Set the Standard

Howdy from Yellowstone Nat'l Park! Fall is everywhere, from the nip in the air, the incredible color that dots the hills to the mammals in rut. Wildlife sightings are plentiful with grizzlys easily seen and observed as well as black bears. Photographing black bears with spring cubs in fact is a slam dunk! This year, elk are all over the Madison and there are four prime bulls vying for the affections of the very numerous cows. There are subjects just about every place you point your lens. That is, accept for all the photographers that get in your way!

It's great to see so many photographers out enjoying and photographing our wild heritage! I can honestly say there are more photographers here then I can ever remember seeing. And why not, the photography is just stellar! The flip side is that I've never seen so many photographers act like complete &*)@#&! There have been some incidents that have been down right embarrassing to the point where you were shaved to be seen with a camera. For example (and I hope the photographer who I'm describing is reading this so he knows what I think of him), there was a black bear family, a mom and 2 spring cubs out near Tower Jct last week. The bears were as black as night and the grass they were in as white as the summer sun can bleach. It was high noon, literally so you had a solid black subject on a basic white background. Total yuck!

Anyway, there was your normal bear jam of the public there watching the antics of the bears. With the light, that was what everyone should have been doing. It's what my group did, left the cameras in the vans and just watched the fun for an hour. Well, there was this one idiot photographer with his Nikon (yeah, Nikon sorry to say) and 500f4 was just dying to get THE perfect shot. He was all over the place as if he was the only one that could, or had the right, to capture the perfect shot. It got to the point that he rudely said to a lady sitting on the ground (there before he was) that she was blocking him from his great image. He then proceeded to pick up his tripod, hit the person with the tripod (by accident I think, but others didn't see it that way) and proceeded to march up a bank to get his perfect shot. Perfect shot of what? What an &)*^#_*.

Doing a typical Moose, I made my feelings on the matter known. I thought the whole display was appalling. Later that same day, our group stopped at Madison River to photograph the elk antics. Using common sense, common courtesy and basic biology, we used our long glass to keep a respectful distance from the bulls while capturing THE shots, lots of them. What our group soon noticed is that all those around us were maintaining the same distance as our group, using the same common sense and courtesy. Rather then being part of the problem, we were part of the solution where the wildlife and wildlife photographers all won. We all got to enjoy the elk while the elk could do their thing.

When you get out of your car, any place but especially in a national park and you set up a long lens, everyone notices. Your actions are on display with many wrongly assuming that such a photographer must be a professional and as such, knows what is right or wrong. This is a heavy responsibility that sorry to say, a vast majority of the photographers we saw in Yellowstone simply take for granted. They have only one thing on their mind. The Image (even though what many are capturing is yuck). All photographers need to take it upon themselves to set the example of what wildlife photography is all about. Park your car not on top of plants or blocking the road. Be courteous to the public since it's their wildlife heritage too (we don't own the rights to see and enjoy wildlife). Most importantly, go for quality and not quantity. There were a handful of photographers who, by their very actions you could tell were making great images. They were not ruining the experience for others around them or for future photographers. We have a great responsibility when we're in the public's eye. We need to demonstrate what is a good photograph. We need to demonstrate what is a good photographer. By doing so, we give all others a high mark of perfection to strive to meet. By our very actions, We Set the Standard!

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Wildlife Photography is an INTERNATIONAL Language

The Tip of the Month is coming to you this month from down under. Australia! The wildlife photography the last three weeks goes beyond words. The amazing array of critters which are so apply documented in the guides don't even hint at the magic when you see them live and in person. I honestly don't know why it took me so long to get here, but coming back is in no doubt! I've seen lots and learned even more, but nothing so much as the power of wildlife photography to communicate in any language.

I'm not talking about f/stops and shutter speeds here, I'm talking about getting up early, staying out late, going out in pouring rain or walking 10km just to get the shot. The drive and passion of wildlife photographers supersedes any language barrier (like me with my oh, so California slang). Capturing the image in the light remains the same (even if they say Neekon rather than Nikon). It was so cool that I could bring my same basic techniques and message 8,000 miles and share it folks with like intentions and desires.

So what's the tip? Get out and share your passion with others! Why is that a tip? Inspiration comes in many forms from different places. One is your fellow photographer. The amazing thing to me is you're reading this and you are most likely in some totally different part of the world than I, in some other time zone with a totally different set of critters waiting you out your door to photograph. Just as you can pick up new trivia from our website, I can travel across the ocean and learn firsthand from the very gracious and talented photographers in Australia .

My family was incredibly fortunate to be brought to Australia by Darren Leal and spend an amazing week in Lamington Nat'l Park with 11 marvelous Aussie shooters. The images we captured, the scenery we shared and the knowledge we all gained doing what we all love, wildlife photography, is something my family will never forget. There will be so much to come as I share our experiences but something that sums it all up the best are our experiences with parrots.

To be perfectly honest with you, I've seen "captive" parrots and pet parrots in the states all my life and while they are colorful, they just didn't do anything for me. Being captive and pets, they just didn't have the romance to me that more common birds out my office window might have. Well.have you ever seen a parrot, or thousands of parrots in the wild? I sure hadn't up until a couple of weeks ago. If you haven't, you're missing out on one heck of nature's great spectacle! They are just darn special! I can tell you that I could not get enough of them. There are SO many different species, colors, sizes in different habitats, I could easily see someone spending a lifetime photographing just Aussie parrots.

Photography to us has always been a means of communicating with other the wonders of our wild heritage. We've been incredibly fortunate to share its wonders with folks in North America for nearly three decades. We've now been very fortunate to be able to travel across the globe and mutually share with other wildlife photographers the same passions with new critters in a new world. It's just amazing how small a world it truly is and even more just how wildlife photography is an international language!

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Flight Photography

Flight photography has got to be one of the coolest things about being a wildlife photographer! It's also something that takes lots of practice. Panning is an art many photographers haven't made second nature. It's a must! It starts with proper hand holding and then twisting at the trunk. You fire at the start of the bird's pass and stop firing one they are in front of you but continue to track them in the viewfinder until the camera is no longer making any noice.

You've got to watch your backgrounds. You need to think about wing position. You've got lots to think about in fact:

never photograph a bird against a gray sky
never take butt shots
avoid cutting off of wing tips
try to capture more action than just flight
try shooting vertical flight shots and not just horizontal
what depth of field do you want
keep the sun and wind on your back

If you're shooting with the D2H, you should experiment with single sensor dynamic focus and pattern dynamic focus to see which works best for you. And to facilitate quick learning, find some agreeable gulls who, for a few peanuts, will fly their hearts out for you.

Great flight photography takes knowing the basics of panning and combining them with action and light. It's a great summertime thing to perfect!

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Sewage for Inspiration?

You're stuck in the middle of nowhere, be it your office, the middle of Alaska or your own mind. You see great light but you don't see an obvious subject. You're tired of not shooting but you just don't want to be out with a camera for the sake of being out with a camera. That ever happen to you? It's happened to me plenty of times. What to do?

You've got to make something happen! This first of all means you simply get past being human and make yourself get out of the office, house, car, mind, and walk towards something with your camera. You've got to not look for creating thousands upon thousands of great images. But perhaps just perfecting one. You've got to decide what gear you're going to take with you and since we're in such a frump, it most likely won't be much. So we'd best take something that is flexible. The point is, to break the frump requires getting out!

But this still doesn't solve what to photograph, does it? Here's my tip for the month. Sewage. Or trash, garbage, junk, how ever you want to describe what it is civilization does with the things it no longer wants. What's in sewage you ask? Well, often there are critters you might want to photograph. In Alaska it's often grizzly bears but elsewhere it more than like will be gulls (though I know a number of locales in the lower 48 where you can easily photograph black bears). On most beaches in the summer, one trash can can bring in all sorts of possible subjects.

Now you don't necessarily photograph the trash itself, but the critters that might come to it. No, this is not the glamorous side of wildlife photography. No, you're not going to make a living or kill weeks upon weeks visiting this one area. What you are going to do is simply break out and open your mind back up to the power of photography!

This month's Photo of the Month is just such a shot. We were in Alaska and the fog rolled in pretty much squelching my plans for the afternoon. For over a decade I had seen a phenomenon that occurred in the water attracting huge numbers of Glaucous-winged Gulls and Black-legged Kittiwakes. We couldn't shoot much else with the fog but it did soften the light so we could photograph these birds without blowing out the highlights. So off we went and you know what, what I thought would be a lost afternoon turned out to be killer! I shot over 3GB of images myself and it was cool and the images great!

There are times when what's in our mind that we should be shooting just isn't available. It's those times we need to clear our minds and find a way to open them up to other possibilities. So when all else fails, I highly recommend sewage for inspiration!

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The Equipment Game

The equipment game, how do you win? Is buying the latest and greatest the way to go? Is sticking with the old because it's already all paid for the right thing? Do you believe the reviews you read on the web? Is renting the way to go? Man, the equipment game which has no real rules can be a real drain on the brain and wallet. How do you win?

The way you win IMHO is to maximize your gear for YOUR photography. While this is most definitely easier said and done, it can be accomplished. In the last couple of months, I've heard a number of gear transportation problems that all revolve around having too much gear. Too much gear is the most common attempt photographers use to win the equipment game. I personally prefer to win the game by following the ole KISS theorem of solutions, Keep It Simple Stupid.

The KISS theorem is closely related to the least is more idea, both working very well when it comes to wildlife photography. The advantage to having less gear but gear that does more is many fold. The most obvious is the capitol not spent on more gear. This is money that can be spent on better things like going out and taking more images. Having less gear has the obvious advantage of not having to carry more. Having less gear means you have less options when you're shooting which just possibly might help you make the right choice. But how to you get to less?

In this day and age, zooms can make all the difference in working with less and keeping it simple. Personally I have only one fixed lens now, the 600f4. Otherwise my lens arsenal goes from 12mm to 400mm with just 4 lenses, all zooms. And with teleconverters I can extend that range to 800mm. This ability is killer when shooting and traveling. I don't have to walk into the field with a giant camera bag attached to my back. I go easily do it all with just a couple of lenses. But what about quality?

This past weekend I had an opportunity to photograph the Dipper going through its spring mating ritual. I only had the 200-400VR at hand but by attaching the TC-20e, I was able to easily capture the photo. The key was to have the right equipment and in this case, the zoom was perfect. When the male landed by the female and began to sing, being able to zoom back rather than having to walk backwards is how I was able to get the photo. All of this with quality that is knock you down sharp!

Winning the equipment game means thinking through your own photography and what tools work best. It's always tempting to get the latest and greatest, but winning often means having the least that does the most.

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Less Can Be More?

There are a lot of rules in photography, ever noticed that? Many are no more than someone's poor attempt of filling page space. The problem is, until you have experienced everything for yourself, you don't realize that many of the rules are huey. In the meantime, you might struggle capturing images you feel pride in following this listed rules. There is a lot of truth in the statement, less can be more.

Information overload, a common phenomenon today. Photographs can often have this same problem. Eliminating unwanted elements from a photograph is very important, especially in landscape photography. But in wildlife photography, a bird in flight for example, there isn't a whole lot of elements to get in the way of communicating, or is there?

There's a lot of rules about cropping animal parts. Don't cut off the legs below the knees or the head at the shoulders. When it comes to birds, don't cut off the wing tips let alone a whole wing. I've always wondered what's at the heart of these rules, who starts them and why. Isn't the goal of a photograph to communicate something about the subject? In that pursuit, don't we as photographers have a certain license to interpret what we see into what we communicate?

In this month's photo, I've broken one of the big rules in photographing a Bald Eagle in flight. What's the subject in the photo? It's that stare of the eagle staring right down my lens barrel. Just how much of the wing do I need to show in the photo for you to know it's a Bald Eagle and an eagle in flight? More to the point, if I do show more rather than less, doesn't I actually make the subject, the stare, physically smaller in the frame? Don't I lessen the impact of the subject by including all the wings?

The composition you see in this photo is one that was already in my mind. I knew prior to depressing the shutter I wanted the "stare" of an eagle in flight with its wings fully spread. I also knew from previous images that including all of the wing spread diminished the impact of the stare. But my composition flew into the face of the rules. What to do? Shoot, shoot, and shoot some more. I had lots of "possibles" but none really captured what I had envisioned. Not until I captured this one.

What you see here is only the "rough" draft I have in mind for this photo. One reason why I was shooting this shot on a gray sky day is because of my knowledge of light, Photoshop, and one of its tools, Threshold. But that's a whole other story. The Tip of the Month is to look at your own photography, break some rules and see if you can't, from less really create more.

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Color Can Be Everything

In the digital world many worry about the correct white balance. There's really good reason for this. Correct white balance is key to many things, the least of which is capturing color digitally that represents what it is we saw. But what did we really see and to the point of this Tip of the Month is, what do you remember?

This TOM ties in with the Photo of the Month. During our last DLWS in Yosemite we experienced a heat wave. The up side of this was that the falls were incredibly full. The spray at the right time each morning produced amazing rainbows. There was a brief time when the sun would create the rainbow but would not light the falls themselves. This really creates two white balances within one photo. You have the color temperature of sun and the color temperature of shade both affecting the subject. What to do?

Having blue water because it was in shade doesn't work. We all know water isn't blue but more white. We don't remember the blue that was really there, we think of the water as white. This is when you need to know the digital darkroom, Photoshop CS in particular. The image began as a NEF file so Nikon Capture 4.1 was needed to be used to process the file into a TIFF. In Photoshop, the first thing was to correct the color to remove the blue tint created by the shade color temp. Threshold was used to find the purest white and black. Using an adjustment layer > curve, we then corrected the color. This was essential so we could bring to life the rainbow by using an adjustment layer > saturation.

This tip isn't so much a tip as it is an opening up of the doors of your imagination and technical possibilities. I don't expect you to take this little information and go out and do it yourself. There is more to it than what I've mentioned here. But these are all things one can easily learn and employ. When you understand what you can do in the digital darkroom, you'll know what to do when you depress the shutter. There are times when you technically can't do it all when you depress the shutter. You have to use the digital darkroom to finish your story telling.

If you want to learn more about how you can finish your story telling, be sure to join us at DLWS!

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The Excitement!

It's that semi annual time of the year when new announcements of new products are being made. There is no doubt that there is some excitement knowing that new tools (toys for others) are going to shortly be made available. Some of the announcements in just the last week have got some quite excited, even ready to switch brands on the promise of new and better being just around the corner. I admit, there are times when I'm informed of something new and I can't wait to get that new tool in my hands. But recent emails just have me wondering.

Coming up as 25 year veteran of these cycles, I remember back in the old days when it wasn't until folks came back from PMA or the magazines with their PMA show reviews a month later, did we learn of new products. I remember my first PMA, the F3 was announced. A few months later the camera arrived in my hands and a few months after that, the first user reports would be published. The period between the announcement and first reports being published could be as long as four months. In those intervening months, there was only excitement about what was coming. What happened to those days?

What has happened to the excitement of photography for so many? I mean, shouldn't the excitement start with the gear, extend through the picture making process and climax when you see your results (let alone going out and shooting more)? I'm talking about such excitement that when you get your new gear you nearly sleep with it. Excitement such that you can't wait for the sun to come up so you can go shooting. Excitement so intense you can't wait to see your results printed so you can share the thrill with others!

I don't know about others, but I've got to have this excitement myself everyday! If I have to go a couple of days without making some new images that I truly enjoy, I get about really offensive like I have really bad B.O.! You simply don't want to be around me.

Sure, there are always something you can gripe about, something not perfect. But if it is something other than your image, something you have no control over, why take the time to gripe? Perfecting the image, making more time to shoot, isn't that a better way and more productive way to spend your time? Aren't you just dying to experience that excitement, achieve what we're all really about, photography? The Tip of the Month is really no more than, Go Shoot, and find the excitement that photography has in store for you!

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New Year's Resolutions

Ah. the new year is here with all sorts of promise of photographic challenges and rewards. What have you set your sights on mastering, where are you going to take your photography in 2004? I mean more than the "take more photos" resolution, I'm talking about really setting for yourself hard to achieve goals that will force you to stretch your already polished talents. Here's some of what I've set for myself.

photograph five new bird/mammal species in depth (going to Australia for the 1st time, getting new species in and of itself won't be a challenge)
learn and apply the SB-800 group lighting with wildlife, preferably a nocturnal subject
experiment with the new WT-1a to improve on remote photography results
explore extensively, visually two new locales in Alaska and Vermont
make my yearly rounds of CA T&E species to be photographed
get that darn great bull moose shot!

All of these goals require some of the basics that I always cover. Most of them start with doing homework, first reading and then field time. Learning the subject's biology is how I can then start to put the technical pieces together. Because that's what is next, taking the biology and combining it with technology.

For my goals for 2004, this means learning new tools and how to apply them. That's always exciting to me. I do this by first learning the biology and then recreating what I think I'll find in the field and duplicate it in the office. I'll create mock ups of the field scenarios and then in the comfort of home, solve as many problems technically as I can before heading to the field with it. This insures protecting the subjects welfare and at the same time insuring the best possible results photographically.

I actually started planning some of my 2004 goals in early 2003. That means I've already got some dates on the calendar which is exciting on one hand, depressing on the other because once those dates arrive, I always ask myself where did the time go. The best place, and really the only place to learn, is behind your camera. Set your goals high, push yourself, your craft and equipment. You CAN change the world with your images!

All the best. Happy New Year! Moose & Sharon.

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2004 Thought of the Month Archives

Set the Standard

Wildlife Photography is an INTERNATIONAL Language

Flight Photography

Sewage for Inspiration?

The Equipment Game

Less Can Be More?

Color Can Be Everything

The Excitement!

New Year's Resolutions