Red River Paper Blog

By Andrew Slaton— A cloudless, blue sky is excellent for just about everything except making dramatic photos. That’s what I had all summer in Wyoming. But it didn’t much matter to me. Low hanging scrub cedars dominate the immediate landscape. Concrete, ground up by time and pressure surrounds me. We are parked in a sparsely...read more

 By Arthur H. Bleich— Always interested in the outdoors, it was probably preordained that Dawn Wilson, 49, would eventually settle in Colorado and become a renowned wildlife photographer. Growing up in New Jersey, her active and creative life in high school continued through her college and post-graduate years. From an early age she developed a...read more

By Peter E. Randall— Photographing and producing a book on Ghana was not on my mind when I first visited the West African country in 1984 as a United Nations consultant. I was hired to document an improved method of smoking fish, a vital task in a country with little access to refrigeration to preserve...read more

By Albert Chi— Most photographers dread shooting when poor light levels require slow shutter speeds for proper exposure. Chances are pictures will end up blurred due to camera shake, subject motion, or both. And to compensate, you can only up the ISO so much before running into noise and artifacts. Here are some ways to...read more

By Michael Freeman— When you know in advance that a situation forbids photography, you first need to have a very good reason to flout authority, and then you need to plan how to shoot surreptitiously. This is the serious end of investigative photojournalism, and while you’re not likely to be facing the same challenges as...read more

By Will Keener and Ron Wolfe— White Pocket is photographer’s dreamland; a remote, other-worldly experience in the Vermillion Cliffs National Monument in Arizona that looks like chef whipped up a colorful concoction from chunks of multi-colored fudge. Writers tend to wax poetic in describing White Pocket, seeing visions of gum drops, ice cream cones, dragon’s...read more

  by Arthur H. Bleich— Red River Ppaper Pro Carl Juste has a personal intensity that permeates every photograph he makes. His images speak in a way  words  cannot, making an immediate connection with the viewer. He is a master visual communicator. Juste, 56, was just two years old when his family was forced to...read more

By Christine Pentecost— I’m fortunate to see a lot of wildlife. Living with my husband in the mountains near Bozeman, Montana, close to Yellowstone National Park, we’ve had black bears look into our windows, moose wander through the yard, bobcats and mountain lions meander through our property, and an over abundance of deer visit us,...read more

By Gavin Pretor-Pinney— It is easy to forget that you live in the sky—not beneath it, but within it. Our atmosphere is an enormous ocean, and you inhabit it. This ocean is made up of the gases of air rather than liquid water, but it is as much of an ocean as the Atlantic or...read more

By Andrew Slaton— So here we were in Florida, as March rolled closer to April. News about the Coronavirus sparked fear throughout the country. All of our state and national park reservations were canceled out from under us, and photo jobs were postponed or canceled outright. The world, to most everyone, looked a bit more...read more

By Andrew Slaton— It’s mid-May at American Horse Lake in Oklahoma as I sit down to write. Things are beginning to open back up, but the second wave of a global pandemic still looms as an inevitable possibility. So much has changed. The Sooner state in the spring is awash with color. Newly budding branches...read more

By Albert Chi— More than 100,000 people in the U.S. have died from COVID-19 since the year began so it’s easy to understand why the Sympathy and Get Well card slots in store card racks are bare. But Thank You cards are also in short supply at many locations as grateful survivors and their families...read more

By Suzanne D. Williams— Light is the key element in every photograph and having an understanding of it is essential to becoming a good photographer. Relying on your camera’s automatic settings will at some point become a hindrance because these settings can be misleading. The camera does not always make the correct choice. Instead, you,...read more

By Arthur H. Bleich— It’s 2011. On a jumbo jet 36,000 feet over the Pacific headed for New Zealand, night has fallen, the cabin lights are  dimmed and most of the passengers have dozed off.  Nina Katchadourian  slips quietly out of her aisle seat, cellphone in hand, and makes her way down the aisle to...read more

By Arthur H. Bleich— “These are times that try men’s souls.  That’s what Thomas Paine wrote in 1776, after our country severed its ties with England. Now, 244 years later, we’re facing  a similar challenge with most of the country in mandatory lockdown. Although confinement to quarters can be frustrating and time seems to creep...read more

By Albert Chi— Many strange-looking cameras have been produced but Solarcan may be the weirdest, yet. And, certainly, what it’s made to do gives it a leg up on all the others. Basically, it’s a pinhole camera with a twist (curved to be more exact), made to record the transit of the Sun, for a...read more

by Arthur H. Bleich— By day Jules Aarons worked as an astrophysicist, unraveling mysteries of celestial communications; weekends he roamed Boston’s West End, photographing its vibrant street life; nights found him in the darkroom, transforming his images into works of art. When he died in 2008, at 87, Aarons had made his mark; both as...read more

By Christine Pentecost— Living in Montana, where the winters are  long, I decided to give myself a photographic challenge, so I could enjoy my flowers year round. I wanted to photograph fresh bouquets of flowers, but in a way that I could have unique backgrounds, which could easily be changed.  I also wanted a new...read more