World River Day, 2023

September 24, 2023
Climate Changenature photographyRichard Mack PhotographyRivers

Today is World River Day a time to remember how we depend on fresh water for life itself. For me there is nothing like sitting by water, especially a river or stream of various sizes and watching the water consistently roll by and hearing the sound of the water’s movement. Evry river runs into the big lakes and ultimately the oceans around the world.

We must keep our waters clean and keep protecting them as we move forward. Many programs around the world are working to clean up our rivers from government programs to volunteer programs which you, yes, you can get involved with. Do a search for local river organizations working with the rivers in your area and get involved. In the meantime, enjoy some of the rivers I have photographed over my career.

The rivers included:

Missouri River, United States

Little River, United States

Columbia River, United States

East Fork Bitterroot River, United States

Middle Prong Little River, United States

Chicago River, United States

Dordogne River, France

Seine River, France

Rio Manso, Argentina

Arno River, Italy

Thames River, England

#richardmackphoto #mackphoto #freshwater #worldriversday #rivers #nature #streams #invironment #climatechange #invironmentalphotographer #naturephotographer #naturephotography #canonr5 #canon1ds #canonphotographer #canonexploreroflight #greatsmoymountainsnationalpark #nps #gsmnp #smokiesfriends #gsma #SWS #thesweetwaterseas #greatlakes

Great Smokies Book Trailer

February 22, 2023
Great Smoky Mountain National ParkGreat Smoky Mountains BookRichard Mack PhotographySmokies

Here is a short trailer for the new book Great Smoky Mountains National Park: Five Decades of American Landscapes which will be in our hands shortly! After 10 years of not changing anything in this best selling book in Great Smoky Mountains National Park stores I thought it would be good to change up this third printing by adding new work. I’ve added 55 new images and redesigned which images are where in the the book. The printing is by ArtBookPrinting who worked with us on this version. The print quality is the best I’ve experienced! Each image has more detail than beofre, I went through each image in Lightroom/Photoshop and pulled out more details than before which the presses could now handle.

I also want to thank my designer Rich Nickel, John Manos for editing the copy and of course Steve Kemp for writing the foreword and chapter pieces. A book like this is truely a work of collaboration! Thank you to all who worked with me on this book.

Rember you can pre-order the book on QuietLight Publishing website! http://www.quietlightpublishing.com

Great Smoky Mountains – Fog

June 8, 2022
CanoncloudsenvironmenteveningExpectationsGreat Smoky Mountains BookGreat Smoky Mountains NPLandscapesNational ParksRichard Mack PhotographySmoky Mountain National ParkSmoky MountainsSmoky Mountains Book

This year we need to do a third printing of my book on the park, Great Smoky Mountains National Park; Thirty Years of American Landscapes. I headed down in January for new snow images and went back last week to see about getting the synchronized fireflies and some star images. Sadly, not many synchronized fireflies had come out yet, a few but not many, and the weather was cloudy every night. What happens then? You change strategy and get images of the streams – which were running full because of the rain – and details of the mountains and the vistas with the fog lifting.

Foggy days in Great Smoky Mountains NP

Here is the first set of images of the rain and fog. I’ll do a second posting of the rivers and streams later.

It may not be what you envisioned as the images you wanted to capture but you must quickly decide that is simply fine, I can make images of other subjects. I shot video as well as we will probably have a eBook version with some of the video clips.

I have never had a bad trip to the smokies in my 40+ years of going to one of my favorite places. Always feels like a place I know even though there are parts of the park I have not been to as of yet. Hope you enjoy the images. Stay tuned for more!

Cheers, Richard

Monument Valley Time-lapse

April 22, 2022
CanonLandscapesMonument ValleyNational ParksNight sky time-lapseRichard Mack Photographytime-lapseTimelapse+
Images from Monument Valley, Arizona

On my recent trip to the Southwest, we stopped in Monument Valley for one night, too short of a time but that’s all the time we had. We stayed at The View Hotel on the Navajo Reservation which overlooks the Mitten and valley. Perfect location and many rooms have open porches for sky watching. Perfect! I set up two cameras for time-lapse. The main camera, a Canon 5D IV with the 16-35mm lens and another 5D IV with the 28-105 lens. I used the Pulse intervalometer by Alpine Labs for the timelapse.

The technical side. The camera with the 16-35mm lens was the main camera which did both nighttime star timelapses. It was set at ISO 2000 and f2.8 at 20 second exposures. The exposures were done every 30 seconds. The first timelapse in the film took 2 hours and 56 minutes to produce. I’ve seen people using higher ISO’s but haven’t done that yet to se how much noise there might be in the shots. These exposures were about 1 stop too dark. I lightened them among other adjustments in Lightroom. I also adjusted the kelvin temperature from 5500, down to 4500, to bring out the blue and blackness of the sky.

The timelapse of sunrise was done on the second camera with shots every 2 seconds with the settings ISO 100, F11 and shutter ranging from 1/13th to 1/40th of a second. If you look closely, you can see the wind blowing dust and a few small dust devils across the ground. By the time we had to leave there was a dust storm a brewing and it was hard to see the valley.

In post processing the timelapse I use the plugin from Timelapse+ Studio in Lightroom to create the key exposures and then make adjustments to these images and have the plugin adjust the images evenly across the length of each timelapse video.

Images from Monument Valley, Arizona
Images from Monument Valley, Arizona
Images from Monument Valley, Arizona
Images from Monument Valley, Arizona
Images from Monument Valley, Arizona

One great thing with timelapse is if you are shooting from a hotel balcony you can fall asleep while it is playing out! OK, I woke up several times to check things which was good as the Milky Way was rising farther south than I thought even with the star apps I have to calculate it before a shoot. When I started the clouds looked like it could either get overcast or stay partly cloudy. One of those times it will work or not – but if you don’t go ahead and shoot it you can’t get it back!

Images from Monument Valley, Arizona

I hope you enjoy the still images and the video! If you have any questions just ask!

Cheers,

Richard

#monumentvalley #richardmackphoto #nature #timelapse #timelapseplus #astrophotography #Canon5D4 #canon #natgeoyourshot #natgeo #stars #nightsky #milkyway #milkywayphotography #alpinelabs #alpinepulse