May 3, 2012 | Landscape Photography
There are times no matter who you are or how good you are, you simply cannot replace a motordrive on astroblast!We were at the rookery when a Great Egret came into feed the kids. Well as you might guess, all hell broke loose as the two kids fought over the resource. In case you didn’t know, the kids have to simulate the parent to cough up a meal. They do this by grabbing the parent’s bill and pump the head/neck back and forth over and over again. This whole time, those pointie bills are flying around like diggers! I watch through the lens holding my breath part of the time, the chaos is fierce. There is no physical way even with the D4 you can see the action, tell your finger to fire and the camera fire to capture the action. So it’s real simple for me, hit the hammer, let the D4’s 10fps loose, enjoy the sound of that mirror slapping away and shoot! Then in the post I look at the action frame by frame to decide which images tells the story of the mayhem the best. Once, long ago at Venice Rookery I saw the same behavior and at the end, there was a little blood below the eye of the parent. I didn’t see it this time but you just gotta think that hurts!
May 3, 2012 | Landscape Photography
Any southern coastal region in late winter early spring is a target rich place to photograph shorebirds. Our time at Ft DeSoto is a perfect example. What you see here is the same bird, the Black-bellied Plover, one of my favorites. They just have attitude and a air of confidence that makes me smile. Sadly, we don’t see them in the spring tuxedo but we can see them in the winter plumage and then changing into their spring duds. If you know a little bit about them, you will recognize the transitions in plumage which makes for a great story. These are three different individuals, all three at different phases of molting in their spring coat. If you’re into editorial content creation, this is money in the bank. If you do slideshows on bird ID, this is a treasure chest. And if you just want to document the mysteries of birds, this is a great reward for getting up early and lying on the sand shooting. And it all comes from knowing a little bit about your subject. Knowledge about your subject trumps an expensive lens every time!
May 1, 2012 | Landscape Photography
There was one location on the rookery my lens found itself pointed the vast majority of the time, what in my mind I called the clowns. There was three great attributes about this one area. They were at the top of the rockery so the background which is physically in the distance is out of focus bigtime. Next, they age class of the chicks, they not only look cute but also comical and are very animated. Lastly, at the end of the day, they would have the last great rays of light. I shot about 600 images this evening of just these funny characters!
I also shot a ton of video this evening. The D4 simply does an amazing job and when attached to the 600, it’s just cool (the D4 has a video feature not even found in the D800 I’ll be talking about a lot in the upcoming issue of the BT Journal). Now I’ve been wearing reading classes for a few years. Jumping back and forth from shooting stills and then video, I have to put them on to see the LCD in Liveview mode to focus. This sucks! So when I learned about the SmallHD, I had one in the office a few days later. I’ll have much more about this shortly but wanted to bring it to your attention now. Its large screen and sharp image makes it possible to critically focus without glasses and easily follow the action. We had lots of action and this night, it simply rocked!
May 1, 2012 | Landscape Photography
Florida has many, many bird treasures, deciding which ones to share with our K&M gang was a challenge. This afternoon after shooting in Ybor and a great dinner at the Columbia, we decided to take the group to a very special place, the Brandon Rookery. This is a relatively young rookery so it’s still growing. Rookerys take on a life of their own each spring and this spring, the Wood Storks were there in big numbers. Now if you never been to a rookery, the first time especially, it is an amazing sensory overload of sights, sounds and smells! The celebration of life is simply uplifting as you see all stages of new life going through the daily struggle to break the bonds of the nest. Where in all of this do you point your lens?
This is an essential question I wasn’t asked but would love to share with you. I come to natural events like this with a definite strategy. That’s because without it, the overload means you tend to just shoot shotgun and not sniper. You point your lens here and there and back again hoping that the click will later make sense when you need to be selective from the get go. I tend to start looking for family groups. I move the lens around looking through it at the various family groups in the rookery. I then start to eliminate those that are just too “busy” or in bad light of the chicks are at a stage in life they are not cute anymore. Once I have my selection narrowed down to two or three family groups that are photographically cool, I visually concentrate on just those and point my lens at the one that is the coolest at that moment. The top image you kinda get the idea of overload of elements, the bottom image of a more selective look at the rookery. Now I’m not saying you don’t take the wide shot and only telephoto. I’m simply talking a strategy to tell the story and this is the one I use and has been successful for me.
Apr 30, 2012 | Landscape Photography
Then when I was finished with the forest, I turned around to see the gorgeous light skimming across palms. I remembered a long ago great shot of these palms in the same light so I went off on a quest. The first problem I found was I couldn’t get high enough. Vantage point is everything! I tried to get on top of our van, but they just don’t make them the way they use to (sorry rental car company for “impression). So then it was off to find some type of elevation.
I finally found the right combo for the most part of elevation and subject. So then it was time to work the elements. The area is managed as it should be with fire so I want to include that in the photo. I also wanted the free of the palms and their patterns and then the openness of the area they grow. So multiple shots were required.
With that, it was real simple finishing in ACR and then into Nik’s Color Efex Pro > Glamour Glow & Darken/Lighten Center. While I like my shots, they are not as good as the one in my memory that someone else took long ago. I now am on a quest to find that photo to see if in reality of my memory, which is the better. It was good to have something though to inspire me to work what was at hand rather then to just blow it off and blah. There was a photo there, just had to go find and make it.
Apr 30, 2012 | Landscape Photography
We started a new tradition at our K&M Adventure Monument Valley of going to some place new neither Kevin or I have been to before. It’s a way to see not only how we deal with a new location, but share visual ideas as they come to us. So this morning on word from some birders (which turned out irronious) we headed to Myakka River State Park. It’s really a gorgeous place, when it’s not hot and there is moody light. We arrived when the ground fog was amazingly thick so we slammed on the brakes and stopped in this great forest area.
I remembered this photo of Jay Maisel’s of light streaming through the redwoods and his joke that he used a smoke machine to get the image. I thought of that because we could smell a fire and see the tint of it in the light streaming through the trees. So that’s what I went after with the camera. My composition was based on a couple of factors. The first was the sun itself, whether I used it as a star burst or hid it behind a trunk. Then there were the God Beams and finally the forest. So I did a dance working those elements into the frame.
Then there was the shooting. These are all 5 image handheld HDR starting at -1exp comp. Shooting with the 18mm, I could “cheat” DOF by shooting at f/8 which gave me a relatively “fast” slow shutter speed. Then the images were assembled with Nik HDR Efex Pro and then finishing with Nik Color Efex Pro > Glamour Glow. When it comes to my favorite, it’s the bottom image and that’s probably because the light is subtle and not in your face. That might change with time though. I do know it was a gorgeous morning and a lot of fun!
