A 3 Hour Tour

Not even close actually, it was a 14hr day with a big portion of it spent on the waters of Prince William Sound. We started with a magical Black-legged Kittiwake rookery, then worked Alaskan Sea Otters (with pups), then a number of Glaciers. We no sooner got back to land and we worked 5 moose. I’m still working my way through images from the day and we meet in a few hours to go shooting again. I’m bone tired and loving it!

Photos captured by adrenaline fueled exhaustion

BTW….check out what I’m missing at home here

Sheepish Morning

It was one of those mornings when we got up early and were in place at the right time at the right place and the magic began to happen. This four year old Dall Sheep ram came down and was in easy reach. Things were just getting good when, the “incident” happened. Lets just leave it at, a lady showed up who wanted to play wildlife photographer with her point and shoot. After that, the 13 ewes decided they weren’t going to come down when they saw the ram coming up. So it goes sometimes, but we did have at least 15min with this magnificent symbol of the wildlerness!

You get a bonus this morning, a double blog. I was honored when asked by my bud Scott to guest blog on his blog today. You can check it out here, the photo is of Havasu Falls and the man in yellow is my bud Russell Brown.

Sheep photo captured by D3, 600VR on Lexar UDMA digital film

Havasu Falls captured by D2Xs, 17-55AFS on Lexar UDAM digital film

Practice making….fun!

I’m exhausted, it’s been a long and great day! Our target subject the morning, moose, didn’t want to play but that didn’t stop images being made of the birch trees. The afternoon found us on Potter Marsh working all the activity, the most popular being the Mew Gulls and Arctic Terns. There we plenty of other opportunities including the Greater Scaup but we kept coming back to the gulls and terns. The main goal was to make better images using panning, photographing the gulls and tern going by but this pair of Arctic Terns performed at point blank range. You couldn’t take your lens off them.

Photos taken by D3, 200-400VR / 600VR on Lexar UDMA digital film

I could Bearly handle Moose'n around

This afternoon we spent time working on more basics. The main lesson was for each camper to learn what focal length, aperture, exposure compensation and composition for AK’s two big species, moose and griz worked best for them. So. off to AWCC we went to work on these skills. We happen to just fine the perfect subjects to practice on.

This was the first time I’d photographed griz with the D3 and 200VR & 600VR so I took advantage of the lesson time myself. It was a great four hours of shooting!

Photos captured by D3, 200-400VR / 600VR ob Lexar UDMA digital film

I could Bearly handle Moose’n around

This afternoon we spent time working on more basics. The main lesson was for each camper to learn what focal length, aperture, exposure compensation and composition for AK’s two big species, moose and griz worked best for them. So. off to AWCC we went to work on these skills. We happen to just fine the perfect subjects to practice on.

This was the first time I’d photographed griz with the D3 and 200VR & 600VR so I took advantage of the lesson time myself. It was a great four hours of shooting!

Photos captured by D3, 200-400VR / 600VR ob Lexar UDMA digital film

Love the early light

Went off to one of my secret locales in Anchorage for one of my favorite birds in AK, the Red-necked Grebe. Not one you find outside, especially in breeding plumage, I target this bird in June when I’m in AK. The Base Camp campers got quite a show, from great backlit feeding (the water splashing is from killing a little fish it had caught), to courtship and in this case, defending a territory from another male, to just simply coming up and saying hello. Light and backgrounds were on the learning agenda for the day and the grebes made it great!

Photos captured by D3, 600VR w/TC-17e on Lexar UDMA digital film.

Silver & Gold in the Fog

We decided to take a break from scouting and play tourist this morning. With Josh in tow, we headed to Hatcher Pass and the famous Independence Mine. It’s a heck of a drive up to the mine and since it’s early in the season, you have to park a mile and a half DOWN the hill from the mine. So, up we walked. With the dense clouds shrowding the hill, I figured it would be a black and white shoot. As you can see from this shot, it was good black and white light.

But as you can see, there was color too (besides black and white). We came to learn once on site that the buildings were painted with two coats of aluminum paint and the trim was done in red so it all had a “cheery” look to it for the miners. The mine was at its height in 1940.

And in fact, the color was quite stunning in the flat light. I couldn’t get any plum lines no matter what I tried, it gave me a headache. A combo of NX2 and Color Efex Pro2 made the color and texture just pop.

But I’m good. Even in a deserted mine complex, I still find wildlife. Even if it was a “wood” duck!

Photos captured by D3, 24-70AFS on Lexar UDMA digital film

Please don't eat the Daisies

Out scouting again today, covering some new territory when we ran into another of my northern cousins. A good lookin bull in spring velvet.

Unlike his southern cousin, this one is smart enough to take time and smell the flowers. Eat them too!

What was interesting was the one year old hanging with this bull. Looking at the bull’s bell and size of antler development so early, I figured he’ll be a good size boy come this fall. They normally don’t hand with “kids.” Well, after watching them for 10-15min, the bull right after this photo was taken, drove the kid away with a couple of serious head butts and chase.

And the real fun thing about all of this, was it happened right in downtown Anchorage! That’s one of the cool things about Anchorage, if you know where to look, there is wildlife literally right out your door. In yesterday’s news was a Black Bear that had to be tranquilized, it was in a person’s backyard making itself right at home.

Even cooler is most locales stop to take in the wildlife even though it’s an everyday event.

Photos captured by D3, 200-400VR / 24-70AFS on Lexar UDMA digital film

Please don’t eat the Daisies

Out scouting again today, covering some new territory when we ran into another of my northern cousins. A good lookin bull in spring velvet.

Unlike his southern cousin, this one is smart enough to take time and smell the flowers. Eat them too!

What was interesting was the one year old hanging with this bull. Looking at the bull’s bell and size of antler development so early, I figured he’ll be a good size boy come this fall. They normally don’t hand with “kids.” Well, after watching them for 10-15min, the bull right after this photo was taken, drove the kid away with a couple of serious head butts and chase.

And the real fun thing about all of this, was it happened right in downtown Anchorage! That’s one of the cool things about Anchorage, if you know where to look, there is wildlife literally right out your door. In yesterday’s news was a Black Bear that had to be tranquilized, it was in a person’s backyard making itself right at home.

Even cooler is most locales stop to take in the wildlife even though it’s an everyday event.

Photos captured by D3, 200-400VR / 24-70AFS on Lexar UDMA digital film

Howdy from up North!

Just back from the trip chasing tornadoes and I’m already on the road and in Alaska (for our Base Camp). But the experiences from last week left a definite impression.

This thunderhead over Cook Inlet is upsecuring the view we were just minutes before enjoying of Mt McKinley. Its speed and density brought back memories of last week in KS. But we ain’t in KS no more

We then went out scouting for some of our training locales for Base Camp and came across some old and favorite subjects like Mew Gull. And…

Arctic Tern. This one is flying in with a fish which it delivered to its mate tending the nest. While I nailed it in flight, it smoked me when it dove down to its nest and delivered its fish. Outta practice I guess, need to work on my vertical panning this week. Panning is something we stress at Base Camp. Stopping action by moving the camera body (sounds like an oxymoron) is an important tool in the wildlife photographer’s bag.

So is this tool, the Wimberley Head VII. I depend on this head for supporting my 600VR. Mine got “unhappy” on our SD Base Camp (TSA dropped). Well, sent it to Wimberley for TLC and man, did they deliver. Waiting for us in our room when we checked in AK was a silky smooth, very happy Wimberley. Now that’s service!

Personally, I use my Wimberley slightly differently from the instructions. You can see here I mount the lens in the opposite direction so my wrist isn’t fighting the main support post. Also, I never tighten the controls but rather, have them slightly loose so panning is smooth but not stiff.

I’ll post from AK the next week as I can. With only a few hours of “dark,” it’s going to be some long days!

Photos captured by D3, 70-300VR / 600VR on Lexar UDMA digital film

Hard Light Spring?

I’ve received a whole lot of emails of late in regards to holding details in highlights / whites. It would seem it’s a hard light spring out there. Let me see if the answer to this current common question helps you.

This is an American White Pelican in FL photographed with a 600mm. As you can see even in this small file that the highlight detail is still intact. But rather than look at the highligths/whites, look at the shadows because there’s the key to the answer. Notice how you can see detail in the shadow area to the right of the wing? This is due in part because of the light bouncing off other parts of the pelicans body. But the BIG reason why there is shadow detail is because of the quality of the light and there lies the answer to the problem.

The photo was taken bloody early in the morning, 05:20 to be exact. Why is that so important? The sun is not high in the sky blasting away with all its might on the scene. Holding highlight detail is directly dependent on the quality of the light. Not the exposure, not the camera, not the post processing but on the quality of the light. If you’re having problems holding highlight detail, you need to examine the light you’re shooting in.

Most cameras have a tool to help you learn light, what manufactures call Highlight Warning, what I call Blinkies. These show you exactly where in the photo you have lost highlight detail. It’s then upon you the photographer to decide if that’s a good or bad thing and if it is a bad thing, you, the photographer must make the decision how to deal with it.

Light is everything and is the answer to this common question. Hope that helps.

PS…another common question is where is Base Camp going in 2009? At this time, we’ve not decided the locales so you’ll just have to be patient.

Nikon 60AFS micro

You know me, I gotta play with the new stuff when it comes out and I have to tell you, the new 60AFS micro is fun to play with! My first look at the lens was during our Redwoods DLWS event. I was so impressed I begged the NPS rep who had the lens to send it to me for a couple of days for a project (he’s a real nice guy for a suit).

When first announced I wondered why come out with a new one since the original 60micro is so tack sharp. Well, the first thing you notice with the lens is the fact that it has IF (internal focus). This means there is no expanding or contracting when you focus. This is HUGE in my book. The AFS isn’t a really big deal to me since I manually focus most of the time when working with the 60micro. You will love the sharpness of the lens, it is tack corner to corner. But lastly, you’ll love the price, it’s pretty darn inexpensive. Check it out, you might just find a place for it in your camera bag!

NX2 is here!

Finally, I can talk about it! Finally, I can show folks this amazing program!

Nikon Capture 2 is a killer program which I’ve been using for a long time and just love. 90% of all my post production is done in NX2. You can download a 60 day trial here. You can learn more about here.

To answer a very popular email question of the day, yes, I’ll be posting in our D3 microsite a couple of NX2 instructional videos. Since they are free, they will be brief and go over the basic way I use NX2 in my workflow. You can look for those in a couple of weeks when I get back from AK Base Camp.

Back to work

It’s not really work, perhaps I should have said it’s back to what I do best. Before the sun rose this morning, I was out in the field continuing on with a Greater Sage Grouse project started earlier this year. That’s a 4 day old sage grouse chick (cutest thing on the planet) about to receive a pit tag. This is a year long project for me so there’s much more to come and learn.

Photographically, it was dark when the photo was taken. The exposure was 1/8 at f5.6 just to get some information in the background (the Sierras). A single flash was used, off to the right connected via a SC-28. The flash was gelled to give it a slight warm tone to match the sun (when it would arrive in a half hour). I’ve found the 24-70AFS to be my workhorse lens, it’s seems to be basically permanently attached to the one D3. Tomorrow it’s a 03:30 call to do more of the same. Ah, it’s good to be home again!

Photo captured by D3, 24-70AFS on Lexar UDMA digital film

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