The obvious answer is to get higher. You can see the difference in these two shots from Death Valley showing a creosote bush in the Eureka Dunes area. You would not think that the main bush is the same one! The first shot is from a high camera angle, whereas the second one is shot from standard tripod height. The first shot gives an interesting foreground to background relationship that shows how the creosote bush fits into this landscape. The second is hardly worth considering because the bush is too high in the landscape. (The green of the creosote bush is better in the first image because I used Viveza 2 on that image, but not on the second.)

So how did I do this? Did I drive a truck onto the dunes? Bring a big heavy ladder with me? Nope. I used my tripod, but in a unique way that works very well with digital photography.

I extended the tripod legs to their max, then brought them together. I set the self-timer of the camera to 10 seconds, set up my exposure and focus appropriately (in this case, aperture priority and auto focus), pressed the shutter, then hoisted my camera on tripod over my head. I held it until the shutter released, then brought it back down.

The great thing about digital for this technique is that you can instantly see what you got and make revisions. You may need to hold the camera straighter, aim a little higher or lower, and so forth. In just a few shots, I had my shot. (I did have to do some minor cropping for a slight straightening -- it can be hard to get the camera perfectly level when doing this, but then the Crop Tool in Lightroom makes this easy to fix!).

Obviously, you have to watch your shutter speed doing this or risk unsharp images due to camera movement during exposure. With a wide-angle lens, you can shoot at a slower shutter speed and still get sharp images, though this is inherently an unstable camera position, so you can't go too low. With a wide-angle like this, it is easy to use f/8 or f/11 to allow a faster shutter speed, plus I will use a higher ISO as needed, too.

So the next time you are in front of a landscape that is giving you problems, try hoisting your camera overhead! It can be worth a try just to see what the landscape looks like from up there.

This is a shot of me by my friend Chuck Summers. A different location, but the same technique.

We all have a need to be recognized and validated, yet this can be difficult. This is a struggle all artists face. As photographers, we have no clear and singular definition of success for the photography. It is not like a sporting event where "success" is winning. Or like a business where success is a successful business. If a photographer is successful in the business end of things, that is a business success, but not necessarily a validation of photographic success.

"Successful" photographers can be successful because they happened to be in the right place at the right time, they are more aggressive than others, or they are simply really good businesspeople. But how we feel about our own success can come from much deeper places.

Our parents had a big influence, both intended and unintended, on how we look at this success. My dad (a businessman) never understood my interest in photography as a kid and I got no support for it. I was in many ways a mystery to him. He was never mean, and I did love him, but that lack of support did affect me. I suspect this is true for many photographers.

I know this created feelings that I must do more, know more, "know it all", prove myself because only then will I have enough and maybe my father would see this was okay. All silly, of course, but it is interesting how much our young experiences can still affect us as we get older. My dad eventually loved my work and was very supportive, but those early things stick with you.

Yet, when my dad passed away last year, an older woman who lived at the assisted living residence met me and said, "Oh, so you're the photographer son. Bob (my dad) never could figure out how you made a living." I know he really didn't mean any harm there, but that strangely annoyed me and brought me back to the old feelings.

Even today, I do things without thinking because there is this need to "prove" myself. If I take a deep breath and really look at what I have accomplished with my photography and my related work, I have to admit I have been pretty successful. Yet, there is still that nagging feeling that it isn't enough at times, and so I don't "enjoy" the "success."  I feel I have to keep going and "prove" myself, even though I don't really. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, because it pushes me to do new things, but on the other hand, it isn't necessarily a good thing because it keeps feelings of success elusive.

You have a story that you tell yourself, too, about success as a photographer in your situation. We all do. I think what is important is not that we have stories, but that we recognize these stories and challenge them if they are not helping us. Your story may be about defining success in terms of other people, too, or maybe you have simply accepted what the culture says about success and photography. Those things won't ultimately help.

Knowing myself in terms of my own story of growing up without support for my photography and always having to "prove" myself makes me think. And I don't like the story. It may be true, but I have a choice, just as you do, as to what stories you allow yourself to tell about you and what you accept of them.

What do I want success as a photographer to mean? Being able to enjoy nature, enjoy photography, and connect the two for others. I do that. I don't have to strive to do "everything" to prove myself, even if a part of me wants that.

So the question for you is not, What does success mean as a photographer? but What do you want success as a photographer to mean to you and your life? It is an important question we don't often ask ourselves, yet the answer influences everything we do as a photographer.

The photo here is of Courthouse Towers in Arches National Park. I thought it had an uplifting feeling that sort of fit with the idea of success.

I often hear about photographers who feel intimidated by the technology of their gear. Or sometimes it is just the opposite, they trust it too much. One thing I consistently see is something all photographers struggle with that has little to do with that technology. In fact, the technology is a distraction. No amount of changing the camera will help with this. And unfortunately, camera marketers encourage the idea that camera technology is "perfect", even "miraculous", so if the photos don't come out right, you might you must be at fault for not using the camera right. That is generally not true.

Here is the idea: we see subjects, cameras don't. Cameras see and overemphasize light and shadow, we don't. We can see a subject perfectly even if part of the subject is in bright light and part in shadow. The camera cannot do that. It overemphasizes the light so that if the light and shadow are in areas that obscure the subject, the subject will never look good.

No matter what settings you use.

No matter how many megapixels your camera has.

No matter how expensive your camera is.

The challenge we all face then is looking at subjects and scenes in a way that is closer to how the camera sees them. We can see anything the camera sees, but the camera cannot see everything we see.

One answer to this is to realize that you can always say no to taking a picture. This happens when you realize that the light on the subject is never going to look good no matter what you do. There is no good exposure possible, no good angle to shoot from, no focal length that will help. By saying no to a subject, this opens you up to finding subjects and scenes you can say yes to. If you don't say no to this subject, you will be frustrated and still not have a good photo.

All of us as nature photographers see a subject and want to capture it with our camera. That's part of what nature and photography is all about. However, knowing there is a possibility to say no to the photo opens up your eyes and mind to other possibilities. You are no longer obsessed with getting a picture of an unphotographable subject. Instead you look for what is photographable for subjects and scenes that you can say, "Yes!" to.

This works at whatever level you are photographing. There are pros who are very "untechnical" and still get great shots. There are also pros who are very technical who get great shots. And there are photographers who are untechnical who get lousy shots and photographers who are very technical who get lousy shots.

While understanding the camera and its controls is very helpful, modern cameras with their automation make it possible to take great photos without deep understanding of the camera. Dewitt Jones likes to joke that P on a point-and-shoot stands for perfect. And he is right! I am not saying that one never has to understand the camera. I feel that over time it is important to master your camera. Understanding the camera gives you more control and a greater ability to get those "yes!" photos. But too much focus on the technology can be a distraction from getting better photos.

One way you start to understand things both on your camera and what subjects are "yes!" and which ones are "no" is to consistently use your LCD. That simply means reviewing your shots as you shoot by playing them back and looking at them. This is a huge benefit. I hear from so many pros that they feel they have become better photographers today because of digital, because of this instant feedback. But at any level, this is so helpful.

Now don't let anyone intimidate you by sneeringly call this "chimping." That is nonsense. The LCD review is a tool and a very good one, but it also is a tool. There are times when it is inappropriate to use such as when you are photographing a lot of action of birds around a nest. But most of the time it is good to check at least occasionally. I "check" it all the time by setting my camera's review time to 8-10 sec. so that the image comes up immediately after I shoot and I can take a quick glance at it.

Look at the image on your screen not to see if you captured a subject, but if you created a photograph. Is the subject easy to see or is the light and shadow obscuring it? Is the background simple and helping your subject or are there things back there that are distracting from it? When you look at the image in this way, you can decide what else you need to do, including take more photos.

One way that will guarantee better photos is to always work your subject, and I mean seriously work your subject, and check your shots as you go in the LCD playback. Seriously working a subject means looking for dramatic changes in the angle you shoot, the focal length you use, the distance to the subject, even the light on the subject by coming back at a different time of day. As you do this, I will guarantee you will find shots you like and shots you will dislike. Take them both. Throw out the shots you don't like. The point is that you just take lots of shots and respond to the scene rather than worrying about getting perfect shots. The "perfect" shot will come as you keep shooting.

One of the best ways I know to get better as a photographer is to shoot lots of photos. One of the frustrations I had as a young photographer was that film and processing could be so expensive and I knew that I needed to shoot and shoot a lot. Digital totally changes that.

I once heard a great analogy -- the concert pianist does not expect to only play during a concert and have everything perfect. That pianist is constantly training, constantly playing, practicing, learning to master the craft, which does not come from a "better piano" or "more knowledge", but from the simple, hard work of constantly playing the piano.

Learning a craft like photography simply takes time. You have to spend time with it, taking lots of pictures. Any time you photograph is your opportunity to learn and grow as a photographer. Invest in some big memory cards so you don't worry about how many photos you take, then take lots and lots of photos. For example, the last photo of poppies is a risky photo. Not everyone will like it. So what? I learn from taking the picture and it is one of many taken of poppies during my workshop at Light Photographic Workshops last week.

Now I have to admit I should have known better, but because they were the same camera brand and model, I just grabbed them both and started using them for the assignment. Without doing any tests. It turned out the new camera's meter was underexposing by over half an f-stop. I normally shot Kodachrome a little underexposed anyway, so my exposure had little latitude. And they were dark. Luckily I had been shooting with two cameras.

With digital cameras, this is much less likely to happen because of histograms and being able to review your shots as needed while still shooting. But underexposure can still be a problem, resulting in harsher contrasts, poor dark tones, problems with color and increased noise, no matter what camera you shoot with, whether you shoot RAW or JPEG.

Still, as my experience with my new Sony NEX 5n proved to me, you really have to get to know your camera. I had shot some before my recent trip to Death Valley, mainly to get familiar with the camera and its controls, plus making adjustments to the controls to make it easier to work with. I noticed a tendency for the camera to underexpose when light levels dropped (such as the before dawn shot above), but give normal exposure in bright light (such as the shot of the Racetrack playa below).

This was not a surprise. I have seen this on other cameras, though I had not seen as strong a tendency to do this that I was seeing with the NEX 5n. I have seen two problems that photographers have when faced with technology not doing exactly what it is expected to do: first, they don't pay attention to the issue and end up with less than optimum images; second, they complain that the camera (etc.) is no good.

I think there is another alternative. Simply know your camera. Know its strengths and weaknesses (they all have both). I know that the NEX 5n is going to underexpose when light levels drop. I know that and I compensate.

This might have been a bigger problem with film because you did not get the instant response. But with digital, it really is no big deal. On the Sony, I can set up the Live View to give me a live histogram, which I now use frequently when light levels drop. It is easy to turn it on and off because of the way I have set up the display parameters. I can instantly see if there is a big gap on the right side of the histogram (the easy and simple way to tell if you have underexposure -- you don't need to do anything else). If there is, I simply give more exposure.

This exposure issue, by the way, is a metering system issue and has nothing to do with shooting either auto or manual exposure. I have a little app on my iPod Touch called Light Meter that is a handy little meter that I used to compare to the NEX system, which also helped.

In a way, I suppose you could say that some things never change with photography. Technology is great, but never perfect, so every camera will have its idiosyncrasies. Would I like my Sony to give the same readings as light levels drop? Sure, but it really isn't a big deal because it is always consistent on how it changes. And with "other technologies" such as the histogram, I have no exposure issues.

But this does point out something important. Always test new equipment before a trip and know your gear's idiosyncrasies.

I do want to talk about setting up or customizing a camera. The Sony NEX system is totally new for me, so I really had to think about setting it up for my use. This put me in a position I have not been in years of dealing with a totally new camera system and its controls set up. This also reminded me that I have found that most photographers never change their camera core settings from the default settings the camera has as it comes from the manufacturer. I think that is a mistake if you want to get the most from your camera and have the best user experience with it as well.

I had seen some blogs about people shooting with a NEX camera and not liking the way you had to deal with the controls. Part of that is just getting used to a new camera (just like getting used to a new car) and part of that is not spending time with the menus to make the camera work better for the user. There are some very useful controls in any camera's menus that can be adjusted to customize the camera for your way of shooting.

I have noticed that most photographers do not change three very important settings on their cameras: review time, sleep time and image rotation on LCD. Unfortunately, I cannot tell you exactly where these will be on your camera or how they will be presented to you in the menus -- camera designers don't seem to believe in making these things consistent. But the choices will be there on most cameras (I have not seen all of these choices on some compact digital cameras).

Review time -- it is way too short with the default setting. This setting is a holdover from the days when cameras ate batteries like a bat eats mosquitoes. You need this at 8-10 seconds for it to be actually useful. We are using digital cameras that let us see the image instantly, so why not take advantage of this! With 8-10 seconds, you have enough time to check to see if you like the shot and be sure you did not make a mistake in framing, exposure or white balance. If you don't need the time, press the shutter button lightly and the LCD review goes away.

Sleep time -- another holdover from days of battery challenges. One minute (a common default) is way too short. It is very frustrating to be setting things up, then waiting for the wind to calm, for example, and when you press the shutter, nothing happens because the camera went to sleep. For standard DSLRs, I think this should be at least 4-5 minutes. For mirror-less interchangeable lens cameras like my NEX, two minutes is probably okay, but I would rather set it longer and be sure I have enough batteries.

Image rotation -- this is a really bad default on most cameras. This is a setting that rotates vertical images so they display vertically on a horizontal LCD. That does not use the full LCD and leaves a large part of it blank. Why on earth would you want to use less than the full LCD? You paid for that beautiful LCD and now the camera is only giving you a little over half of it. It is like stepping back in time to earlier technology where you had only a small LCD. I can't understand why one would not want to see a vertical image displayed fully in the LCD, which means you have to hold the camera vertically to see it, but then you can see it at its best. You can set your camera so that it does not rotate images in the LCD yet the images will still be rotated to vertical when they are in your computer.

Many cameras have some sort of memory settings that allow you to make the camera work for you, yet I find a lot of photographers never use them. For example, I constantly used AEB for HDR with my Canon, so I put the AEB in the My Menu part of the menu system. On my 7D, I would use the Custom settings on the Mode dial to set up the camera for special uses, such as HDR or time-lapse photography so that I did not have to always reset the camera.

On the Sony, I have set the right push of the selector dial (not sure how else to describe that) to allow changing AF to MF and back -- I will do that fairly often, so it is nice to have it as a single "button" push. Manual focus can be important for shallow depth of field shots like the barrel cactus below. I also set the bottom button below the dial to white balance because I use that regularly (I am dead against AWB for nature photography because it consistently will give less than the best color and because photographers trust it when they shouldn't, especially with RAW because they say they can change it, but they don't).

What controls are you changing on your camera to make it work best for you? This will be different for everyone. The important thing is to make the decision to customize your camera so that it works most efficiently for your purposes. The manufacturer put those options into the camera to make it more flexible for different types of photography and photographers. I can tell you from my experience with a new camera, the Sony NEX 5n, that a bit of time spent with it and the manual, plus some thoughts about using it while shooting in the field, have allowed me to customize the camera better to make my shooting easier, faster and more consistent.

The following shot is interesting. It shows Joshua trees on the way to the Racetrack area of Death Valley. I processed this as a black-and-white in Silver Efex Pro 2, then I put the black-and-white over the color in Photoshop and blended them with the Luminosity blending mode. I gained the contrast of the black-and-white with the color of the original.

But Las Vegas is more than an artificial world set in the desert. The Mojave Desert around Las Vegas can be amazing. I like it better than many other parts of the Mojave because the scale is easier to connect with. I love the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area and the Lake Mead National Recreation Area (which has amazing badlands and desert mountains that offer incredible photo opportunities in totally uncrowded settings). Both are literally right next to Las Vegas.

I was just at both locations last week after spending time in Death Valley. I had not been to Red Rock Canyon since the new visitor center had opened. I always visit visitor centers -- I learn from the exhibits, I talk to rangers, I spend too much on local books in the gift store! I have seen many good visitor centers, but this new one truly blew me away. I was in awe of what they had done.

I think the center has a lot to offer photographers. You will learn much about Red Rock Canyon, from its geology to its ecology. But I think there is more, including some lessons about how we approach any way of communicating with people, including with our photography.

First, the displays are unique and interactive. There is no staid set of displays we have seen before. You could tell how different this was just by watching people go through the display area. They were engaged, young and old. Isn't that what we would like from our photography? I do. This is exactly what I feel at times when I see striking and lively nature photography that goes beyond what we have always seen.

Second, there was a touch of whimsy to the displays. A jackrabbit sculpture is not simply a jackrabbit, but it is scratching its ears. A wood rat sculpture is not simply illustrating a display, it is looking over the edge. These displays made you smile and have fun. How often have we seen nature photography that is so-o-o-o-o serious? I sometimes wonder if we nature photographers actually have a sense of humor when we photograph. I know it is hard to get lighter touches to our images (I know this is true for me), but there is no question that this engages people.

Third, the information was presented in innovative, lively ways. Striking sculptural elements gave a feeling of fire or water that caught your attention and gave a modern, effective look to the displays. These displays looked like fun, not "serious education" to give the public that usually does not get used. People, including kids, joyfully moved through these displays as if they were fun to encounter. Wow! I have to tell you how hard it is to do something like this in nature photography, yet perhaps we can learn to not try so hard to portray nature as something that smacks of serious education.

This was a wonderful visitor center and I hope we see more like it at other great locations. I learned more than I expected from it, and I hope the lessons stick and affect how I photograph. In a way, perhaps they did a little here. The first shot seen above is of the valley looking west in early light. However, while I liked the original shot, it just did not portray the drama of the location as well as I wanted.

I tried working the photo in black-and-white in Silver Efex Pro 2. I liked the drama there, but it did not have the same feel as the color. So I put them together! I put the black-and-white image over the color image as a layer, then changed the layer blending mode to Luminosity. The blending modes are not labeled in the Layers panel in Photoshop and Photoshop Elements -- you have to click on the word "Normal" at the top left of the panel to get a menu of modes. Luminosity is near the bottom.

For me, the image gave the dramatic impression of the location that was far closer to what I felt. I think it is a livelier and more interesting image that hopefully engages people more with the setting.

Finally, I have to share this really cool display panel at the center. I originally shot it just for me and I didn't know if I wanted to share it. My shadow seemed like a mistake. Then I had to hit myself upside my head and ask, "Have you been paying attention to your own blog?" The shadow adds a touch of whimsy and makes the sign less "serious photography" (as if photographing a sign should be serious photography). I love the message, including that my shadow is implying a connection to the message as well.