Joshua Tree National Park: Desert in Bloom
No matter where you live, there will always be spring; flowers will bloom and trees will leaf. It is a powerful time of year. I consider myself very lucky to have traveled to Joshua Tree National Park this spring to bear witness to the mass Joshua tree bloom, a once in a lifetime event. No [...]
Joshua Tree National Park: Namesake
Many of the Joshua trees that are standing today were taking root a century and a half ago when Mormon immigrants first gave them their name, some were already full grown. The pioneers saw the figure of Joshua, a biblical character, reaching towards the sky in prayer, personified in the trees. The name stuck and was eventually [...]
Where the River Narrows
On a whim, my wife and I packed our bags and took a trip. It’s strange for us not to head into the wilderness when we have a week off, but we hadn’t allowed ourselves a lot of time to plan. The night before we left we simply looked at the map to see what [...]
My New Store
I am excited to announce the opening of my new online store, the J.K. Putnam Photography Print Shop! I am now offering high-end photographic prints of my work on a limitless basis. All of my prints are made using the most superior archival inkjet printers and luster photo papers to ensure and maintain the original sharpness and vibrancy of [...]
14th Place
When I was contacted by The Nature Conservancy and notified that the photo below was a finalist in their annual photo contest I was thrilled… but I kept it to myself. A wave of superstition came over me. I was afraid I would jinx my chances of winning. The top thirteen finalist would be included in the Conservancy’s annual calendar, [...]
The White Mountains of New Hampshire
As a child, from the back window of a car, I caught a view; a wintery scene from the Kancamagus Highway of a cliff face in black and white. The road before me was snow-covered and the evergreens neutral behind flurries of snow and between the contrast of light and dark. The image was ingrained in my memory. [...]
Montana-Wyoming
While visiting these places I thought a lot about how time had passed from their creation to the present. I thought of how slowly time moved as glaciers carved valleys or how recently the spot I stood on had been an uninhabitable volcanic landscape. For this reason I took advantage of any chance I had to show motion [...]
Japan
Before Japan I had never traveled to a place exclusively to visit it’s urban areas. Since this would be a new experience for me I decided to approach it differently. I looked for situations that would work in black and white. I shot a lot at night and in low-light to produce a grainy look and blur [...]
Alaska
Alaska is quite likely my favorite place that I’ve ever been. Wild, untamed, isolated, and above all beautiful. It’s wilderness challenges you like no where else. It’s open, untouched tracts are matched only by places like Africa’a Serengeti. The coast is draped in mystique and allure where once in a lifetime encounters with nature seem to [...]
Australia
Australia is amazing. It was the first time as a photographer that I felt like serendipity had a hand in the outcome of my images. These moments kept happening; a kangaroo hopping into the perfect light, a bird tilting up its head to match the bare branches it perched on, or a joey wallaby poking [...]
Patience is a Virtue
I’ve been very patient, but it has been a while since National Geographic chose one of my submissions for their daily dozen. You are only allowed to submit once a month and on any given day the photo you submit has to stand out amongst hundreds. Not only that but the quality of the images submitted gets [...]
My Uneasy Relationship with the Gowanus Canal
In the October 2004 issue of National Geographic, writer Joel Bourne Jr. tells of a hypothetical hurricane hitting New Orleans causing massive flooding and taking thousands of lives with it. A geologist Bourne interviews says, “It’s not if it will happen, it’s when”, and as we all know less than a year later it did. It was [...]
New York Scavengers
Through my time spent in New York I have grown used to the sight of shopping carts overstuffed with anything but groceries. Instead they carry cans, bottles, scrap metal, or used electronics. To you and me it’s all garbage but to the people that drag these carts up and down the New York City streets [...]
Colorado
Colorado is big and beautiful. It’s views are so expansive that at times it requires a zoom lens to capture the landscape. It’s cinematic qualities influence the decisions I make when editing the photos. I crop many of the images, following standard motion picture aspect ratios. The landscape gives opportunities for creating abstract images with it’s bold colors, [...]
Tanzania: Part Two
I was very sad to be leaving Alli behind. I’ve traveled without her before but a place like this, Tanzania, just seemed so far away. My traveling companions were mostly new to me, my mother (whom I know very well of course) and five other women from her church, all in Tanzania to see for [...]
Tanzania: Part One
Jeremiah and I stood waiting outside the blue Landrover. It had overheated and the others had gone ahead in the other truck in the hopes of finding a rope to tow us out with. My second day in Tanzania and I was broken down on the side of the road in the Ngorongoro Crater, an [...]
These Boots Have Traveled
Every pair of hiking boots has a soul… two in fact (haha). My boot’s souls have been worn down. There is not much traction left and they have grown too tight (it’s more likely that my feet have grown too wide). While traversing Denali National Park last summer, a place with no trails to follow [...]
A Matter of Time: Yellowstone National Park
I could not catch my breath. I couldn’t go twenty paces without needing to stop and rest. The trail was uphill and pretty steep, but I had only walked a few hundred yards. I had been backpacking in Glacier National Park for a week and a half before coming here. In Glacier I was carrying [...]
Time Well Spent: Glacier National Park
There are not many glaciers left in Glacier National Park. What remains is a handful of alpine glaciers grasping tightly to the sides of mountains. Each spring they shrink a little smaller, soon they will be gone. But this is the direction things have been going in for a long time. The park is not [...]
Your Turn to Pick My Shot
Through month after month of submitting to the National Geographic Your Shot competition I believe I have narrowed down what the editors are looking for. Over the past couple of years four of my pictures have been chosen for the competition (I think this is a lot) and most recently the image of my wife [...]
Spring in the Hudson Highlands
Each spring my wife and I spend our weekends searching out new places to go hiking within easy driving distance of our home in New York City. We started in the Delaware Water Gap area but after a few years we felt we had hiked all there was to be hiked there. Two years ago [...]
California
There have been some changes to the website since my last post; an updated look, added features, and additional portfolio galleries, the newest being a gallery of photographs from California. Unlike the Colorado gallery, which spans almost the entire state, the locations I shot in California are limited to a small stretch of the coast [...]
Emergence
I recently spent five days in California at a photography workshop with National Geographic Photographer Frans Lanting. Frans is a master at what he does and in my opinion is the top nature photographer alive today (if not of all time). He has a unique view of the natural world and is able to show [...]
In the City of Quality
First of all, my apologies to my friends and family that live in Rochester for two reasons; 1) I didn’t visit any of you while I was there shooting for this project, and 2) I don’t mean to portray our great city as a gray, industrial wasteland. In defense of reason 1; I only had a [...]
