Parker Photographic Insiders Field Stories. Real Lessons. Every Tuesday. Hello Reader ! I ate my sandwich in an outhouse. Why on earth would I do that? Let me back up. On this particular morning, I dragged myself out of a perfectly warm sleeping bag at 4 a.m. and started hiking through pitch-black wilderness toward my target location five miles away. But here's what I didn't know... what the weather forecast conveniently failed to mention... was that a massive thunderstorm was tracking maybe...
about 15 hours ago • 3 min read
Parker Photographic Insiders Field Stories. Real Lessons. Every Tuesday. Hello Reader ! I stood alone in the pitch-black darkness... an hour before sunrise... and honestly? I was as giddy as a seven-year-old kid turned loose in a candy store with unlimited allowance. The world around me sat perfectly still. Silent. Waiting. That massive butte rising in front of me was nothing but a dark silhouette carved against the fading night sky... ...a calm, mysterious outline just waiting for the first...
8 days ago • 3 min read
Parker Photographic Insiders Photography + Editing tips Hello Reader ! It started one day with a cookie-ish wish,A sneaky little reach for a sweet, tasty dish.But Mom spun around with surprising speed,And her look said, “Try it… and you’ll regret that deed.” She guarded a jar full of bills, not chips,So my cookie adventure made zero dips.“One dollar,” I thought, “that’s all that I need…”But that Mom-glare of steel made my mischief recede. Zoom! Fast-forward... ten years down the track,Bagging...
8 days ago • 1 min read
Parker Photographic Insiders Field Stories. Real Lessons. Every Tuesday. Hello Reader ! 1,983 miles... 2.5 days of relentless driving... All for one single landscape photograph. Yep. That's the distance I covered. I rolled into the desert at 9:43 p.m. Pitch black darkness. No hotel vacancies anywhere within a 100-mile radius. No campsites. No nothing. Just me, my camera gear crammed in the back, and the world's least comfortable car seat pretending to be a bed. I slept there anyway. Sort of....
15 days ago • 2 min read
Parker Photographic Insiders Field Stories. Real Lessons. Every Tuesday. Hello Reader ! Owls. Love them! How 'bout you? One problem. I've never actually encountered them in the wild. Not really. Well... there was that one time in Cape Coral while visiting friends. You might remember that story from a newsletter months back. Burrowing Owls nesting literally two doors down from where we were staying. Technically? Sure, it counts as "the wild." But in my mind? That doesn't qualify. Way too easy....
22 days ago • 2 min read
Parker Photographic Insiders Field Stories. Real Lessons. Every Tuesday. Hello Reader ! I planned for weeks. Round trip: 4,495 miles. Dozens of carefully researched locations pinned on my map. What I did not plan for? The relentless obstacles that would block me from reaching half of them. A snowstorm... in the desert. Road closures without warning. Flash floods washing out access roads. Every curveball Mother Nature could throw. Which left me staring at a surprising dilemma. How was I going...
28 days ago • 3 min read
Parker Photographic Insiders Field Stories. Real Lessons. Every Tuesday. Hello Reader ! The year was 2001. Me, Tammy, and our oldest son loaded up the car and pointed it toward my Grandma's place in the Gaslight Village. That's the historic downtown area of Wyoming, NY... and yes, it's actually called that because the streets have been lit by natural gas lamps since 1809. The whole village sits on a natural gas field. Pretty cool, right?) By day one of our visit, we were climbing the walls...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
Parker Photographic Insiders Field Stories. Real Lessons. Every Tuesday. Hello Reader ! I didn't need to drive 1,756 miles to photograph a dramatic river bend like Horseshoe Bend. This bend was way closer to home. Only 220 miles. But here's the thing... it was what I'd call a teeny tiny, micro bend. So small you might actually have to squint to see the curve. Okay, maybe that's a little dramatic. It was definitely still worth photographing. The real question eating at me was simple. Would...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
Parker Photographic Insiders Field Stories. Real Lessons. Every Tuesday. Hello Reader ! Somewhere in Ohio. An overcast sky threatening to open up any second. Three waterfalls on today's hit list. All packed into a single ambitious day. The first one was supposedly only a mile away... but that trail had other plans. I climbed uphill not once, but twice. Steep, relentless climbs. And that was just getting to the halfway point. My watch screamed 150 bpm. Averaged 120. My lungs felt like they...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
Parker Photographic Insiders Field Stories. Real Lessons. Every Tuesday. Hello Reader ! November 2025... ...chasing waterfalls. Four of them packed into one weekend through Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Ohio. The first one on the list was supposed to be the crown jewel... Brandywine Falls. Sixty-five feet of cascading water. Easy access from the parking lot. Boardwalk. Stairs. Viewing platform. Everything about it screamed "photographer's paradise." Until we actually showed up. I wasn't...
about 2 months ago • 4 min read