that I had taken at sunset in Yosemite facing West. The image featured in this blog is the one that
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Sunset Clouds Over the Sierras
I had arrived to this spot just above Yosemite Valley to shoot a much different scene than the one I present here. To the East, the moon was rising over
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Winter Compositions, Part 4 — Reflections and Yosemite’s Unique Light
Yosemite National Park’s iconic landmarks — Half Dome, El Capitan, the grand waterfalls — are most frequently the main subject of photographs, and for good reason. They are dramatic, photogenic
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Horsetail Fall, 2014
I hadn’t intended to photograph Horsetail Fall this year, but I was in Yosemite near the optimal time the fall puts on its annual display of color and water, and
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Winter Compositions, Part 3 — Finding Scenes in a Quiet Landscape
Landscape photographers love drama. Dramatic light. Dramatic skies. Dramatic color. All of which are usually coupled with the arrival or departure of a weather system. But what do we do
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Winter Compositions, Part 2 — Moving with the Light
Northern California finally received some much needed precipitation, which showed up over the weekend like a long lost friend. No one was muttering about the rain this time. It was
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Winter Compositions, Part 1 — Photographing Rainbows
California is facing the driest year on record, which was evident during my recent visit to Yosemite. Its grand waterfalls are down to a trickle, and the mighty Merced River
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Horsetail Falls in Yosemite Valley
I am blessed to live fairly close to my favorite National Park, Yosemite, and I manage to get up there fairly often to shoot, climb and hike. This year, I
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High quality UV filters for your camera: worth the extra money?
I was asked recently by a friend whether I thought he should buy a high quality ultra-violet (UV) filter or just get something inexpensive for his new, very nice Canon
