Younes Bounhar Photography

Call in the Weatherman!

As a nature and landscape photographer, much of my work revolves around light. Its availability, its quality go a long way in determining you end-product, the image.

If you’ve been reading my blog regularly, you’ve probably read a couple of mentions here or there of bad weather, even of a “bad light” curse…Now that’s all good and dandy, but the fact is, the last thing I have control over is Nature itself (actually some would argue that there isn’t much I have control of anyway…). Does that mean that if the light I am hoping for doesn’t materialise I am good as toast? The answer is a resounding NO.

The fact is as I and many posters on this blog have suggested in the past, there are good photo opportunities to be had in any kind of light. It takes an open mind, a willingness to experiment and LOTs of practice. As matter of principle (and habit), I am constantly looking for photographic opportunities in my daily life, be it on the bus to work, on a stroll around my neighbourhood or during an actual photo “expedition”. By training your eyes to see where there seemingly is nothing to see, you will quickly find that there are more opportunities than you’ll ever have time to capture.  Some of the elements I use in my search are patterns, shapes, lines, colours, motion, contrast. Each of these, used alone or in combination will open your eyes to even more opportunities.

I a recent answer to one of my posts, Jim Goldstein provided an interesting bit of advice, that I strongly encourage you to follow: “I make an effort to never end an outing without getting photos and experimenting in search of those opportunities”.

Posted on July 29th, 2009 in Creativity Photography Tips | 2 Comments »

Monthly Desktop Wallpaper – August 2009

This month’s wallpaper is from the sunny coast of California, yet again. This time, from Natural Bridge in Santa Cruz. This is a truly spectacular arch, made all more special by the fact you can just walk up to and under it as it pretty much IN Santa Cruz. A moderately slow shutter speed allowed me to freeze the streaks of foamy water without blurring them into oblivion…

As usual, it is available in three sizes for download:

1280×857 1024×686 800×536

Posted on July 28th, 2009 in wallpaper | No Comments »

What is this?

Posted on July 27th, 2009 in Images | 5 Comments »

Photo of the Month – July 2009

This month’s photograph of the month comes (shockingly) from my trip out West earlier this month. One of my favorite moments came as Jay Goodrich and I drove up to Mt Rainier for a nice sunset shoot. On our way back, the black sky was just screaming night photography. I’ve posted other shots of the Milky Way but I wanted to make this one a bit more special. While I couldn’t get Art Wolfe to pose for us on this one, his trusty car more than made up for it and didn’t even complain . The car was painted with a LED headlamp with a red filter attached to it.

Remember that you get a 10% discount on any Photo of the Month order!

Posted on July 26th, 2009 in News | 1 Comment »

Reversing the curse

I found it! That’s it, the search is over.

Ok, let me backtrack, for the past year or so, I have come to believe that I have some sort of curse. I just can’t find good light anymore. I know, I know, you can make great images in any light, but come’on we all know that great light is what will put you over the top.

This curse was never more obvious than last week as I travelled around Washington state: I just couldn’t buy good light if my life depend on it! To make matters even worse, the day after I left, Jay Goodrich and Art Wolfe headed back to Rainier (without me of course), and guess what…light just materialised out of nowhere; the proof: HERE.

But my search has ended today, all I need is buy myself a llama or two…Ian Plant said it, and frankly I need to believe him.

Posted on July 22nd, 2009 in rant | 6 Comments »

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