Russell Schutte grew up in the valleys of California and as a child always marveled at the beauty around him. From Yosemite to Lassen, from Shasta to the vineyards of the Napa Valley and from his small town near Clearlake to the metropolis of San Francisco, he's found the best scenes for his work exist in the place he calls home.

Russell has mastered the craft of photographic compositing. Those of us who have ever used a camera soon discover that cameras can only capture a certain range of light. If you attempt to capture more than this range, you end up with dark black or bright white splotches which maintain no detail of the original scene. Russell's technique is to take a series of pictures of the same subject, each composed to capture a certain area of the subject and then reassemble these various exposures to a single finished photograph. This allows rich detail from bright skies to the inside of dark buildings in a single image. In addition, his unique work also spans several photographs wide to create an astounding range of view – ultimately capturing the full vision of the scene, in which our eye travels in real life.

You can read more about his unique techniques by clicking here.

Russell carries a lot of equipment for his photo shoots. Each component of his pack is used for a specific purpose which helps to create a premier product when his work is finished. He shoots with two Canon digital Single Lens Reflex (SLR) cameras – for the great majority of his work he uses the Canon 5D. For pictures taken in inclement weather he opts for the Canon 300D/Rebel.

He shoots almost exclusively with Canon "L" Series Professional Lenses (some of which have Image Stabilization). This equipment is bolted down to the very secure tripod heads made by Really Right Stuff on top of a Carbon Fiber Manfrotto/Bogen tripod. His images are backed up onsite with a portable 70GB hard drive. The rest of his backpack is stuffed with lens cleaning equipment, battery chargers, rain protection equipment, a large variety of lens filters, and a sizeable notebook for making precise calculations.

Because of the very technical style of his work, a typical panoramic image takes more than an hour to shoot - sometimes several hours - and dozens of 1 GB memory cards.

Russell hand calibrates his equipment for each image and takes an exorbitant amount of care in making sure his work is done precisely. A typical finished panoramic will consist of dozens and maybe even hundreds of pictures. For example, his "Carmel Mission" panoramic is the result of three hours of shooting and 84 individual pictures merged to make the finished work of art. Russell shoots almost all of his work with his camera in manual mode.