Exploring the Chilean side of Patagonia – Torres Del Paine National Park, nestled amongst the Andes in one of South America’s most rugged photography locations.
Nature
Firefall – Capturing the Winter Glow of Yosemite’s Horsetail Falls
It’s so rare to find solitude in the world when combined with a stunning natural phenomenon; Yosemite National Park’s “Firefall” delivers both nature and crowds
Glass Ball Photography – The Whole World in your Hand
Learn how to get the best images from your glass ball photography – from city lights to vast landscapes – with this review and guide by Paul Reiffer – Photographer
Shoot for the Moon – Capturing the 2018 Lunar Eclipse
While eclipses of all sorts happen throughout each year – from “blood moons” to annular solar eclipses, total eclipses and every partial one in between, this year’s lunar eclipse promised something special: the longest lunar eclipse in the 21st century. So the call from Rollei came – could I come across and be involved in their live shoot on Instagram, capturing the spectacle from Hamburg? Well, why not…? With a few days’ preparation beforehand and […]
Norway’s Lofoten Islands – Stunning? Yes. “Untamed”? I’m not so sure.
It’s one of landscape photography’s “big ticks” – that shot of the fishermans cottages in the shadow of Lofoten’s mountain range in Hamnøy; one of the archipelago’s tiny islands connected by bridges that span for miles across the region. I have to admit, it’s been a place I’d been wanting to shoot for a while, so when the opportunity arose to test some new equipment in low temperatures, it was pretty high up there on […]
Rollei Lion Rock 30 Mk II Review – Could this be the most stable tripod, ever?
There’s a new kid on the block – well, triplets, actually : The Rollei Lion Rock Mark II series of tripods, made by FotoPro, with three different heights and capacities of up to 20kg, 25kg and 30kg. So, having used tripods from Manfrotto, Really Right Stuff, Gitzo and many others – after years of them trying to convince me to switch from my existing “old favourites”, could this finally be “the one”? Last year, I […]
Capture One – Advanced Masks & Adjustments, Bridging the Filter Gap
Glass filters are an essential part of many landscape photograpers’ kit bags, but what happens when there simply isn’t the perfect filter for the scene before your eyes?
Paul guides you through how Capure One’s advanced masks and dynamic range recovery tools can help bring that image back to exactly what you saw.
Hide & Seek – Denmark’s Sand-Covered Rubjerg Knude Lighthouse, Løkken
Arriving into bad weather wasn’t on the original plan, but it had taken us long enough to get to Løkken so a determination to shoot took over – I was there to shoot the hidden lighthouse, and that’s precisely what I was going to do, rain and sand storm or not. Set almost as far north as you can go in Denmark, Løkken has become somewhat of a local tourist-trap for its beaches more than […]
Review : Shooting Icebergs with the Phase One iQ3 Achromatic 100MP Digital Back
Over $50,000 for a camera system that only shoots Black and White images? Yes, say Phase One, and that’s exactly why the iQ3 100-Megapixel Achromatic Medium Format Digital Back is that price – because it does purely that, exceptionally well. While my original intention was to capture sunsets, sunrises, and everything in between on my trip to Ilulissat, in Greenland – the opportunity to collect a demo unit from them in Copenhagen on the way to […]
Iceland : The Land of the Midnight Sun, Mountains & Waterfalls
What an evening – and what a view! Being lucky enough to stand in the foothills of Kirkjufellsfoss at 12:30am this summer was quite the experience, and everything I thought it would be all those months ago when we planned this trip to Iceland to see the midnight sun. Landing into Reykjavik, it was clear this was going to be a strange week – looking back to the plane in the middle of the night […]
Stonehenge : Photographing the Inner Circle at Sunrise
Stood in the crisp air of a spring morning, enjoying the view through Stonehenge across the Wiltshire countryside; it was all too easy to forget for a moment that what I was photographing had been built over 4,500 years ago – by our Neolithic ancestors – out of 25 tonne “sarsen” stones transported for over 20 miles to be here. It was a morning that had been planned for a while – with weather that seemed set to disappoint. The nearer I […]
Chill Out : The End of Winter in Iceland
For the briefest of moments, the sound of cracking had stopped – the huge iceberg formations that feed Iceland’s iconic Jökulsárlón (or “glacial river lagoon” when translated) had steadied and the tide was turning. While often full of baby icebergs which have fallen away from the surface of the Vatnajökull glacier, finding one of this size in isolation resting in still water (with very few people around to distract) was quite unusual. Even better, the stillness […]
Spellbound : Iceland’s Northern Winter Waterfalls
It’s a truly amazing feeling – that moment when you walk up to a location that’s taken ages to get to, having planned it for months, with doubt all along the way that you’d even arrive – to find the exact scene you were hoping for. With a mix of relief, awe and then urgency; it was time to shoot the stunning Aldeyjarfoss waterfall, in the North-East of Iceland, before the weather closed in after our ice-bound […]
Hooker Lake : New Zealand, Frozen in Time
That brief moment, just before sunrise, when it’s no longer night – but the day is still yet to arrive – that was the moment when I captured this view of Hooker Lake, in the foothills of New Zealand’s Mount Cook. Standing at 3,724m (following a rockslide which lost 40m in 1991), Aoraki Mt Cook is the highest mountain in New Zealand, set amongst the collection of peaks which make up the Southern Alps. As with most […]
First Light : Sunrise at Zion National Park
Zion – a National Park that I’ve passed many times, yet strangely never visited. Heading in for just one night as we travelled the long trek from Jackson to Las Vegas, I was reliably informed that there was one key “sunset shot” that was worth heading in to at least try and capture. The signs of an unlikely shot were there – the weather was closing in, loads of people around in the late season, and […]
National Geographic : Greatest Landscapes – Featuring “Still”
Travelling around the US, it was great being able to pick up an early copy of National Geographic’s “Greatest Landscapes” book – published this month, featuring my shot of the stunning lone willow tree that sits in Lake Wanaka, New Zealand – before I head back to London. Released in the UK on 17th November, this 400 page book features some of the most dramatic and iconic photography from all around the world, and it’s a […]
Roy’s Peak – Another of New Zealand’s (now) cliché locations
Over-used by cliché wedding photographers, over-“influenced” by millions of instagrammers and over-sold around the world by tourism boards, this once peaceful hiking trail and overlook across Lake Wanaka has sadly now become a magnet for “look at me” shots worldwide. Beautiful though it is, Roy’s Peak has fallen victim to the same challenges faced by “that Wanaka tree” and many other tourist traps nearby – the result of huge popularity following the publishing of (what were […]
From 5 stars to a billion stars : Road-Tripping the Jucy way
Persuading me to leave a 5-star hotel and “rough it” in a Jucy campervan for a week or two while tearing around New Zealand’s south island is no mean feat, but just over a year ago now it was done – and with some great photography results to show for it. This year, based on that success, was the return. With a lot more clarity on our route, more flexibility in our approach and with Jucy […]
Restless – Lake Te Anau, a New Zealand Sunset
For all the weather forecasts and cloud cover tools that exist out there, one element of each day still remains completely unpredictable to all of us photographers: Sunset. We might proclaim “it’s going to be a good one tonight” or “there’s on point, nothing’s going to happen” with a knowingly convincing tone every now and then, but the truth is nobody can really say what will happen in the sky from one evening to the next. Our […]
New Zealand Nights : Aurora Australis & our Galaxy Above
Seeing the northern lights (aurora borealis) in the sky above us is becoming an increasingly popular to-do list item, but despite being fortunate enough to have seen them a few times now, the lure of seeing the southern lights (aurora australis) during our time in New Zealand was just too tempting to ignore. We’d been lucky so far, really, when it came to night sky photographs. While not my favourite subject, hunting for the right location, angle, […]
landscapes in motion : out of this | world
Say hello to our next video portfolio – this time, “landscapes in motion”. Following the successful launch of my “cityscapes : out of this | world” portfolio video, together with the guys at ToInspire, we’ve managed to create another – giving a whole new feel to my landscape images from across the planet. This time, we’re featuring images shot in California, New Zealand, China, Iceland, Australia, Arizona, and of course my home in Dorset. As […]
Inside Antelope Canyon – Paul’s Complete Photography Guide
It’s a location that features on the bucket list of many photographers, and it’s a magnetic one at that. Having already visited both Upper and Lower Antelope Canyon 6 or 7 times since my first visit in 2011, I still have the urge to return every now and then to capture the other-worldly scenes of light-trails, stunning rock formations and shadows throughout these two natural wonders just outside of Page, Arizona. Sadly, there is a lot […]
Old Harry Rocks – 3rd Time Lucky
Despite the initial frustration, there’s something rather satisfying about finally getting the shot you’ve been working at for a while – managing to “beat the weather”, in a sense… Old Harry Rocks | East – Buy the open edition print Old Harry Rocks, jetting out into the English Channel – these chalk cliffs are all that remains of the stretch of headland that once joined the Isle of Wight to the mainland at Purbeck. Similar […]
9 Years in the Making : Fog City – San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge
There’s always that one shot, for every photographer out there – “the one” that just keeps getting away, the one that’s never quite right when you click the button, or the one that’s impossible to find the right conditions to capture. For me, that shot has been the same for over 9 years now: San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge in the fog. Finally, one random winter’s afternoon, I managed to break that spell – and shoot […]