Photojournalism professor Ken Kobre always told us no picture exists without a background. He also told us when doing portraits the first part is to find the background.

From a photojournalism point of view, landscape photography is background photography. All the backgrounds I look for first while shooting portraits or wedding day portraits are themselves the subjects of landscape photography.

Like math being the common code of all science, certain principles and themes found in photography can be used the same way in different disciplines. Lines, shadows, shapes, repeating patterns, and the Golden Mean can be used in all photography.These ideas all come to us from the great artists in all fields. My favorite photographer Ansel Adam’s drew his inspiration from classical music. He called the negative the score and the finished print the performance. He used this A to B as the template for visualization.

Me? Certainly no Ansel Adam’s, but I can use what he did as my own template for inspiration. We all can. Nobody has a monopoly on creativity and access to the basics of photography. It’s called “Stealing Like an Artist” and works wonders for my photography.

I love using backlight with a dark background for my portrait work. Group shots at weddings really benefit from this trick. I jump on it whenever it presents itself in nature. When crawling into the tent the night before this picture happened I thought “That island might look cool with the granite wall behind tomorrow morning.”

Yes it did look really cool. I shot it in color but thought it might look better in black and white. It’s one of the rare times my black and white looks better in landscape photography to me.

Sunrise Lake can be found at the top of the big hill climbing up from Tenaya Lake. If you wind around left of the lake you’ll eventually get to Cathedral Lake. Going right takes you to Clouds Rest, Half Dome, and down into the valley. If you bushwhack it upstream from behind and to the left of this island you’ll get to Mildred Lake.

The lake is awesome by itself but