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Half Dome and Elm tree, winter, Yosemite National Park, California  1990
If you ask me what my favorite light for photography is, I will say soft light like on a rainy day.  I will say that the reason for this preference is the subtlety of light where harsh shadows are not present and for the richness of colors that can be recorded in such conditions.  Sometimes though, nature's lighting is anything but subtle.  When the sun is shining, I look for the edges of light.
The most dramatic lighting conditions for outdoor photography often occur when light and shadow work together to define a subject.  It is these grand theatrics in nature that give landscape photographers such a thrill.  The contrast of a dark shadow behind a backlit branch of autumn leaves, or a sunset-lit mountain, glowing out from a dark storm cloud, will give power to your images.  Shapes and lines stand apart with graphic emphasis.  However, the use of such contrast cannot be i...

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William Neill, an American photographer and resident of Yosemite National Park area since 1977, is a renowned nature and landscape photographer. Neill's award-winning photography has been widely published in books, magazines, calendars, posters, and his limited-edition prints have been collected and exhibited in museums and galleries nationally, including the Museum of Fine Art Boston, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, The Vernon Collection, and The Polaroid Collection. Neill has received the Sierra Club's Ansel Adams Award for conservation photography and is an emeritus member of Canon USA’s elite Explorers of Light. Neill's assignment and published credits include National Geographic, Smithsonian, Natural History, National Wildlife, Conde Nast Traveler, Gentlemen's Quarterly, Travel and Leisure, Wilderness, Sunset, Sierra and Outside magazines. Also, he writes a regular column, On Landscape, for Outdoor Photographer magazine. Feature articles about his work have appeared in Life, Camera and Darkroom, Outdoor Photographer and Communication Arts, from whom he has also received five Awards of Excellence. His corporate clients have included Sony Japan, Bayer Corporation, Canon USA, Nike, Nikon, The Nature Company, Hewlett Packard, 3M, Freidrick Grohe, Neutrogena, Sony Music/Classical, University of Cincinnati, Mirabaud, Bear Sterns and UBS Global Asset Management. He is the photographic author of many books including The Sense of Wonder,The Tree, By Nature's Design, The Color of Nature and Traces of Time. A portfolio of his Yosemite photographs has been published Yosemite: The Promise of Wildness and a retrospective monograph of his landscape photography entitled Landscapes Of The Spirit.
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