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2005 Thought of the Month Archives |
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Do We Have It All?I’m just back from a marvelous and diverse trip. I started out shooting at Bosque and ended up working with the Navy. With way too many hours in a plane (due to weather and other fun) I had way too many hours to think. Two events happened at Bosque that got me thinking about photographers. There was a shooter at Bosque, one who I think should be teaching rather then me. He wouldn’t have to say a word for you to learn. You wouldn’t have to see one of his photographs to be inspired for your lifetime. When I first saw him at the hotel, I was curious. And while he had a simple Canon system around his neck, he has my total respect. When I saw him in the cold, predawn light of Bosque, I was totally blown away. You see, this gentleman was out there doing it, taking photographs while getting around with a walker! Damn, thinking of him out there doing it right now makes my eyes wet. I never talked with the gentleman, I watched from a distance as his good friends made sure he had what he needed to enjoy and photograph the spectacle that is Bosque. That’s truly what wildlife photography is all about! He was out doing it, with his friends, making life special, every single moment! On the same morning while we were marveling over this grand spirit, another photographer walked up to me. I was simply enjoying the explosion off the ponds, I wasn’t even shooting. He came up to tell me he had switched to Canon some time back (as if I keep score or something). He was glad to see now that Nikon at least had some respectable technology (I came home and comforted all my old digital images that have been published a thousand times). I tend to blow off these conversations, totally stupid IMHO. I watched this photographer go back to his camera set up and noticed that his center column of his tripod was raised a good 10-12” supporting his Canon 600 f/4 as it swayed in the breeze. I watched him shoot in the predawn light with this set up. I just shook my head. Wildlife photographers are a very fortunate bunch. They explore our world with a wonder and fascination with some amazing tools. Don’t get sucked up in the “gotta have the most” syndrome manufacturers so have you programmed to do. There is a reason why this month’s photo of the month was taken with the D2Hs. There’s a lot of truth in the old saying, less is more. Rather then demanding larger files with more megapixels, why not demand better, smaller files! This is the season to reflect on all we’ve been blessed with. No matter what brand camera you shoot with, no matter what model, get out and express yourself with your images. Change the world with your images! Merry Christmas! Half Dome from Glacier PointI’m just back from a killer fun weekend of shooting in Yosemite. I was there with the folks from Lexar Media, a weekend of sharing photographic passion in one of the grandest stages for light on the planet. Getting together with friends to go shooting is one of the best benefits of photography. Sharing ideas, techniques and locations is a big part of that enjoyment. Yosemite lent itself beautifully to this end with its vast vistas and dramatic light. These kinds of adventures permit me to learn, develop, practice and teach new techniques and see the excitement on others faces the joy of perfecting their own visual communication. One technique in particular fit in perfectly with our weekend shooting locale, Black & White photography. Being a part of the Photoshop World Dream Team and being partnered with Vincent Versace, I’ve been able to get back into a very old passion, B&W photography. Using a technique that Vincent teaches at DLWS, making a RGB full spectrum B&W image just takes minutes now. What’s the point? The tip of the month is to shoot with friends in great locales whenever possible and to keep your mind as WIDE open as you can to new ideas! Digital photography has opened the doors to many techniques simply not possible before. Be it from time, expense, expertise or ease or a combination there of, we simply didn’t do a lot of the things with conventional film that are now possible with digital. B&W has got to be at the top of the list. Special film, processing, darkroom time and space, those killed that passion for me, one I’m happily able to partake in again thanks to digital and friends! I wanted to share the weekend’s fun with you, the experience and the one of the image that I made (though not the best one) that captured it all. During the “dead” period between when fall color disappears and the glory of winter is fully on us, I hope you go out shooting thinking B&W. If you don’t know how to make that gorgeous B&W print, hopefully we’ll see you at DLWS or Vincent will see you at Photoshop World. In the meantime, make every pixel count. If you’re going to do it… do it right!I’m just back from an amazing adventure photographing Polar Bears… at NIGHT! Along with my shooting partner Roger, we traveled to the Arctic on the North Slope of Alaska for a week of amazing sites and photography with these wonderers of the north. Wow… simply unbelievable! I headed up thinking I’d be shooting during the day with the 200-400VR from the safety of a vehicle. While I had my 70-200VR and SB-800 with me, I didn’t know I’d be standing out in the dark 60’ away shooting with just these tools making images. Simply put, I was not prepared to photograph what I went to photograph. Stupid! Yeah, I came back with over 1900 edited images, but I could have done MUCH better. How? First, one SB-800 running off just 5 rechargeable AA batteries just didn’t cut it (I didn’t take extra). We were working at the maximum distance for these units at f/2.8 so my recycle time sucked. Where was my SD-8a? Well it was lost with UPS from my last shoot so when it came time to pack to head for the Arctic, I didn’t see it and with me, out of sight is out of mind. (I’ve fixed that problem by buying another SD-8a, inserting 6 batteries and putting it my luggage.) Next, the SB-800 is set up to run with the 5th battery compartment. The battery charger I took only charges 4 batteries at a time. That meant that the 5th battery was never, really, fully charged which didn’t help my problem. So now in my electrical bag is the new Maha MH-C801D Battery Charger so I don’t have to worry about that problem again. Finally, idiot here didn’t think about where he was going to shoot… the Arctic, in October! You think it might be cold, especially if the wind comes up? Duh! I know better since when I shoot on my own deck in the winter, I know that the SB-800 simply doesn’t work well in the cold. Standing outside with the wind chill factor bringing the temp down to ZERO the SB-800 just stopped recycling with any speed. I didn’t take chemical Hand Warmers and my SOCK holders to wrap around the battery compartment to keep it working like I do on my own deck. Where was my head?! (I won’t mention that I was in such a hurry, 1 of the 5 AA’s rechargeable I had was a 1700amh where the others were 2300amh). It took me two nights of screwing around to realize my problem with recycles time was because of temp. Now I really felt stupid because I KNOW better! I missed a bunch of great images because of that. Luckily for me, Roger had an extra Hand Warmer packed in his luggage that I could use the last night which was by far one of the best nights. Using my head band (man, my ears got cold) to wrap the hand warmer around the SB-800, I was able to work all night. It just goes to show you, if you’re going to go on an adventure of a lifetime, if you’re going to do it…do it right! (and learn from your mistakes!) Ready… Aim…It’s that time of year when many get out and camp. What a great way to experience our wild heritage and spend time with friends and family. It’s also a great way of seeing and capturing great images. It requires though you be ready because wildlife in such situations typically come and go quickly. Wildlife around campsites tends to be more habituated then the same wildlife species just a hundred yards away from the campsite. You should take advantage of this whenever possible. Great opportunities are only great if you take advantage of them. Here’s some ideas how to do that.
I’m just back from a 10 day float trip through ANWR down the Kongakut River. The first thing we did once our tents were up was to have our 200-400VR on a tripod. We never knew when a grizzly bear, polar bear, caribou, arctic fox or snowy owl might appear. Being ready is how you capture those magical moments when wildlife is checking us out. When you’re out enjoying our grand landscape, keep the camera at the ready for those moments. Ready… Aim…. Checklist for SummerAre you a checklist freak? I know in my old age, I depend on checklists. I have a database to keep track of my checklists even! Without checklists, something gets left behind and usually if that happens, it’s something awfully darn important. I’m heading off to AK for a number of projects. Some are pretty normal, one for example though is a 10day float trip. All of these along with the regular day to day work stuff, has me making lists like crazy. Thought I’d share some of the important listed items with you (clean underwear is obvious).
May your June reward you with lots of time in the great outdoors and many an opportunity for great images! Time to Go SearchingIt’s spring, and while there is still snow covering our property, the birds say it’s spring! That means it’s time to get and look for the new opportunities. Those on the shore, start looking for shorebirds moving through on their way north. These shorebirds, while most likely coming back for a longer stay in the fall, have their gorgeous breeding plumage right now. The Photo of the Month is an example of what I’m talking about. This is a Wandering Tattler I photographed a couple of weeks ago in Hawaii. It’s in its finest plumes right now, an opportunity you don’t want to pass up. Those photographers are lower elevations, many species of birds are already on eggs. Get out and look for birds flying around with either nesting material or bugs hanging out their mouths. Their heading to a nest. If you’ve never photographed a bird at the nest, or need a brush up, head to "Spring is in the Air!" which should give you all the info you need. Those up at higher elevations such as where we live, get out and take advantage of passerine birds heading through on their way north. A number of species stop by our feeders for just a day or two (or as long as the bears don’t destroy them) and refuel. My 200-400VR is set up and pointed out the windows all day long as I pick off the rare vagrant. Lastly, get out with your binoculars and look for the uncommon. Bird, mammal, insect or plant, now is the time to find the rarer ones as they make up for the winter hardships with the plenty of spring. All of these are great subjects just waiting for your lens to focus on them. I can tell you for a fact it’s really hard to be sitting here writing for me because it’s time to go searching! Adapting…It’s a Must!Talk about being like a fish out water, me shooting the Tsukji Fish Market in Tokyo, Japan. Just hours off the plane I’m ankle high is frozen big ass tunes, literally! This is where the tunas are auctioned and sold just minutes after they are offloaded from the fishing boats. Some of these tunas as larger then me and the warehouse floor is full of them to the point they run over into the next warehouse. But this only just scratches the surface of the fish market. I honestly don’t know how large the entire fish market is, but it’s city blocks by city blocks. Starting at 02:30, hundreds of merchants set out their fish, fish parts, fish and sea creature thingies for stores, restaurants, private chefs and housewife to examine and purchase. While the market encompasses vast acreage, each merchant does not, far from it. For example, the money/orders person works in an office the size of a small phone booth. The aisles betweens the crates of fish and fish parts is barely wide enough for a Japanese person to squeeze through and not wide enough for a Moose. But this still doesn’t paint the picture accurately! The hustle and bustle of the fish market is something even a movie camera can’t accurately record. You have these little motorized flat carts that wiz by every second. Powered by a real engine and not longer then a couch, drivers steer these Mr. Toad Wild Ride machines through not just the roads and alleyways, but right through the fish market down the narrow aisles between merchants! And there is not just one of these motorized carts, but hundreds going in every direction on the same aisle you can’t imagine them fitting let alone driving down at full speed. You then add to this the folks pulling and pushing hand carts and trucks on the same aisles along with the small time buyers and us, the tourists, and you just start to get an idea of the organized pandemonium that is the fish market. It’s way cool! How do you communicate all of this life in just one photograph? That’s surely what I was asking myself as I’m supposed to be helping others do the same thing. How do you do that when you’ve not been prepared for such activity, no clue what you’re walking into (I thought I would just be photographing a bunch of dead fish behind a counter)? And once you step into this world and you see the massiveness of the scene and realize the only light you have are the little 60watt bulbs lighting the individual merchants booths (everything is indoors), what do you do? You learn to adapt…quickly! Admittedly, I was totally lost at first. To say I felt I had walked into a buzz saw is an understatement. What was a wildlife photographer doing amongst a bunch of dead fish being driven around at 100mph? What I did was calm down the senses a tad and go into fly fishing mode. No, I didn’t try to catch dead fish on a fly rod. Fly fish mode is really simple. Fly fisherman who know their art always stop prior to reaching the water and just watch. They watch the life in the water to get in flow with it so once they are in the water, they can match the flow and catch the fish. I did the same thing at the fish market. I stopped, watched the flow and matched it photographically before stepping in. This took me about fifteen minutes. It was then that the business of the fish market truly sunk in and communicating it photographically came to light. Blur the motion, that was the answer! Blur the movement was the best way to communicate the action in just one frame. Wouldn’t be hard to do with the low light levels. I started by standing in various locals and panning with the moving action as it went by. I closed my lens down to achieve the slow shutter speed I desired. I tried to use the headlights on the motorized carts to bring some unique lighting to the movement, but that was unpredictable. Then for some reason, a hand drawn cart went by and I started to walk right behind it, keeping in steep with it while shooting, all at the same time. When I looked at the results on the camera monitor I liked what I saw and went on to improve it. Admittedly, I must have looked pretty funny to the locals as I walked behind these carts shooting. And a couple of times, I almost walked into near disaster but in the end, I did get the photo. Knowing my gear, the D2X and its low noise in dark conditions characteristic, the 12-24DX & at 12mm and just all I could encompass and my own preference for slow shutter speeds while panning, the image came to life. No grizzly bears after these fish, just a moose. It turned out to be real simple in the end to get the photo, I had to adapt, it’s a must! The SubtletiesPhotography is a Dance of SubtletiesThere is the subtlety of the light grazing over the subject bringing to light aspects of mood, texture, emotion, life. There is the lack of light, subtlety bringing to light, lines and shapes otherwise hidden by light. There is the subtlety of exposure for that light. Do you communicate the scene true to the scene or true to your heart? Do you expose normally or by dialing in compensation to match or change what the scene is saying to you and what you want to say to others about the scene? There is the subtlety of color… oh the color! Does monochrome fit the mood better then vibrant? Do you light up the world with a blaze of color? Do you go with the recorded color of reality or the recorded color of your emotional response? How exactly does the color play on your mind? The subtlety of focus, just where do you focus? Do you focus right on the subject with a narrow depth of field or do you have all the DOF you can muster? What do you include and exclude by your focus decision and how does that effect color, exposure and light? How do they effect where and how you focus? In this day of dramatic lenses and camera bodies, don’t loose sight that photography is more then pixels and millimeters. It can be a very elegant, fast, slow, erratic, romantic, dance of subtleties! It’s the Camera, I know it!I have a couple of, well, unique, quirky pastimes. One for example is to drive our local campgrounds in the summer time just at dusk to watch the black bears terrorize the tourists. We tend to intervene only when the bear might be getting in trouble. I’ll never forget the ladies face when she looked in the back of her Aerostar to see a bear drinking the milk from the jug! Another thing I like to do is watch other photographers at their craft. Some, like Lynn Goldsmith, Dave Black, my dear friend Vinnie just to mention a few, have real purpose and direction when they’re shooting. It’s especially great to watch them when they’re “playing,” experimenting really as they explore new avenues of their craft. I also like to watch photographers who have no clue what they’re doing yet are attempting to teach others. With instant feedback of digital, they can see their results, or lack there of. And when things don’t go right, the one thing I commonly hear is, “it’s the camera, I know it!” These folks have no clue who I am or why I’m watching them, but they are some of the best material for my articles. That in itself could be the tip of the month, watch other photographers for article material, but it’s not. Rather, the TOM is from a common theme of many phone calls of late. Folks telling me they can’t wait to get their hands on the D2X because the D2H doesn’t deliver. The first thing I ask them is, “you know it’s the camera’s fault?” And resoundingly the answer is yes! I then ask them a question which, to date, leaves folks rather speechless. I ask them if they understand that my peers and I make our livelihood from the images we take. That the quality of those images has to be up to the standards of our clients and ourselves or we don’t make a living. It’s that simple, cut and dry in the world of photography. Up to this point in the conversation, folks are normally with me. It’s when I say, “then if my peers and I can make a living shooting with the D2H, with all of its pros and cons, how come your images suck?” Silence is normally the answer I receive. Digital photography is still photography; problems to be solved, techniques to be mastered and light to be chased. So then, what are the secrets my peers & I know that we are able to make images with the D2H, or any other camera for that matter when other’s seemingly can’t? We know and use as second nature the basics. Handholding and long lens technique. We know exposure, don’t guess at it. We compose in the viewfinder and crop with lenses and physical distances so we shoot the image right, right from the start. We have a constant yearning and taste for gorgeous light in which we chase with our very soul. When all of these elements come together in a photograph, the only thing to do is clean up what noise there is, color cast, size and sharpen. When you have to use a great tool like Photoshop to jackhammer an image into something that resembles a decent photograph, you know you didn’t do it right, right from the start. It’s easy to blame the camera, but it’s just a tool. It’s the person behind it that counts. There are LOTS of grand new tools coming out this year. These tools by their coming on the market don’t make the tools of today no longer work. They are just tools and like a fine brush in the hand of a master painter, the keyboard to a grand pianist, the camera is to the photographer, they are tools. Work on perfecting the most important tool that all of these artists share, the one empowering the tool with imagination and passion. Then when you capture that great image you’ll know it was YOU that captured the great image. It surely ain’t the camera, I know it. New Year's ResolutionAh, the New Year came in with a long overdue present, lots of SNOW! Looking out and seeing 12’ of snow covering the property is a good thing, it means I can fish most of the summer finally because we have water! Nature is rather funny in those regards. While sitting snug in our home by the fire, what’s going on outside that we have absolutely no control over influences all we’re going to do over the next year. That’s life and we learn to roll with the punches and have fun along the way. Isn’t photography much the same? We don’t have control over camera body or lens design or flavors so we roll with the punches and go have fun. The rumored “delay” of the D2X and all the DUMB emails I’ve received in regards to it is what got me thinking along these lines. That, and I reread over the holidays an old favorite, Time Exposure by Wm Henry Jackson. Here’s a pioneer photographer who, for one survey took a 20x24 WET plate camera into the field with Dr. Hayden to photograph the Rockies. I wonder how many photographers today could take on such a task, especially with his spirit. His goal was to capture better images to INSPIRE the public into action. The last few months, I’ve been reading a number of books by and about “old” photographers like Jackson or Capa for example. All these photographers had the “latest” gear for their day. They all realized their “latest” gear had flaws and they, being craftsmen to the extreme, still took images that to this today are astounding! The majority of these masters recognized their images weren’t “perfect” in the technical sense. But they were perfect in the way these masters wanted them to be perfect, in communicating! Almost without exception, all the master make some comment that “someday” the perfect picture taking machine will easily take the technically perfect photograph. But as Wm Henry Jackson said, “I take the greatest satisfaction when I see the expression on the person in my gallery when they happen upon my photograph that touches their spirit.” Photographers are very fond of books, usually ones with lots of images and few words. I don’t think this is because they don’t like to read, on the contrary, but I think it’s because photographers learn about their world best, visually. They also communicate the best about their world, visually. And who, the majority of the time are our photographs communicating to? Other photographers or the public at large? I guess if you only show your images to photographers who, are looking for imperfections to pick on rather then seeing the message being spoken, being worried about the greatest amount of megapixels with the least amount of noise should be your biggest concern. But are other photographers truly your intended audience of your work (not that you should produce schlock because the general public doesn’t know any better)? But it’s very interesting to read the old masters as they talk about their peers of the day. They speak of each other with great admiration, making amazing images with the limitations of the camera gear in hand that’s move the public. Isn’t that truly what a great photographer does? My New Year resolution is pretty simple, improve my own photography. I don’t see any piece of camera gear or combination as being a factor in that resolution. The biggest factor I see influencing my resolution is sitting a whole lot less behind this monitor and a whole lot more behind the lens (my goal every year I guess). There’s a bunch of this grand world my lens has still not focused on. There are mired of creatures who’s lives intrigue me that I’ll need to invent techniques to capture their life history on film. My resolution, if obtained, will hopefully bring me the same satisfaction as some of the past masters, seeing the smile on some viewers face when my image touches their heart. |
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