Another wonderful autumn season has passed. The trees stand bare, temperatures here in the Wasatch Mountains fall consistently below freezing almost every day, and winter is still nowhere to be seen.

Slight hints of snow are visible on the high peaks but otherwise the slopes await, covered with fallen leaves, now brown and matted, and no storms are in sight. This is in sharp contrast to the previous two years in which the local ski resorts recorded their earliest openings in history.

So, as I await winter's white blanket, I am working on yet another wonderful crop of autumn images - my favorite of seasons. These past couple of months I was fortunate to discover new hidden gems in Utah's amazing canyon country, to make some new friends on the trail, and even to expose some film (more on that below).

This morning as I surveyed the ever-growing list of subscribers to this newsletter, I was inspired to see the variety of places you hail from. All parts of the US are well-represented, as are most EU countries, but some of you found your way from the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and Australia - places that ignite the imagination and bring about endless questions in my mind about life in these parts of the globe. More amazing and humbling to me is the realization that, beyond the boundaries of maps, politics, religions, and culture, it is natural beauty that brings us all together, and I am proud and grateful for being able to share these things that are so meaningful to me. Thank you all!

Guy Tal

The Gift of Natural Beauty

For many of us, this is the season for holidays and gift-giving. I'm not one for subliminal marketing techniques or silly advertisements so let me be forward here: please consider my prints as gifts for your loved ones, and help share the beauty. If you can appreciate the hard work and love that goes into making these images, you know your financial support is appreciated and will be put to good use. Rather than a mass-produced gadget, consider a print of your choice, produced individually by your request. There is no corner-cutting or corporate bureaucracy here. The business model is simple: I use the best available tools to make the best possible product that I can, and all revenues are used towards my ongoing pursuit of wild beauty.

Mmm... Film...

I never really stopped using film, though over the past two years my work had been predominantly digital. Having used a wide array of photographic tools over the years I learned to appreciate the value of variety. In reviewing my work it becomes very clear to me that I don't work with a digital camera in the same way that I do with a view camera, and that both differ still from working with a beastly 6x7 SLR or an elegant square-format Hasselblad, and so on. Each one stimulates me in different ways. I'm sure this is the cumulative effect of varying aspect ratios, different views coming in through the finder, different workflows, and different capture mediums (which, once their nuances are known, almost dictate the type of subjects I look for).

With one system I may be more prone to seeking detail, with another lines and patterns. One may pull me in the direction of extreme wide vistas, another into the minute world at my feet. In short - there is value to using a variety of tools regardless of any technical merits, conveniences, or "quality" associated with each. What's in my bag seems to affect what I'm seeing and how I set out to photograph it.

This is perhaps not a novel concept. Ralph Waldo Emerson described the ill-effects of consistency in an article dating back to 1841, saying that "With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall." (And that whole bit about hobgoblins and small minds, but let's not be mean here.) Personally I see the danger of consistency in the fact that it is convenient. Once you have learned how to be successful with a given formula, it is far easier to repeat it than to venture once again into uncharted waters. While such convenience is a boon in any number of pursuits, it is a curse when it comes to seeing creatively.

But enough philosophy. What I really wanted to tell you about is the wonderful time I had this past season loading rolls of film into an old Pentax 67, and sheets of 4x5 chromes into holders, and the joys of operating well-machined mechanical lenses, levers, and springs, the familiar old sounds of leaf shutters and cloth curtains and mirror slapping, and ultimately that wonderful anticipation in advance of picking up film from the lab, then driving away slowly trying to concentrate on the road while holding slides to the light. So many people narrow down the discussion of photographic tools into an obscure metric of "quality" and completely miss the far more stimulating factor of the experience. Using different tools corresponds to completely different sensations, different ways of working and seeing, different activities and skills. Mixing things up is a great way of avoiding the allure of comfortable consistency and the consequent creative stagnation.

So, my advice for the day is this: if you've been loyal to any one tool for more than a few months in a row - set it down and make a quick switch. Medium and large format equipment is now more financially attractive than ever. A small investment can pay big dividends in sheer joy and creativity.

The above notwithstanding, I would like to add that working on large film scans again also made me realize just how good modern high-end digital cameras are. When it comes to prints of 16x20-ish inches, files from the little Canon 5D now give my 4000dpi scans of 6x7 film a good run for their money. In terms of dynamic range the digitals beat slide film hands down. And yet, there are some qualities that make them subtly different and that cannot be accurately measured. Tonal relationships may look similar but when enlarged and placed side by side there is an obvious "something" that distinguishes them, no matter how close the palette or detail. That "something" can translate into a mood or a feeling that one can hold more successfully than the other (and not always the same one). It would be a great shame if one came to replace the other. For some things, such subtleties can make a world of difference.

Limited-Edition Prints Survey

Limiting print editions had long been a contentious topic for photographers. Many galleries require it, some collectors will not purchase open (unlimited) edition prints, and some simply purchase images for their visual appeal regardless of edition limits.

For a long time now I persisted in offering all my prints as open editions, though recently have seen more requests from collectors to offer some work in limited editions. I am asking for your help to determine interest in limited-edition prints and hope you will spare a few moments of your time to answer a quick survey and offer your thoughts: