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russellgraves.com, Dodd City, TX (2026)

05/06/2026

Spring in the Netherlands - A Hackberry Farm Nature Photography Workshop field report

You see it with your eyes, but in your mind, it’s hard to comprehend that such a variety of colors exists in nature. All across the lowlands, technicolor fields of pinks, reds, yellows, oranges, and every color in between beg for at least a little attention from the camera.

Despite the relative sameness of the tulips, it’s remarkably easy to pick individual flowers out in which to photograph in this nature photography workshop. Each row is arrow-straight and is meticulously planted so the flowers come up densely packed in tidy rows. Just the precision of the agricultural practices is something to behold.

Across the pasture, I hear what I think are kids at play, but it's the sound of baby lambs bleating at their mothers in the thick green forage. It’s as pastoral a scene as you can imagine, and it’s all around us to witness.

Just an hour before, we walked around Monnicandam. A lakeside city founded in 1355, when the lake it sits beside was a huge bay that led to the North Sea. Now, thanks to Dutch ingenuity in reclaiming land and building canals, the lake (now called Markermeer) is a freshwater impoundment. However, the fishing and shipbuilding industries are still strong, and the harbor is full of boats - some modern but many with a historic flair that adds to the charm of the waterside village.

The streets that flank the canals and waterways are lively, as the Dutch are an active, social people who ride bikes and visit one another on the outdoor plazas of the many restaurants in the area.

Like the locals, we sit outside and enjoy the nice weather that’s in store for us. It’s a great way for our group to socialize with one another and talk to some of the locals.

The place is alive. Bikes and pedestrians transit the old cobblestone streets lined by buildings older than I can comprehend. In the near distance, the grand spires of De Grote Kerk (The Great Church) and De Doopsgezinde Kerk (The Mennonite Church) command the meager skyline of the town.
These small Dutch towns are magical.

As the week winds on, we visit Royal palaces, cheese makers, dairy farms, museums featuring famous Dutch artists like Van Gogh, Vermeer, and Rembrandt, learn how clogs are made, take a canal cruise through Amsterdam, and enjoy other activities that round out the Netherlands experience.

What an experience it is.

And, of course, there’s the omnipresent tulip.

While the tulip isn’t native to the Netherlands, the Dutch perfected its cultivation and varietal selection, and built a botanical empire that once sparked one of the first international market crises and what’s regarded as the world’s first speculative market crash.

Prior to 1737, when the tulip market fell to its knees, tulip traders eagerly swapped bulbs at higher and higher prices. Just before the speculative bubble collapsed, a single bulb would sell for enough to buy a luxury canal house in Amsterdam.

While the tulip market isn’t nearly as volatile as it once was, the industry is still strong, as Dutch tulips account for about 95% of the worldwide tulip market each year.

In Keukenhof Gardens, countless tulip varieties are on display in well-manicured gardens, while in the fields around Lisse and elsewhere, huge swaths of commercially grown tulips beckon the photographer in all of us. The scenes are simply too beautiful to ignore.

Near the trip’s end, we all gather at a restaurant in Haarlem’s old city center. A carnival has commenced, and I’m seeing more and more people wearing orange in preparation for the national holiday in a few days. Koningsdag (King’s Day) is an annual celebration of the royal family and the historical importance of the monarchy to Dutch culture.

We walk past the festivities and settle into a quiet restaurant just off the main plaza. These “family suppers,” as I call them, are always a satisfying aspect of the trip. Within a short time, the group went from strangers to one another to friends and fellow travelers. It’s rewarding to see.

As we sit and wait for our food to arrive, each person talks of their experiences here and elsewhere. Each of their stories helps add to the beauty of all we’ve seen this week. While each person’s story is unique, they all share common threads - a love of travel, a love of photography, and a belief that, because we’re doing what we’re doing right now, the world is just a little bit smaller for all of us.

05/01/2026

Moonlight on the Prairie - A Hackberry Farm nature photography workshop field report

“There it goes…” His voice punctuates the near blackness of night. While one of my guests on the Moonlight on the Prairie nature photography workshop is merely feet away from me, he and the rest of the participants are nearly invisible. It’s so dark out here.

It’s an eerie change of pace: just about three hours ago (when we arrived on this high, hardscrabble ridge in the heart of the Texas Rolling Plains), the landscape was bright. Well, as bright as it can be for 2:30 am. A full moon hung overhead, and a full blast of reflected sunlight painted the landscape a golden hue. Although technically it’s still dark outside, it’s easily bright enough to walk around without a light. The clear skies and bright moon cast our shadows across the gramma grass and prickly pear that dots this elevated perch on which we set up our cameras and look, unabated, to the west.

Ours wasn’t the only shadow being cast. Overhead, unseen by us, the Earth casts its shadow across cislunar space. It’s a magical misalignment of the earth, the sun, and the moon that’s fairly uncommon. In the span of a few hours, the moon shifts from bright and omnipresent to a dark orange and strange in appearance. It’s a total lunar eclipse, and they only happen in Texas every two to three years. But here we are, cameras clicking away as totality occurs.

“Wow, that’s beautiful,” he says, and the others in the group concur. As serendipity would have it, a group of photography friends booked every spot on this excursion, and for once, I am sort of the odd man out. They all know each other well, but I am the newcomer. I do what I always do to break the ice - I tell a story.

I tell the story of April 2024, when the total lunar eclipse appeared over Hackberry Farm in Northeast Texas. Just about everyone in the group saw the eclipse and shared their stories about it. These men are an easy group to mesh with and welcome me into their inner circle. But between the laughs and poignant moments we all share, there’s no doubt they’ll tell stories about the night when we all shot images for a few hours on Monday night, got 2-3 hours of shuteye, and then came back out in the darkness to do it all over again.

The lunar eclipse is a long one. It begins about 3 am and unfolds for the next four hours or so. Every so often, you look up and see a bigger and bigger wedge of the moon shadowed by the red-refracted umbral light.

Going, going, going, gone…

The moon stays in totality for some time. When totality commences, the ducks on the lake below, the owls, coyotes, and all of the other night critters who’d been auditorily active when the full moon shone bright, are now silent in the predawn stillness.

Then it happens: all the stars come out.

Washed out by the bright moonlight just minutes before, the sky is now dotted with both familiar and unfamiliar constellations. It remains largely that way until the day starts to break to our east.

As the landscape lightens with the coming sun, the eclipsed moon sinks further towards the horizon. We pack up and drive down the road to find a windmill and then shoot the last vestiges of the lunar phenomenon as the sun struggles to crest the eastern horizon.

The whole night was surreal. The whole week was surreal.

If you’ve never done it before, moonlit landscapes are an incredible way to do night photography. In fact, it’s my favorite way to do night photography. Milky Way shots are cool but a little passé. Moonlit landscapes - when combined with interesting foregrounds and perhaps a few clouds in the sky… Well, that’s surreal. And, surreal is what we are after.

Each night we head afield to capture moonlight on the prairie. Moonrises, old buildings, trucks, rugged landscapes, and grain silos are all on the agenda. We crisscross the plains to find places of interest and take pictures that, I guarantee, heretofore, have never been shot before. Or at least in the way we’re doing it.

Some shots are lit only by moonlight. Others use colored lights placed in windows or just off camera. We experiment a lot. The results are pleasing and predictable. Each participant goes home with engaging images and has learned new techniques to add to their photographic toolbox.

On the last night of the trip, we ate supper at a local steakhouse. Earlier in the day, this area was placed in the bullseye for a severe weather outbreak. Everything is on the docket: wind, hail, tornadoes, and lightning. Before we walk into supper, we check the weather radar and accept that severe weather will miss us.

However, when we walk outside the restaurant, I see bright flashes over the buildings to the northwest.

“Before we head out, let’s take a look at what this storm is doing,” I tell them. Looking at the radar on a weather app, I see that a burgeoning cumulonimbus that we’d seen an hour earlier as we were out photographing at sunset had grown into a monster that was sliding northeast of us.

“We’ve got to take a look at this storm,” I tell them. They all concur. We drive two or three miles to a high ridge north of town. From here, we see the Rolling Plains prairie stretch about thirty miles, fading behind the earth’s curve. An immense mesocyclone floats past, spitting rain, hail, wind, a short-lived tornado, and copious lightning.

The jagged bolts of hot electricity raced through the sky and lit up the clouds around it. It’s hard to describe how it feels to watch such power on display. Mother Nature’s not angry. She’s just exercising a system of exchanging heat from the Earth’s surface and redistributing it in the upper atmosphere. It’s the nature of the weather's dynamic cycle during the unsettled season, spring.

We’re here to witness it, behold its power, and marvel.

04/17/2026

Shooting at low ISOs gives the cleanest images, but it can limit your shutter speed options. It's all about finding the right balance for your shot. While noise can be fixed in post, good camera handling at the lowest possible ISO is always the best starting point.

04/16/2026

Ever wondered about ISO in photography? It wasn't always called ISO. Back in the day, film sensitivity was measured by ASA. Learn how we transitioned to the International Standards Organization's measurement and what it means for your photos today.

04/15/2026

The lower the ISO number, the less sensitive your camera's sensor is to light. While high ISO settings can be useful, they introduce digital noise, often referred to as 'digital grain.' This trade-off means images may appear less clean. Understanding ISO is key to managing image quality.

04/14/2026

ISO is a crucial standard in photography, measuring a digital sensor's or film's sensitivity to light. Whether you use Canon, Nikon, Sony, or Olympus, ISO 100 means the same thing across all brands. It's an international language for capturing light.

04/10/2026

Transform your photos by learning composition essentials like the rule of thirds. Combine this artistic thinking with proper camera handling and exposure techniques to see immediate improvements.

04/09/2026

Holding a camera steady is crucial for better photos. Standing upright is the least stable. Try kneeling, sitting, or even lying down for maximum steadiness. Knowing the right technique for the right situation is key.

04/09/2026

Learn the essential photography skills that lead to consistent, repeatable results. Just like in sports, mastering the basics elevates your game. Improve your photography and capture more of the great outdoors.

04/08/2026

Death Valley Days & Nights - A Hackberry Farm nature photography workshop field report

The air is getting noticeably cooler as the sun sinks closer to the Panamint Mountains behind us. Here in the Mesquite Dunes of Death Valley National Park, the experience is surreal. All is quiet, save for the occasional breeze through the creosote bushes below. Each person on this nature photography workshop concentrates on their composition that, in their own estimation, will encapsulate what it’s like to be in this spot of the vast Mojave Desert.

Across the vast tan-hued dunes, wind-carved lines undulate. The side lighting accentuates the patterns of light and dark across the sides of each hill. Looking out across the dunes towards the Grapevine Mountains, the same light patterns play over the countless dunes that stretch to the basin’s edges.
“It’s so peaceful out here,” says one of the guests. I concur. Last year, when I came to this arid land, it took up my efforts just to learn the vastness of the park and where to go. This year, that all changed. I connected.

Nearly twenty-four hours ago, we were driving back to our oasis lodging in Furnace Creek. We’d been out all afternoon exploring ghost towns, pioneer towns, watching wild burros pick their way through the desert scrub, and seeing countless stars dot the black sky as the day cleaved into the night.

As we cruised through the dark, a quietness fell over the van. Everyone is tired, but no one is sleeping. They simply listen to the hum of the tire on the road and watch the desert slip past us in the moonlit night. It was at that moment that everything clicked.

“This place is special,” I concede to myself in the silence of my own thoughts.

The land here is rough and rugged with an austere beauty that deserts only impart. It’s an armchair geologist’s dream. The landscape alternates between high mountain escarpments and flat, low basins whose bottom lies well below sea level. It sounds trite, but I have no better way of putting it: Death Valley is a land of extremes.

Over time, the once flat land buckled and folded due to extreme tectonic forces in the earth’s bowels. Evidence of this plate movement is everywhere. The most extreme example is the tall escarpments that rise around the margins of the flat basins.
Broad eroded alluvial fans, stippled with subtle shades of browns and tans, delight the creative eye. Unlike many big, in-your-face lush mountain scenes that offer only a single view, the deserts here offer beautiful views and, hence, photographs, in all directions. Portrait, landscape, panoramic, black-and-white, macro, and infrared are all options for compelling compositions at just about every stop we visit.

This year, we hit the jackpot from a historical perspective. Being the hottest place on the planet and the driest place in the United States, water here is scarce most years. However, due to abundant rainfall, the ancient Lake Manly is once again holding water. In the Pleistocene, the lake covering Badwater Basin was over 1,000 feet deep. Climate change evaporated all of the water, and over time, all that’s left is a broad salt flat whose mineral deposits are thousands of feet deep in places. Most of Badwater Basin lies below sea level, and the high mountains flanking it create a heat sink that prevents cool air from penetrating. In 1913, the Furnace Creek weather station recorded a world record temperature of 134-degrees Fahrenheit.
While the basin is still short on moisture, this year, a broad sheet of water covers hundreds of acres. Lake Manly lives again. The site is rare and unusual, and we take the opportunity to photograph the mountains reflected in the water.
The rains also sparked the first superbloom in a decade. Desert Gold and Phacila rise from the hardscrabble and blanket a landscape that is otherwise dry and bare. The colors are beautiful, and we spend ample time documenting the historic event.

Bouncing around the desert, we see the sublime and witness the unusual. After all, we are mere spittin’ distance from Area 51 and the Yucca Flat nuclear test range. We witness an unusual light cruising through the morning sky, see atypical helicopters flying past with enormous, unknown equipment dangling beneath, see two ostriches running through the desert, and military planes screaming overhead from time to time. It’s a collection of the strange.

Perhaps the strangest thing we witnessed was the moving rocks of the Racetrack Playa. Even though scientists think they know why the rocks move, no one has ever witnessed the phenomenon.

Questions about the rocks still abound:

How did the rocks get to the middle of the playa?

If the rocks came from the surrounding mountains, why are there so few?

If this phenomenon’s been going on as long as anyone knows, why aren’t there more rocks?

And so on…

We stand on the playa’s north end and stare at the first sailing rock we find. Surrounding the rocks are perfectly hexagonal shapes in the fine-silted soil that’s dried to a hardness that’s substantial enough to support our weight without indentation. Estimates suggest there are nearly 10 billion of these shapes in the 1,700 acre playa. The ground here is so flat, it only drops two inches over a distance of 2.8 miles.

In the area in which we explore, a spot that’s probably 100 acres in size, we find a half dozen or so sailing rocks. Each one left behind unusual and seemingly random tracks that don’t seem to correlate with other nearby rocks. We stand around and discuss the mystery of it all.

We leave with more questions than answers.

That is the allure of the desert: The mystery of it all.

russellgraves.com

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