Introduction

To start out this blog, I will introduce myself. My name is Tom and I am a transplant from the western US to the midwest. I have been gone for a little over a year and miss the west quite a bit; I hope to return within the next few years. I am a full time grad student who sometimes wishes he were a full time photographer. Maybe one day. Right now I am content to take photos on weekends.

The bulk of my photography has been done in the west, though I have shot some since I have lived in the midwest. It is the west that captures my attention and fascinates me most. I hope, however, to highlight great outdoor photography from all across the world, not just the western US.

I decided to put this blog together to provide resources for the amateur nature and landscape photographer. As a rank amateur, I am always looking for ways to improve my photographic skills and find new places to shoot. My hope is that this blog becomes a place for photographers like to me (I hope somebody else is reading this blog) to find information about neat places to shoot, useful techniques, to see inspiring photos from professionals and other amateurs, and communicate with each other.

Being that I am unschooled in photography, I expect that most of what I present will come from other sources, which I will be careful to cite and link to. Ultimately, I would like this to be a place where an amateur landscape and nature photographer can come to get great information.

A note about the title: most visitors will recognize the darkroom technique of dodging and burning used to lighted or darken certain parts of an image, or will at least know that there are Photoshop tools by those names. I myself have only once used the techniques in a darkroom. They are very useful and widely used in helping to bring the most out of an image. I hope that this blog helps amateaur photographers to capture their very best images and get the most out of their photography.