Happy Holidays!
I’m down in New Mexico, celebrating the season in the spectacular known as Bosque del Apache. It would require a great poet to verbally describe the explosion of light, sight and sound that is Bosque. The inspiration though that comes from witnessing this amazing cycle of our natural heritage is so befitting this time of year. It’s all a wonder!
No matter the event or where you are, photographically cover it like it’s the first and last time you’ll ever be able to capture it. Not to be a pessimist, but this approach forces us to think of every possible angle in our attempts to visually communicate. Being human, we often settle for the first thing and when it’s good, we don’t force ourselves to possibly improve on what we’ve already done. Quite often, we see something good and say to ourselves, “I’ll do that tomorrow.” But for one reason or another, we aren’t able to ever get capture quite the same shot as we first saw.
This is the season to take nothing for granted, everyday in fact we should treasure what we are able to experience. Carry this feeling from the season to everyday and to every photograph and your photography will naturally improve.
All of here at WRP wish everyone around the globe all the best this Holiday Season.
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Flexibility
Have you ever planned a great wildlife photography journey, planned it for over a year? I have, many, many of them in fact. You ever get off the plane or step out of your car on your adventure only to find the one thing you didn’t plan on and can’t control, mother nature, has dumped on your plans? This has happened to me, most recently on my trip to Alaska.
We had a plan A and then a plan B and then a plan C and even with that, mother nature foiled us at each turn. There are simply times when wildlife photography just ain’t going to happen. You have two options as I see it, fold up your tent and go home or find other subjects. The first option isn’t really an option for me, so it’s off to find different subjects.
On my recent sojourn to Alaska, the other subject we found was Alaska. While we weren’t blessed with any critters, we were blessed with amazingly great scenics. I can honestly say this is the first time I came back with more scenic than wildlife critter photos. But that’s ok!
When heading out for wildlife, do you carry the gear with you required
to photograph the landscape you’re in? To be ready for this contingency,
I always have with me a 14mm & 17-35mm along with Moose Filter and Split Gradated Neutral Density filters. I go so far as to have at least one of these lenses with me when I do have wildlife as a subject.
Most don’t know I even shoot scenics, but I shoot lots of them. I enjoy photographing the world around me as much as the critters in that world. I just enjoy it more when it’s my choice and not the only option. Good thing I have just enough luck to find great scenics when there’s no critters about.
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Luscious Light
It’s fall, the time of year I love the most because of its luscious light! It’s the quality and quantity that just sets my mind and shutter finger a flying. It’s so nice that this great light happens at the same time many regions are carpeted with the amazing colors of fall!
There are thousands upon thousands of ways to photograph fall color. I’m surprised someone hasn’t written a book about it! I have just one way to mention and that’s what I call “semi macro.” This is Moose’s favorite type of macro because it doesn’t require a macro lens and my getting down low (two big pluses for me). Last year, I did most of my fall “semi macro” shots with the 28-70f2.8AFS, this year I’m exploring it with the new 24-85G. All it requires is a good pair of shoes, some imagination and fall color.
The way I personally like to do it is to stroll around a forest looking down. I look for natural patterns in the fallen leaves. These patterns can be either outline shapes of the leaves, color, or both. There are many times that when I see a pattern I like but it needs a little help to be complete within the frame. The photo of the month is just such an example where I added one leaf to finish off the pattern.
By using a lens like the 24-85G, even though it doesn’t have a “macro mode,” it does focus down to about a foot. This, along with it’s zoom range, makes a great, quick, bend over and shoot, macro lens. That’s just the kind I like. Because I can shoot semi macros for about an hour and then I need to find something moving to photograph. I can only do this little stuff so long.
In conjunction with this, I use a Moose Filter quite often. This helps remove the glare from the overhead sky and make the colors pop.
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Keeping Sharp!
Regrettably, summer is coming to an end! For many, this means that the great summer photo trip is now only a memory, the images are edited and filed away. But the end of summer doesn’t need to mean the end of your photography. In fact, you should be getting ready for next summer, now!
One of the best ways of doing this is photographing critters in your own backyard. Personally, right now I’m busily photographing all the “new” chipmunks in our yard. This years kids are out and about and are tons of fun! They are a photographic challenge as well because they just don’t hold still. Their constant moving means I have to constantly move as well in order to get the lens on them. Then I have to focus and fire before they’re off on their next run. It’s great for maintaining those all important reflexes!
It’s also a good time to look at your summer images to find your own weaknesses that you can improve on. Maybe you need to work on seeing better light. It could be you have what I call “center-itis,” that is all of your subjects are always dead center in the frame. It could be as simple as a focus problem.
You could work on these problems again in your own backyard. You want to learn light, pull up a chair and just watch light in a small area for a few hours. Just watch how it changes as the earth turns. You’ll be surprised how much you can learn without a camera in hand. When it comes to center-itis, the best thing is to take that AF sensor off the center sensor and activate either the right or left one. Force yourself to move the camera to focus and therefore reposition the subject in the frame. And as for focus, you might need to practice proper handholding technique or long lens technique, or buy better tripod and/or head.
Constant shooting helps retain what you’ve already learned and build on those things you need to still learn. There is not a day that goes by that I don’t have a camera in my hand if for no other reason than to stay familiar with a tool that I depend on. The best images come when the human element in the picture taking process keeps sharp!
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Flash Is Your Best Friend,
Get to Know It!
Flash can be the most frustrating aspect of photography to get to know.
Flash, especially fill flash, is an essential tool to the wildlife photography. No matter if you shoot conventional or digital, light is light and the majority of the time it's not perfect. This is where flash fill comes in to make up for the deficiencies of light. You must of course first see these deficiencies and then now how to apply flash to your benefit. And it's important you learn this before the greatest photo of your life appears in your viewfinder.
In the May issue of the BT Journal is an article on current flash technology coupled with multiple flash technique. This might be especially important to you right now with nesting season going hot and heavy. The June issue of Vividlight will have a basic article on flash technique and application you might want to check out. Why don't I just include these articles in this Tip of the Month?
I guarantee you that you won't learn flash in a flash. I can tell you it took over two years before it all clicked for me personally (I'm slow). And there is a lot more to flash than what I have in these two articles. But it's a start and that's what you need to do with flash, start. Start today, don't put it off! Flash can lighten up your life. Flash can be your best friend.
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Visit NikonNet's Legend Behind the Lens - a monthly showcase of the world's greatest photographers.
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Time for Spring Cleaning!
The snow is melting, the first buds are forming on the Aspen, Band-tailed Pigeons are starting to check out the feeders, biology projects are gearing up. The glory of spring is on it's way! I like this transition of seasons, it gets my juices going as I look forward to all the spring and summer shooting to come. It's also the time I start doing spring cleaning! Here's my check list for spring cleaning!
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Camera gear goes in during the last lag time of the year to be cleaned and checked.
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I contact biologists to see where projects are at as mother nature doesn't always keep to a calendar.
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I make sure all my images files are numbered, up to date and ready to be added to.
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I start checking known nest sites to see if any activity has started.
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I check current biological papers for any new information that I can use to help my photography.
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I see if there is any new gear on the market that can aid me in my upcoming photographic projects You might want to check out my SB-80DX review.
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I check hard drive space to see what I'm going to need and when for the upcoming rush of images.
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My vehicle is readied for summer travel.
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I've scheduled in time to smell the flowers!
With this, I feel I'm set to go and make the most of the time I have behind the lens. I hope you and I both have lots and lots and lots and lots of time to watch the wonders awaiting for us this spring!
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Heavy Cropping
Here's my New Year resolution….remind photographers the key to great images comes from getting it right when the shutter release is depressed!
I've been around for a while now, I'm entering my second decade of photographing wildlife in January. It amazes me how many things haven't changed in 20 years and on the other hand how many things have. Twenty years ago my biggest struggle was getting my F3P to work TTL with multiple flash units, finding subjects and capturing what my eye was seeing on film. And now it's just finding the time to shoot. But one thing that hasn't changed in the hundred+ years of photography is the image itself.
Twenty years ago I would look at the images of published photographers admiringly. I would read what they had to say noting they had been shooting for 20 years and wishing I had their knowledge that they had acquired over their 20 years of shooting. Now, I receive emails from photographers wishing the same thing except I'm the "old" shooter now. Back when I started I had one luxury photographers today don't have, I didn't have to deal with the smoke screen of new technology. Digital photography, as anyone who has read my writings for the past couple of years, is something I have fully embraced. But many have not realized that digital replaced film only as the medium I capture of what I see and want to communicate. I push myself to get the image correct each and every time I push the shutter release with digital just like I did with conventional film!
I have this sinking feeling of late after talking more and more with digital shooters and reading what they have to say, that they are relying on technology to make a crappy image great, after the fact. Photoshop art is one thing when a photographer with an incredible eye takes one or more incredible images and with their vision, make one image that communicates what they want to say. I really enjoy looking at those images as a number of my friends do it so damn very well! It is a totally different thing IMHO to shoot an image of a bird that is a micro dot with a D1X, take that image and Heavy Crop the hell out of it, process the file to the point where it's still crap but peddled as great! More pixels doesn't compensate for little photographic skill!
With the release of The D1 Generation, I've received emails from folks saying the images in the book look unbelievable, are they really digital? Are they really unmanipulated as stated in the text? Are they really from a 1MB, Fine file? How do I capture such quality? Here's lies my New Year's resolution. In the upcoming issue of the BT Journal there will be an full article answering this question How do I do it. But in a nutshell the answer is very simple, getting the image right when I depress the shutter release!
Everyone at WRP wishes each and everyone across the globe the grandest of New Years! We hope that you have all the time you desire to follow and capture what you see and that you're always in need of recharging your batteries to shoot more! I truly feel wildlife photographers are some of the most fortunate people on the planet! First we are fortunate because our passion takes us outdoors to witness and experience all the grandeur our wild heritage has to share with us. Second because we get to play with some of the coolest toys known to photography in our pursuit of capturing what we witness to share with others. Don't let all the technology get in your way of this fortunate pursuit! Take it in with your heart, capture it with your shutter!
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Baseline Data
Any reading of the material I've written and you know that I work with biologists. I've been doing so for over 20 years and I credit them for much of my photographic success. They work miracles as far as I'm concerned, getting me to the right place at the right time and up close and personal with the subject. All this being done with the knowledge that the subject is not harmed by any of our actions. The lessons I've learned I've tried to pass along to you folks over the years in all of my writings. There is one essential methodology in the collecting of data that I personalized long ago, both in my photography and photography business and that's baseline data.
When a biologists starts a project, they collect their baseline data. This is a complete catalog of what's present. With this baseline information changes and difference can be measured and in a perfect world, understood. It is this firm foundation of knowns or baseline data that biologists can proceed to accomplish their work. Photography is no different!
It doesn't matter if you're a portrait photographer or wildlife photographer, conventional or digital film shooter, we all need to have OUR OWN baseline data. This covers everything from exposure, lens selection, flash settings, film type, tripod and most importantly personal preferences! So many photographers have never ever figured this out for THEMSELVES that is amazes me. But if you think about it, this is why so many photographers find struggle and not fun in their photography.
How do you discover and learn what your baseline data is? Personally, I apply the KISS theorem to my photography and see what comes up. The KISS theorem is simply, Keep It Simple Stupid. An example can be my learning of the digital format. I started by putting things at their simplest and seeing what worked. When I found what worked, I made note and when it didn't work, I figured out why and once fixed, made note. It was with this knowledge I could expand my world and knowledge base which in turn, created better and more successful images.
Photography is a constant problem solving process in order to be a successful communicator. In any problem solving scenario, you must first recognize the exact problem and then fall back on basics, your baseline data, to move forward to solving the problem. As you're more successful in doing this, the more baseline data you have the better your images become. You'll find your baseline data is constantly growing in the exact same proportion as your photographic success. You'll be surprised how this simple concept can pay big dividends in your drive to be the best photographer you possible can be.
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