Photography Workshop Registration Closes Today

Posted on August 19, 2013 by Lech

I’m very excited to be teaching a workshop on photography that is being sponsored by the California Native Grasslands Association.

The workshop is a full 8-hour engagement with myself and photographer Jim Coleman of the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center. We will be catering specifically to thinking about outdoors photography with an eye on conservation and site documentation. That doesn’t mean we won’t offer some basic ideas, themes and concepts to improve anyone’s photography (and if I remembered half the things I teach, I’d be a better photographer too!). We only have a limited number of spots remaining (in keeping with our class size of less than 15)!

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Not a bad place for a birthday or bachelor party or thoughts on impermanence

Posted on August 12, 2013 by Lech

location: Twin Lakes, Desolation Wilderness.

180 Degree Panorama of Twin Lakes – Desolation Wilderness – Click to enlarge the photo. Original is almost 10,000 pixels wide making for a great 5 foot long print!

Perseid showers overhead. It’s 3 am and I’m slightly wh’skeyed. I think that Krishnamurti’s August 10th mediation says it best: Continue reading →

The Dammed and the Wild: Rivers – August 2013 Desktop Calendar

Posted on August 2, 2013 by Lech

Barely one of every 20 rivers found in the Northeast run to the ocean without an artificial dam altering flow patterns. Damming rivers was historically a profitable venture that allowed for control of nature and power generation. Now, many of these structures stand like tombstones. They represent a time when wild rivers were plenty and people were few. We are beyond that point and a greater economic and environmental good is actually derived from liberating these rivers.

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Northern Coast Portrait Bike Tour

Posted on July 22, 2013 by Lech

I’m very lucky to have ambitious and inspired friends like Ryan. He constantly pushes all around him to make people more conscious, more involved, more informed, and more fit. Yes, more fit, might be the best description for a buddy who now has a term that describes the process wherein one begins a cursory run or bike ride only to realize that the perfunctory nature of the workout slowly morphs into a point-of-no-return epic endurance event.
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Thinking Like a Mountain Goat – July 2013 Desktop Calendar

Posted on July 2, 2013 by Lech

These are resourceful, smart, gregarious, adaptable creatures… and they’re suffering in a world with a changing climate.

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My 100th post: Thoughts on Rain, Boundaries, Inspiration

Posted on June 25, 2013 by Lech

A tribute to another photographer who sometimes had rain and sometimes sun. Either way he created amazing images from embracing nature. Into Yosemite Valley – circa 2010.

Rain is the force of life in Mediterranean climates. It’s not simply a thing that happens here or there – rather it defines wet and dry seasons. It creates possibilities for birds, worms and salmon alike. Today it’s raining here. It’s quite a surprise for the end of June, but I wanted to embrace it. It’s a beautiful caesura in the parching season of the hot, dry summer which is forecast for 2013. Enjoy the rain, the anomalous rain and all the life it brings at the most unpredictable moments. Continue reading →

Celebrating Point Molate Through Art

Posted on June 20, 2013 by Lech

I am very blessed to be taking part in a very unique conservation art show. This event is dedicated to celebrating an environment that was nearly lost to a poorly planned development. A citizens group from Richmond was one of the few advocates for protecting the Richmond shoreline. In what I would call the Golden Age of conservation in the Bay Area, most conservation organizations either supported developing the shoreline into a casino or quietly refused to comment. Conservation as a greater entity failed. I was angry, sad, and broken as I worked on this project as both a photographer and a conservation biologist.

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June Desktop Calendar: El Capitan Meadow to be Closed

Posted on June 1, 2013 by Lech

Yes, you read that right. One of the most iconic, magical places on earth will only be accessible by trespass. This is what we call Fortress Conservation in the ecology field: buy the land – then put a fence around it to limit human interaction.

Erecting fences is a short-sighted, privilege-driven way of doing conservation. It’s not a way to promote conservation, it’s the way to kill it.

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Stow Lake engagement with Leah and Adam

Posted on May 21, 2013 by Lech

Leah and Adam are about the sweetest people you’ll ever meet. They have kindness in their souls. And they’re good listeners too, making for a really fun engagement session at Stow Lake, in Golden Gate Park – San Francisco. The cherry trees were going off, and it was green as green gets for our golden California. It was lots of fun, and no, no one went swimming in the lake today!

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Drought, Groundwater and the Joshua Tree – May 2013 Desktop Calendar

Posted on May 2, 2013 by Lech

While waking transects and looking for rare plants in the dusty Mojave Desert of 2013, I had much time to consider vastness, appropriateness and tenacity. Notably, it was hot, dry, and teetering on spiritual (which isn’t always a good thing when rattlesnakes abound).

The desert is nothing if it is not tenacious. It is an acerbic beast even in it’s kindest moments. Blowing sand, regular temperatures in the hundreds from April through October (in the sun that is). Humbling, and even bending or distorting the idea of life just a bit, since the desert’s signature is withering brown plant skeletons, dry playas and spines. Dessication, opportunity and impermanence are its soul. It is a tribute to both eternal things and the ephemeral. Within that sea, there are pauses of vibrance and life.