Bob Yellowlees, proprietor of Lumiere Gallery, is a genius. Why? Well, among the reasons has to be that he hired Tony Casadonte as gallery manager. Tony Casadonte runs the gallery, builds the Search-friendly website on WordPress, presents and sells vintage prints and digital prints, oversees matting and framing, coordinates events, activities and a lecture series with the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, a large number of other tasks and accomplishments… and… oversees the recording of videos. He coordinated and designed the ALL NEW 3:18 MINUTE PHILIP HYDE VIDEO…

Philip Hyde from Lumière on Vimeo.

The Making Of The New Video

One day Tony Casadonte told me I would receive a recorder in the mail. Seemed a bit strange, but everything is strange these days when it comes to technology. Sure enough, one day this box about 6″ X 10″ X 8″ arrived in my mailbox. I opened it up. Tony explained the contraption, “It’s only a couple hundred dollar recording machine, but we shipped it FedEx to be sure it arrived safely.” It was digital. No tapes. OK, I know I am hopelessly stuck in the 1980s when I remember my father picking up the first tape recorder commercially available from Sony. Anyway, no moving parts, amazing. Just press a button and start talking.

Tony gave me an outline of his interview points and I started speaking into the microphone to answer them. Every so often Tony interrupted and said, “Well, what about this?” or “That?” In a flash, seemed like, we had an hour and a half of me rattling on about my father pioneer landscape photographer and conservationist Philip Hyde and his work. I burned a copy of the recording right to my computer for backup, put the recorder in the box and done. Tony said he would have to edit it. OK, I agreed. He sent me several versions of the audio, cut down to three and four minutes. The editing shined in one version. Tony said, I’ll have my guy Neal go to work on this and cue up a video with music and your father’s photographs. Hopefully we will be able to make a video or two more out of the rest of the recording.

In a day or two Tony and Neal posted the newest version of the video on Vimeo and a slightly different version on YouTube. Take a look. I am amazed at the results. From my convoluted ramblings, they somehow cut a very focused, concise statement about my father that would have made him proud. Hats off to Tony Casadonte and his team, or is it Bob Yellowlees’ team? Anyway, great job gentlemen, thank you. Take a look yourself… and… don’t miss the current exhibition at Lumiere Gallery, “Messages from the Wilderness,” prominently featuring Dad’s conservation photography and the work of other great conservation photographers such as Ansel Adams, Edna Bullock, Peter Essick, Robert Glenn Ketchum, Tom Murphy, Bradford Washburn, Edward Weston and Brett Weston.

Messages From The Wilderness Exhibition

November 12-December 23, 2011

Lumiere Gallery
425 Peachtree Hills Avenue
Building 5, Suite 29B
Atlanta, GA 30305
404-261-6100

For more information about the exhibition see the blog post, “Messages From The Wilderness Opening At Lumiere Gallery.”

(See the photograph large: Marble Gorge Near Nankoweap Creek, Grand Canyon National Park.)

Marble Gorge Near Nankoweap Creek, Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona, copyright by Philip Hyde.

Time and the River Flowing: Grand Canyon by Francois Leydet, in the Sierra Club Books Exhibit Format Series, came out in 1964 in response to two proposed dams, one just above and one just below Grand Canyon National Park. Time and The River Flowing formed out of a river trip down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, planned for that creative purpose. The river trip headed by David Brower, Executive Director of the Sierra Club and head of the Sierra Club books publishing program, and led on the river by lead boatman Martin Litton, has become legendary for including passengers who were the who’s who of landscape photography, conservation and the natural sciences of the time.

The illustrators of Time and The River Flowing were Katie Lee with one photograph, Joseph Wood Krutch and Eliot Porter each with two images, Daniel B. Luten with three, P. T. Reilly with four, Ansel Adams contributed five color photographs, Richard Norgaard six, Joseph C. Hall and Martin Litton, using the name Clyde Thomas, each provided nine photographs, David Brower had 10, Clyde Childress made 19 of the images and Philip Hyde supplied 31 of the book’s illustrations.

Published only two years after the introduction of color to Sierra Club Books, Time and the River Flowing contained only color photographs, even by Ansel Adams. As a result many of the best black and white photographs of the Grand Canyon by the artists above never received the same level of recognition, even though they were in some cases stronger images.

Now Philip Hyde’s black and white photographs of the Grand Canyon can potentially be more widely seen. See the new portfolio added to Philip Hyde Photography of Grand Canyon National Park original black and white prints. See also several more of Philip Hyde’s best black and white photographs of the Grand Canyon by visiting the portfolios “Black and White Vintage & Digital Prints 1,” “Black and White Vintage & Digital Prints 2” and “Vintage Black and White Prints & Raw Scans.”

For more information on the making of Philip Hyde’s original darkroom black and white prints see, “About Vintage Black and White Prints.”

Continued from the blog post, “Martin Litton: David Brower’s Conservation Conscience 1.”

Chiaroscurro, Sun Through Fog, Avenue Of The Giants, Humboldt Redwoods State Park, California, copyright 1964 by Philip Hyde. First published in "The Last Redwoods: Photographs And Story Of A Vanishing Scenic Resource," by Francois Leydet with photographs by Philip Hyde and Martin Litton, in the Sierra Club Exhibit Format Series.

See the photograph larger here: “Avenue Of The Giants, Humboldt Redwoods State Park, California.”

After seeing Martin Litton’s feature articles in The Los Angeles Times protesting proposed dams in Dinosaur National Monument, David Brower recruited the young journalist to join the Sierra Club and continue the fight against dam building and other wilderness degradation in earnest.

Martin Litton and Philip Hyde made the landscape photographs of Dinosaur National Monument that became the Sierra Club book, This Is Dinosaur: Echo Park Country And Its Magic Rivers with introduction and chapter one by Pulitzer Prize novelist Wallace Stegner. The controversy over the dams in Dinosaur National Monument, along with the first quality images of the area brought home by Philip Hyde and eloquent arguments by Martin Litton in Sierra Club Board Meetings, prodded the Sierra Club Board of Directors to decide to expand the interests of the Sierra Club beyond California and the Sierra Nevada.

The battle over Dinosaur not only made the Sierra Club a national organization, but also brought the cause of conservation national recognition. A number of conservation groups including the Wilderness Society and others formed a coalition of organizations opposing the Dinosaur National Monument dams. The conservation ideals exemplified by visionaries such as Henry David Thoreau, Aldo Leopold, and John Muir, were combined with new lobbying efforts, grassroots on location campaigning, full-page ads in national newspapers and other methods that became modern environmentalism.

The Dam Builders Reach For The Grand Canyon

“Post-War industrialists in league with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation found their high water mark when they reached for the Grand Canyon,” Philip Hyde explained in a 2004 interview. “World wide citizen action prevented Big Dam Foolishness from getting a foothold in the Grand Canyon. Dam builder’s influence declined from then on.” Today, there is a world-wide movement to remove dams on major rivers, but in the 1950s and 1960s, conservation groups did not yet have much power. David Brower, leader of the new environmental movement and Executive Director of the Sierra Club, and Martin Litton hatched a plan to stop the Grand Canyon dams. They organized a river trip down the Colorado River through Grand Canyon National Park. The river trip participants included the who’s who of the day in landscape photography, geology, ecology and other sciences and disciplines. Martin Litton acted as lead boatman, Francois Leydet joined the trip as a writer, Eliot Porter and Philip Hyde as photographers, David Brower as filmmaker, to mention only a few. Their creative efforts and scientific observations became the Sierra Club Books Exhibit Format Series book, Time And The River Flowing: Grand Canyon. The book went out to every member of Congress and with other written material circled the globe and caused a worldwide outpouring of support for saving the Grand Canyon.

Also on Martin Litton’s list of conservation successes was the making of Redwood National Park. The centerpiece of the redwoods campaign, the Sierra Club Books Exhibit Format Series book The Last Redwoods: Photographs And Story Of A Vanishing Scenic Resource with text by Francois Leydet and photographs again by Philip Hyde and Martin Litton, helped the Sierra Club establish its argument for a Redwood National Park between the California state parks along Redwood Creek where the largest redwoods remained rather than a Redwood National Park proposed by Save The Redwoods League that merely combined existing state parks. Read more on the Redwoods campaign and the making of The Last Redwoods with Martin Litton and Philip Hyde in future blog posts.

Martin Litton was the 185^th known person to float down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon in 1955 and founded the company Grand Canyon Dories in 1971. He ran commercial river trips using small oar-powered wooden boats originally used for fishing in Oregon and known as drift boats, but adapted by Martin Litton for use in whitewater and renamed Grand Canyon Dories. Martin Litton wrote the introduction to a number of noted books on the Grand Canyon and other environmentally sensitive wilderness areas and national parks, as well as working as managing editor for Sunset Magazine. During his work for Sunset Magazine, Martin Litton used various made up names in print for his photo credits because Sunset Magazine did not want him to actively participate in controversial environmental campaigns.

At Age 94 Martin Litton Is Still Fighting For Redwoods

Though history has not given Martin Litton as much credit as others, at the present age of 94 he continues to work on various environmental campaigns and fly his Cessna 195. He even rowed a Dory through the Grand Canyon at age 90. Martin Litton held a seat on the Sierra Club Board of Directors from 1964 to 1973. He helped found the American Land Conservancy and served on its executive committee for 10 years. In 2005 he ran as a write-in candidate for the Sierra Club Board of Directors, but he did not win the election. His current focus is preventing the logging of Giant Sequoia Redwood Trees in Sequoia National Monument. See an excerpt from the recent film on Martin Litton. He still speaks regularly on conservation, often with outrage at the logging of the Giant Sequoia Trees:

The mission of the Forest Service is to get rid of all the nation’s forests so they can start over. Under the guise of removing hazardous trees, they are taking out all the dead trees that are serving as homes for woodpeckers and owls. Their credo is to remove trees that are dead, dying, or in danger of dying. That’s every tree in the world… I feel sorry for my grandchildren. The only true optimist is a pessimist. You have to realize how bad things are before you can improve them.

Stay tuned for excerpts from my fiery interview of Martin Litton in the next blog post in this series, “Martin Litton: David Brower’s Conservation Conscience 3.” Also in future blog posts read more stories of Philip Hyde and Martin Litton working or traveling together: a river trip up the Klamath River, down the Colorado river, flying over the California Coastal Redwoods, through Grand Canyon National Park.

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.  –John Muir

McClure Meadow, Evolution Valley, Kings Canyon National Park, Sierra Nevada, California, copyright 1970 by Philip Hyde. Deardorff 5X7 Large Format Camera. Widely exhibited and published including in "The Range of Light" with quotes by John Muir. Still available as an original vintage darkroom black and white print. Three 8X10 vintage prints left available for sale at this time. Other original vintage black and white prints in the "Yosemite, Kings Canyon and Sierra Portfolio" also available in limited quantities. Please inquire for details.

(See the photograph larger: “McClure Meadow, Evolution Valley, Kings Canyon.”)

In his preface to The Range of Light, with Selections from the Writings of John Muir, my father pioneer landscape photographer Philip Hyde wrote about choosing photographs and John Muir quotes for his book. To read more about The Range of Light see the blog post, “Philip Hyde’s Tribute To John Muir.” Philip Hyde described his process in the Preface to The Range of Light:

It was a labor of love rereading John Muir some fifty years after my first reading. In searching for quotations to use with my photographs, I found the same inspiration and delight I recall feeling in the past—more, really, since my love for the mountains has only increased with the familiarity experience has given me… I wanted to go out again, to go in further, to explore all the places I had missed, and I wanted to improve on the pictures I had made to illustrate the heightened savor I was finding in his words. In nearly a lifetime of returning again and again, I began to feel I had barely scratched the surface. But over the life of the project, my view began to shift from unfulfilled desire to gratitude. I was coming to see that I would never satisfy my thirst for wildness and mountains. I could never make all the definitive photographs of them. But hadn’t I already had more than most men’s share of them? In general, the matching of quotations with pictures should be understood as equivalents—some descriptive, some expressing an experience of feeling that seems to parallel in some way one which John Muir describes. Others are visual equivalents of the words in less direct, more personal ways. There was a basic purpose in all this: my hope to somehow discharge a little of my debt to John Muir for his keen observation that informed and sharpened my own; for his words that amplified my feeling and experience, and colored them both brighter; for his boundless enthusiasm for Nature; for his clear vision that it would not be enough, living in an exploitive culture just to love Nature, but essential for Nature’s continued existence unimpaired, that one work to carry those “good tidings” to others who would, in their turn, work to protect Nature.

In 1938, just before he turned 17, Philip Hyde first visited Yosemite National Park and the Sierra Nevada. On that trip he made his first photographs with a Kodak Readyset 120 camera that he borrowed from his sister. He brought the camera along thinking he would photograph his Boy Scout friends, but when he had the film developed, he discovered that most of the photographs were of nature rather than people, a tendency that stayed with him throughout his career. For more on Philip Hyde’s early trips to Yosemite National Park, see the blog post, “Lake Tenaya And Yosemite National Park.” His wilderness photographs participated in more environmental campaigns than any other photographer of his time and helped to establish the genre of landscape photography as a recognized art form while his photographs served as the backbone of the groundbreaking Sierra Club Books Exhibit Format Series. The Exhibit Format Series, invented by Ansel Adams, David Brower and Nancy Newhall, became known for popularizing the coffee table photography book and helping to establish many national parks and wilderness areas of the Western U. S. Beginning with participation in the first book in the Sierra Club Books Exhibit Format Series, This Is The American Earth, Philip Hyde went on to publish more photographs in more volumes in the series than any of the other photographers, including Eliot Porter, who was known for illustrating the best selling book of the series, In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World with quotes by Henry David Thoreau. To read more about these photographers and the development of the Sierra Club Books Exhibit Format Series see the blog post, “How Color Came To Landscape Photography.”

Though the various book projects influenced a generation of photographers and brought his work acclaim, Philip Hyde himself said, “I didn’t want to be distracted by fame.” He was more apt to spend his time working on any of many local environmental campaigns around the West, rather than talking to photography galleries, museum curators or photography agents. Although the best art museums and collectors did take interest in his work, often through recommendations from mentors such as Ansel Adams, Edward Weston and Minor White; Philip Hyde, until recently has been less well-known than some other leading landscape photographers. Now for the first time in more than a decade, Philip Hyde’s vintage black and white prints, as well as his original dye transfer and Cibachrome prints are offered by a select number of the world’s best photography galleries. To read more about the galleries who carry Philip Hyde’s work see the blog posts in the category “Galleries for Philip Hyde” or go to “About Vintage And Black And White Prints.” A limited number of his vintage and original prints are still available for viewing and acquisition on the Philip Hyde Photography website. As we scan Philip Hyde’s original vintage black and white prints and film, a few new images, and on a few rare occasions a whole new portfolio is added to PhilipHyde.com. The selection of photographs chosen for the new “Yosemite, Kings Canyon and Sierra Black and White Portfolio” were carefully reviewed by many experts in the art world, in photography galleries and by other professional photographers. Please enjoy and write me as you have questions.

What writers, artists or other influences helped you connect to a place?

BIG NEWS:

New Release, “Reflection Pool, Arches, Escalante Wilderness, Utah.” Philip Hyde Archival Fine Art Digital Prints By Carr Clifton And David Leland Hyde Offered With Revised New Release Pricing:

The world’s best archival digital prints STARTING AT $99.00… for a limited time and number…

See revised New Release Pricing in the blog post, “New Release Pricing.”

Reflection Pool, Curved Sandbar, Forming Arches, Escalante River Side Canyon, Escalante Wilderness, now Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Utah, copyright 1968 by Philip Hyde. Never before printed or published. Intended for use in the book "Slickrock," by Edward Abbey and Philip Hyde, but damaged before processing.

(See the image large: “Reflection Pool, Arches, Escalante Wilderness, Utah.”)

This photograph has never been printed before. It was partly damaged and unprintable in the film era. With new digital print restoring techniques, this one of a kind historical photograph is now available as an archival fine art digital print. A leading professional photo lab masterfully high resolution drum scanned Philip Hyde’s original 4X5 large format Ektachrome color transparency. This provided an 834 MB digital file far superior to any digital capture made today. From the drum scan, master landscape photographer, Photoshop expert and printer Carr Clifton carefully restored the image and crafted an exquisite print file.

The Photograph’s Historical Significance

The groundbreaking Sierra Club Books Exhibit Format Series popularized the coffee table photography book, set the standards for composition and technique for a generation of landscape photographers, brought color to landscape photography and helped to make many national parks and wilderness areas in the American West during the late 1950s, 1960s and the early 1970s. Ansel Adams, David Brower and Nancy Newhall invented the series, Eliot Porter was the best-selling book photographer, but according to an Outdoor Photographer article by Lewis Kemper in 1989, Philip Hyde was the go-to man for David Brower, series editor and Sierra Club Executive Director. More Philip Hyde’s photographs appeared in more books in the series than any other photographer. Right after Philip Hyde’s Navajo Wildlands: As Long As the Rivers Shall Run came out in 1967, Philip Hyde had already begun work on another Southwest book that became the classic Slickrock: The Canyon Country of Southeast Utah with Edward Abbey. Slickrock would be published to help build support for wilderness or national park protection of the Escalante River and for areas around Canyonlands National Park eventually added to the national park.

From Philip Hyde’s Solo Escalante Travel Log, Participating In A Sierra Club Back Country Backpack, Spring 1968: Written By Philip Hyde

May 1:  Utah: Escalante Wilderness: Gates Cabin camp to the camp below 25 Mile Canyon. The Escalante River Canyon narrowed, while the bends in the river lengthened and became tighter in the corners. We began today to traverse the upper part of what the wranglers call “The Narrows.” The canyon walls were intermittently higher and the big alcoves in the ends of the river bends began to resemble the characteristics of the lower Escalante River. There were more short side canyons. I went into one on the left, entering at right angles to the Escalante River. Suddenly it turned sharply at a large sand slope. The side canyon looked promising, with a narrow bottom, high walls, cottonwoods, box elders and a few Gambel’s Oaks.

About two miles up the side canyon ended abruptly. I crawled under a passage between two huge angular boulders and entered a chamber not unlike Cathedral in the Desert in Glen Canyon, Utah. This water hollowed canyon chamber was Cathedral in the Desert’s equal in quality but not in size. The vaulted roof was not as soaring and the dimensions of the chamber were much less than Cathedral in the Desert, but this canyon chamber had much the same feeling of remote solitude and secret beauty. There was likewise a plunge pool for reflections and a magnificent sandbar with a long, graceful curve. This pool was fed by a now dry set of chute like “chimneys” in the “roof,” rather than a waterfall as in Cathedral in the Desert. The two “chimneys,” side-by-side, one and then a double-barreled one next to it, are beautifully water-sculptured. These forms make me wish there were some way to ascend to the level of the “chimneys” to see the carved stream channel above.

I spent about two hours in the canyon mini cathedral and left reluctantly. I was elated to find this chamber where it is well out of reach of “Lake” Powell’s high water inundations. I continued back to the Escalante River, then down canyon, crossing the river innumerable times. The canyon was narrowing dramatically and the walls became higher and more impressive. I walked past some sharp bends in the canyon with great sandstone columns and overhangs. Down past the “winking eyes,” two rounded out holes high in the wall of the left bank. Past 25 Mile Canyon. I started into the mouth of 25 Mile Canyon, sauntered in about one hundred feet or so, reflected on the hour and decided to head for camp instead.

I was the last man in and Sierra Club campers were having their soup beneath the deep red cliff, perhaps 35 feet high that was catching the last rays of the sun. I ate and then made my bed among the limbs of a medium-sized cottonwood—a leafy bower with sandy floor and more privacy than usual. In my sleeping bag looking up at the sky, I saw it was cloudy again, with broken clouds blowing overhead, their moisture too diminished by the time they reached us to dump any rain, though it looked threatening at times all day. My tarp was ready to be rigged but no drops came and I slept.

Urban Railroad Distortion, Reno, Nevada, copyright 2009 by David Leland Hyde. Nikon D90. Post-processed in Photoshop.

In his 1993 book Galen Rowell’s Vision: The Art of Adventure Photography, Galen Rowell wrote a chapter called Velvet Media in which he extolled the virtues of Fuji Velvia film, with some cautions. Galen Rowell wrote:

After twenty-five years of using Kodachrome film whenever sharpness was of the utmost importance, I abruptly gave up on it in February 1990 after seeing tests of an amazing new slide film from Japan…. Fuji’s introduction of ISO 50 Velvia at the Photo Marketing Association show in Las Vegas… After I returned home, I ran controlled comparisons of Velvia against Kodachrome 25, Kodachrome 64 and Fuji Pro 50. On my own light table the next morning, I clearly saw the end of an era. Velvia was the best of all existing worlds. Its resolution exceeded that of Kodachrome 25 and the other test films in high-contrast tests simulating daylight and equaled Kodachrome 25 in soft light. Its color saturation and separation of tones exceeded those of Fuji Pro 50 and the other films. I was aware that many photographers would prefer Kodachrome’s relatively muted colors, but I believed much of this was due to a conditioned constancy illusion that Kodachrome slides accurately represented the natural world. I knew better and fully expected Velvia to establish a new constancy illusion with picture editors and the public… I wanted to see the world freshly through this new tool and to push it to the limit to see what it would do. Over the years, the limitations of other films had caused me to consider certain kinds of subject matter and lighting as impossible. Murky renditions of greens in shadow under a blue sky on Kodachrome became vivid on Velvia. Fuji Pro 50 renditions of delicate foliage have very strong color, but also a lack of resolution that calls attention to itself, especially when compared with Kodachrome 25. Velvia holds both color and sharpness.… I soon began asking, ‘Is anything wrong with this film?’ not only to myself but to other users. The few negative answers had to do with too strong colors and a slower film speed than the advertised ISO 50.

In early 2010, in the comments on Steve Sieren’s blog post, “Ever Wonder About The History Of Landscape Photography?” large format landscape photographer Michael Gordon commented about how Fuji Velvia film had changed Landscape Photography. Michael Gordon first did a blog post about Velvia in 2008. In his 2010 comment, Michael Gordon said, “Want to be shocked? Compare Hyde’s “Drylands” photos to the current crop of Velvia-ized desert landscape photographs. Porter too. Not many years have passed, and despite the drying climate, the desert sure got a lot more vibrant in photographs!” Other comments on Steve Sieren’s blog post addressed the effect Velvia film had in the hands of various landscape photographers and its general impact on all landscape photography.

Many galleries, museums, photographers and others blame “over-saturation,” if it exists and can be defined, on the advent of the digital age and Photoshop, but here we see much evidence that “over-saturation” began long before. Also in 2010, outdoor, documentary and landscape photographer Carr Clifton offered his thoughts and possible explanation as to what happened in landscape photography from 1990 through the early years of the new millennium. Carr Clifton said, “When we first started printing digitally, we were used to trying to get the richest and even the hottest color out of whatever film we were using. Many films didn’t have the rich color palette that we now see. The same thing happened back in the 1990s with Velvia. Velvia was different because for the first time, it offered too much color, more than you see in nature. When everybody started scanning film and making digital prints, even the scans of Velvia were too gaudy.”

On reading Galen Rowell’s Outdoor Photographer features, Sierra Magazine articles and several of his books I discovered that he wrote more eloquently about photography than perhaps just about anyone else ever, with the possible exception of Robert Adams, Charis Wilson, Edward Weston, Minor White and Ansel Adams at times. That puts Galen Rowell at the top of all writers on photography. He is also admirable as a landscape photographer because he was self-taught. My father, pioneer landscape photographer Philip Hyde has been said by many of the who’s who of photography today to have influenced a generation of photographers. See the blog posts, “How Color Came To Landscape Photography,” “The Golden Decade: California School Of Fine Arts Photography,” and the series beginning with the blog post, “The Battle Over Dinosaur: Birth Of Modern Environmentalism.”

Notwithstanding, Galen Rowell also influenced a generation, the next generation, our generation, the landscape photographers just coming into prominence now. Galen Rowell was also one of the most talented photographers who ever lived. He was the master of “fast and light” and capturing unusually powerful landscape photographs. When we showed the Philip Hyde exhibition at Galen Rowell’s Mountain Light Gallery, I found through talking to guests and staff that Galen Rowell was also known as a life-changing mentor, a generous mountain guide, a driven activist for various conservation and social causes and a dynamic leader of an organization of top quality people who continue to inspire the world. However, some segments of the art establishment hardly recognize him because they feel he overdid the color. Carr Clifton, who also greatly admired Galen Rowell put forward the theory that when Velvia film first emerged on the scene and also in the early days of digital printing, that Galen Rowell went a little far with the color, but never lived to rein in when other photographers did.

“It was around 2003-2004 that everybody started to pull back some and bring their color back into the realm of reality,” Carr Clifton said. “All except for a few blatant examples that remain. Galen, unfortunately for all of photography, died in the plane crash in early 2002. We were all very sad about it. Now Galen’s prints are frozen in a state of too much syrup. He never made it to the time in 2003-2004 when everyone backed their color off.” Because Galen was so admired, there are now many photographers who try to do what he did with sunrise-drenched mountain tops, brilliant reflections and ultra-vivid colors. Other landscape photographers agree with Carr Clifton. They believe that Galen Rowell might very well have pushed his own work back down the color saturation scale if he had lived. It’s all conjecture, but an interesting theory and something to consider in view of how much landscape photographers try to emulate Galen Rowell’s work. For more about other concerns over the direction of landscape photography today see the blog post, “Is Landscape Photography Thriving Or Dying?”

Travel and landscape photographer Richard Wong wrote on this subject in November 2010:

…Galen did have a large audience probably due to several factors, one of which was a long relationship with Outdoor Photographer Magazine dating back to the beginning from what I understand, but even before that he had “street cred” in the outdoor community for being a prolific adventurer and rock climber. There were photographers just as good if not better out there at all the different things he did but he was able to connect with and convey his philosophy to his audience much more effectively than most. He was a great writer. And also someone who was always striving to innovate. Looking at his body of work, you can clearly see the evolution over the years. You also have a good point about the color. I was told that his staff worked on those digital masters from his slides in the years prior to his death and probably against advisement, he wanted to push the envelop on the saturation. You can tell by looking at some of his prints up close at his gallery and also in some of his books that some highlight detail was probably sacrificed due to saturation. His Evolution Lake image for example. With that said, I have always overlooked that phase of his career because that doesn’t define his body of work. One thing I’ve always pondered is what Galen would be doing now on the Nikon D700 if he were still around. Breaking new ground for photography I would imagine.

Fuji Velvia film was not the only film that amped up the saturation. Galen Rowell provided a warning against overdoing the color saturation in this quote also from the 1995 book, Galen Rowell’s Vision: The Art of Adventure Photography:

Much of what people were saying when Velvia first came out applies to Kodak E100VS today. Sometimes it looks garish, sometimes it looks great, and much of the time it will produce the image that editors will choose. Kodak E100VS often produces bright colors closer to what you believe you saw in flat light or at a distance, but if you use it all the time, you risk having the sum total of your style appear garish and suspect. In direct light this film doesn’t just come near the edge of the color saturation envelope; it moves beyond into a realm that requires the same sort of restraint as the use of color-enhancing filters does.

Probably the same could be said for the color saturation adjustment slider in Photoshop. What do you think? Is “over-saturation” an overblown issue? Is it a myth? Is over-saturation a problem in landscape photography today?

Photographer’s Comment From The Original Vintage Black And White Glen Canyon Portfolio

Continued from the blog post, “Glen Canyon Portfolio 1.”

By Philip Hyde

Reflections, Fronds Gelees Canyon, Glen Canyon, Utah, 1962 by Philip Hyde. From the original Glen Canyon Portfolio.

(See the photograph full screen Click Here or view the entire Glen Canyon Portfolio. The first 20 images are from the original Glen Canyon Portfolio. The photographs that follow those are scans of the other best 8X10 vintage black and white prints.)

It is ironic that Glen Canyon has come to be known as the “place no one knew.” It was well known by those tireless engineers of the 1930s and 1940s who combed the West searching out all possible dam sites. It was known by the National Park Service as early as the 1930s when a proposal was made for an Escalante National Park to Harold Ickes, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Secretary of Interior. Such a park would have encompassed all of Glen Canyon and many of its tributaries, but the proposal succumbed to the ambitions of the dam builders, as was revealed when the Park Service published Survey of the Recreational Resources of the Colorado River Basin in 1950. The survey lists all the potential dam sites and accompanying “recreational” plans, while potential areas for preservation are conspicuously absent. It is only fair to say here, that while the Park Service knew Glen Canyon’s qualities, its voice for preservation was stifled in the Interior Department where the Bureau of Reclamation had become the powerful tail that wagged the dog.

Glen Canyon was also known by legions of Boy Scouts who kayaked or rafted through and by hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people who went through and on their own (anyone could, for Glen Canyon’s Colorado River was mild) or with early professional river runners like Moki Mac, Georgie White, Bus Hatch, Pat Reilly, and others. The place wasn’t unknown. Its partisans just couldn’t be heard over the roar of political power.

It may seem further irony to some that while Glen Canyon went down the drain, another area survived because it had a boundary line drawn around it.

When the bill to authorize the Upper Colorado River Storage Project was in Congress, it was opposed by conservationists and actually stopped, temporarily. As constituted then, it would have authorized two dams in Dinosaur National Monument at Echo Park and in Split Mountain, in addition to Flaming Gorge dam on the Green River just north of Dinosaur, Glen Canyon Dam, and several smaller projects.

It is important to note that conservation in the mid-1950s was far from the strong and united force it is today, and it seemed doubtful whether Glen Canyon and the two Dinosaur dams could have been kept out of the final project. The spectre of opening the national parks to dam projects must have heavily influenced the conservationists’ decision when they finally agreed to withdraw opposition to the Upper Colorado River Storage Project if the dams in Dinosaur National Monument were deleted. This done, Congress authorized the Project—a political decision made to build another big dam on a river that could not adequately supply the first one. The best that can be said for the loss of Glen Canyon is that more “big dam foolishness,” as Elmer Davis called it, eventually aroused enough opposition to help stop two more dams proposed for the Grand Canyon a few years later.

Though I consider Glen Canyon’s loss tragic, I am certain that had dams been authorized in Dinosaur National Monument, no national park area would have been secure. The precedent would have opened the gates to at least eight national park areas, including Grand Canyon, where Bureau of Reclamation or Corps of Engineers dam proposals were already on drawing boards.

As things worked out, the building of Glen Canyon dam became literally, the high water mark of the Bureau’s power, and it has receded ever since—for which lovers of the land everywhere can be grateful. –But not complacent; for old dam projects, like old soldiers, never die; they just lie low until revival looks safer.

The reservoir behind Glen Canyon dam has been called “the most beautiful man made lake in the world.” That should tell you something of the quality of the wild canyon when you realize what you see today is but a remnant.

The scenic climax of Glen Canyon was along the Colorado River and at, or near, the tributaries’ junctions with the river. Cutting down to the river’s base level, the small streams (and flash floods) created grottos and waterfalls, carved great vaulted chambers, and deeply incised meanders in the final plunge to the master stream. These places of magnificent rock sculpture were among the first to go when the reservoir started rising, and they now lie hundreds of feet under water. Gone are the river and stream edges softened by riparian vegetation—grass, moss, even large trees where enough soil accumulated—willows, gambel’s oak, cottonwood, box elder. Gone, too, is the remoteness and feeling of adventure, reduced to the commonplace of reservoir recreation by gasoline power, noise, and smoke.

Though Glen Canyon gave its name to the dam, it is like the name inscribed on a tombstone that can only hint at the life that was. So, this portfolio hints at what was, to trigger memory in those who knew and to celebrate the life and beauty that was there for those who didn’t know.

To read more about Glen Canyon see the blog post, “Glen Canyon Lament By Philip Hyde 1,” “Glen Canyon Lament By Philip Hyde 2,” and “Glen Canyon Lament By Philip Hyde 3.” To read what David Brower wrote about Glen Canyon go to, “Let The River Run Through It.” To read about the movement to remove dams see the blog post, “A River Will Run Through It.”

The first 20 images in the website portfolio are the same as the original Glen Canyon Portfolio. The photographs that follow those are scans of the other best 8X10 vintage black and white prints. Click on the title here: Glen Canyon Portfolio to view the images. Enjoy.

This series on the Glen Canyon Portfolio continued with the blog post, “Glen Canyon Portfolio 3.”

California Quarter Image, Reverse Side, Courtesy Wikimedia Commons, 2005. First seen on PJ Finn's Buzztail Blog.

What is Monday Blog Blog? See the blog post, “Monday Blog Blog Celebration.”

NEW! Special Update: Buzztail Blog Has Added A New Writer

Greg Russell, author of the photo blog, Alpenglow Images, will lend his blog post writing skills to help PJ Finn develop Buzztail Blog…

Check out Greg Russell’s first Buzztail blog post, “Learning To Stand, Part I.”

What is Conservation Anyway?

Whether we are called conservationists, environmentalists, activists or some other term, a growing number of people both breathe air, drink water and want to maintain the quality of both for future generations. There are a certain faction of people in the United States who swallow the marketing and spin dished at them by big oil and big coal backed media. The spin says that we can continue to take old decayed organic material that we call oil and coal from deep in the earth, run it through refineries, machines and other hot devices, then spew it into the atmosphere indefinitely without any negative consequences. In my opinion, the idea that any negative consequences will be considered a theory until they have proven true, is ludicrous and nothing short of mass-suicide. The people swallowing and perpetuating the propaganda apparently have never ventured out into nature to observe the obvious signs of change all around us in every ecosystem.

Can Landscape Photography And Environmentalism Combine Well?

Meanwhile some photographers do not recognize the connection between landscape photography and the need to help preserve the land. Some photographers have also forgotten that landscape photography helped birth conservation in the 1800s. Nonetheless, many landscape photographers are aware of the tradition they are part of and are also rediscovering that photographs are one of the best tools available for making a difference. Because Global Warming has become so politicized and controversial, as have many other conservation and environmental issues, or for other good reasons, some photographers who are also great activists, choose to keep their photography and conservation efforts separate. My father pioneer landscape photographer Philip Hyde set himself apart by combining conservation and photography way before it was cool, hip and groovy to do so, but many other landscape photographers of note including Ansel Adams and Eliot Porter chose to separate the two endeavors to varying degrees. For more discussion on whether or not to mix conservation and photography see the blog post and comments on, “Wallace Stegner: The Wilderness Idea.”

PJ Finn, Photomontana Blog and Buzztail Blog

One photographer who is also an environmentalist is Paul Johnson, online a.k.a. PJ Finn. PJ Finn runs an insightful photography blog called Photo Montana, as well as a blog for activism, wilderness and environmental news called Buzztail Blog, which incidentally came before the photoblog. Buzztail refers to the noise a rattlesnake makes with its tail as a metaphor for what conservationists and environmentalists do when they report on and draw attention to various environmental issues. For more information about PJ Finn see his bio and the previous Landscape Photography Blogger blog post, “Photomontana Takes On Sacred Cows,” which recommends PJ Finn’s blogging on both blogs. Lately PJ Finn, after a move to Southern California, has rededicated himself to building up his Buzztail blog. Please lend PJ Finn a hand over there, stop by, make a comment, link to his blogs and otherwise offer up a big thanks to him for all of the good work he does.

What in the world is “Monday Blog Blog? Find out in the blog post, “Monday Blog Blog Celebration.”

Backlit Icebergs, Jokalsarlon, Iceland, 2007 by Lewis Kemper.

After I wrote the blog post, “Monday Blog Blog: Photoshop For Pros,” I had a strange feeling that I had forgotten at least one or perhaps more professional photographers who are important to mention in any discussion about Photoshop or Photoshop training. Sure enough, one of those who I inadvertently left out was landscape photography master Lewis Kemper.

Lewis Kemper lived in Yosemite National Park for 11 years. From 1978 to 1980, he worked at the Ansel Adams Gallery. This gave him the opportunity to meet many influential photographers of the time including Philip Hyde. In the summer of 1979, Philip Hyde led the Color Landscape Photography Workshop for the Ansel Adams Gallery. His two assistant instructors were Jeff Nixon and Lewis Kemper.

“It was a dream come true to meet and teach under one of the photographers I had admired since I was a kid,” Lewis Kemper said. He continued:

I remember growing up looking at Sierra Club Books, Philip Hyde and Eliot Porter’s photographs, Navajo Wildlands, Slickrock, and the Sierra Club Calendars. Prior to Philip Hyde and Eliot Porter, landscape photography was limited to the big general scene. Eliot Porter sort of stole the title for ‘intimate landscapes’ but that was what I admired about Philip Hyde’s work too: the close-ups and the smaller and mid-sized scenes. Originally landscape photography was about trying to photograph everything. Now the Sierra Club photographers were showing us that you could take pictures of part of everything and still convey everything.

Part of what landed Lewis Kemper the job at the Ansel Adams Gallery was his B.A. in Fine Art Photography from George Washington University. In photography school, Lewis Kemper studied black and white photography and the zone system, but even earlier, starting in high school, he was more drawn to color. While helping Philip Hyde teach the Ansel Adams Gallery Color Landscape Photography Workshop, Lewis Kemper showed the lead instructor his Color Cibachrome prints of “Sand Dune,” “Cedars In Snow” and others. See more of Lewis Kemper’s photographs at LewisKemper.com.

“Philip liked my prints,” Lewis Kemper said. “He kept saying, ‘I can’t believe you’re getting this with a 35 mm camera.’” Subsequently, with a friendly push from Philip Hyde, Lewis Kemper began to use a large format 4X5 view camera. Listen to Lewis Kemper’s podcasts that mention Philip Hyde’s influence at the bottom of the page here. Later, in the early 1990s, Lewis Kemper bought an Imacon Scanner and began making high resolution digital scans of his 4X5 transparencies. He learned digital printing with the first 25 inch pigment printer, the Epson 7500. The Epson 7000 had been an ink printer, whereas with the advent of the Epson 7500, digital printers began using pigment. Lewis Kemper also printed commercially for other landscape photographers.

In 1992, Photoshop came out with version 2.5.1. Lewis Kemper said he remembered the instruction manual being very hard to follow. He said, “I had been screaming and struggling for 45 minutes with the clone tool and the instructions that came with Photoshop 2.5.1, when my wife came in to help. She started pushing buttons with the mouse and playing with the keyboard and all of a sudden the program cloned. I asked her, ‘What did you do?’ She said, ‘I don’t know.’ Then she tried to repeat the steps she had made when it cloned and it cloned again. Finally we had figured out how to make the clone tool work.”

Lewis Kemper began teaching photography workshops including Photoshop classes in 1995 at the Palm Beach Photographic Center, the same year Photoshop came out with version 3.0, the first version with layers. Read more of Lewis Kemper’s articles and tips: go here. When Lewis Kemper first started writing for PC Photo Magazine, he was using a small point and shoot digital camera, but through his work with the magazine he became enthusiastic to step up to a Canon 1DS, which had an 11 megapixel sensor. Lewis Kemper made his first serious digital capture with the Canon 1Ds in January 2004. He now represents Canon as one its Explorers of Light, an elite group of only 62 photographers around the world including Art Wolfe, Barbara Bordnick, John Paul Caponigro, Adam Jones, Robert Farber, George Lepp, Tyler Stableford, Rick Sammon, David Hume Kennerly and Douglas Kirkland. Lewis Kemper currently uses a Canon iPF 6300 24 inch printer and his two main cameras are a Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III for landscape photography and a Canon EOS-1D Mark IV for wildlife and outdoor sports.

Lewis Kemper first taught classes through BetterPhoto.com in the Fall of 2003. He has also taught at the Santa Fe Workshops, Light Photographic Workshops, Aspen Workshops, and George Lepp Digital Institute. He is the author of The Yosemite Photographer’s Handbook, The Yellowstone Photographer’s Handbook and his latest Photographing Yosemite Digital Field Guide, which was voted in the top 20 of all such field guides. He also produces the acclaimed Photoshop training DVD’s, The Photographer’s Toolbox for Photoshop. His photographs have been published in numerous other books including those published by the Sierra Club, The National Geographic Society, Little and Brown, Prentice Hall and many others. Besides having his photographs appear on the cover of many of the best magazines, currently Lewis Kemper is a contributing editor for Outdoor Photographer and Digital Photo magazines and NANPA Currents magazine.

Landscape Photography Blogger’s Introduction

Bend In Colorado River Above Klondike Bar, Glen Canyon, 1962 by Philip Hyde.

(To see the photograph full screen Click Here.)

The original Glen Canyon Portfolio came out in 1979. Northland Press of Flagstaff, Arizona published a limited edition lithograph portfolio of 20 images photographed by my father landscape photographer Philip Hyde in 1955, 1958, 1961, 1962, 1963 and 1964. Dad first visited the Glen Canyon vicinity in 1955. He joined river trips on the Colorado River through Glen Canyon in 1958, 1962 and 1964 after the gates on Glen Canyon Dam had already closed and the reservoir “Lake” Powell, or as Dad and many of the other environmentalists called it, Lake Foul, was already filling and drowning the beloved side canyons.

The river trips were all accompanying David Brower, the first executive director of the Sierra Club and leader of the environmental coalitions that helped to keep dams out of the Grand Canyon, keep the trees in Redwood National Park and in North Cascades National Park and helped to expand or establish dozens of other national parks and wilderness areas of the development sensitive Western United States. He was the father of modern environmentalism. David Brower usually had his movie camera rolling while on the river and hiking the side canyons of the doomed Glen Canyon. My father even captured David Brower filming on still camera film.

Landscape and nature photographer Eliot Porter also photographed Glen Canyon and produced a gorgeous Sierra Club Book called “The Place No One Knew” in the Exhibit Format Series. Some of Eliot Porter’s images were intimate and sensitive, some grand and majestic, but they were all in color. Besides Eliot Porter, there may have been other photographers who made snapshots in Glen Canyon, probably some of them were on the river trips with my father and David Brower. The talented photographer Tad Nichols made black and white prints of Glen Canyon. Environmental activist, singer and song writer Katie Lee also made both black and white and color photographs of Glen Canyon. Dad remains one of just a few formally trained fine art photographers who made high quality original black and white photographs and prints of Glen Canyon. Dad’s vintage black and white prints of the doomed and drowning canyon are the only vintage black and white prints of their kind.

Recently I searched through the files and found the corresponding vintage black and white prints for each of the 20 images in the original Glen Canyon lithograph portfolio. I scanned them with an Epson 610 everyday desktop flatbed scanner that I purchased in 1998 with my Dell Windows ’98 computer. The scans came out a bit too dark in places. Some of the shadows are too large and too black without any detail in areas where the vintage black and white prints have detail. I will have to experiment more with the limited settings. Nonetheless, with a little tweaking in Photoshop to get the scans to look more like the prints do, they are at least somewhat viewable. They do not do justice to the gorgeous and luminous prints that my father made. He was a black and white printer extraordinaire.

To read more about Glen Canyon see the blog post, “Glen Canyon Lament By Philip Hyde 1,” “Glen Canyon Lament By Philip Hyde 2,” and “Glen Canyon Lament By Philip Hyde 3.” To read what David Brower wrote about Glen Canyon go to, “Let The River Run Through It.” To read about the movement to remove dams see the blog post, “A River Will Run Through It.”

The best scans from the original black and white prints from the original Glen Canyon Portfolio I combined with scans of vintage black and white prints from Grand Canyon National Park. Click on the title here: Glen & Grand Canyon Vintage Black and White Prints to view the images. Enjoy.

This series on the Glen Canyon Portfolio continued with the blog post, “Glen Canyon Portfolio 2.”