Mar 24, 2017 | Wildlife Photography
Barred Owl Branchlings
captured by D5 / 800mm
It’s real simple, there was no “shot” when we found the Barred Owl branchlings. They were high up against a horrible bright background when they themselves were in shade with all sort of distracting branches between them and the lens. It was a no win situation from the get go. Worst of all, stuck on a narrow boardwalk with everyone stopping to ask what we’re looking at. That’s because the branchlings were so far away in such horrible light, folks couldn’t see them. The D5 / 800mm wasn’t a secret weapon making the magic happen. No shot … simply none!
Yet we stood there for nearly three hours. Why?! For starters, how often do you have Barred Owl branchlings to photograph? If you live on the west coast like I do where there are no Barred Owls, the answer is rarely. And if you’ve spent anytime with branchlings, you know that they will move. The question is will they move while you’re still watching and more importantly, will they move where you can make a photo? Now if you leave, you just answered the question because you will never know and take no photos away with you. Staying, you might have the answer if they move but there is still no guarantee you’ll have the photo. And that’s kind of the point. When we go out shooting, be it owls or mammals or even a stamp collection, you don’t know if you’ll comeback with the photo or not. You have to put in the time, where it’s five, ten minutes, 2, 4, 24 hours or days or months. The essential ingredient in every photograph is time and for me, it adds up to forty years and counting. Because after all that time I still know that something will come even when at first it appears, no shot … simply none!
Mar 23, 2017 | Wildlife Photography
Pileated Woodpecker
captured by D5 / 800mm
I have an amazing partner who is also my wife. Too often though, we are separated as I go off on this project and that event. We’ve been together a long time so I know the majority of her favorites and one of them is the Pileated Woodpecker. Goes way back in time when we watched them in Yosemite Valley in the ’80s. Well on my last adventure in FL last week, I was in a couple of locales where there were Pileateds. I wanted a photo to sent to Sharon just so you knew I was thinking of her. I saw one fly by here and another there, but never saw any opportunity to make a click. Then the last day in the last hour I received a text from Jake. He had two Pileateds in his viewfinder. So I grabbed the D5 / 800mm and booked it back down the boardwalk. Jake is really good at learning and applying all the lessons over the years shooting wildlife. The most important, go slow and look 360 for the great light and then the subject in that light. Doing that he found two which was just one when I reached him. Another important lesson we practice everyday is knowing our camera gear intimately for just such as an occasion as this. I saw the small avenue through the trees I could shoot as I walked up. By the time the tripod was on the boardwalk, the camera exposure compensation had already been set, aperture selected and focus approximately set for the distance. So once on the boardwalk all I had to do was get the glass on the Pileated and shoot. No, it’s not a great shot but that’s not what I was after. The point of this shot was to share a memory and moment with my best friend. But isn’t that what photography is really, truly all about>
Mar 20, 2017 | Landscape Photography
Light is this powerful tool that moves the mind and tugs at the heart. You can witness this every time you see a live presentation on stage. While contained within the physical space of the stage, the lighting crew moves you through a scene creating depth and tapping emotion with light. What is lit and what is not, the warm light here and cold light there, what’s in the spotlight and what is hinted at, each light doing a job that the mind grasps onto and the heart relishes. This is the same light we must seek in our photography! We are so very fortunate to witness the many wonders of our world and with that great fortune comes the responsibility to share it with others not so fortunate. That chilly morning you’re up early in the high desert where the newly white topped mountains are veiled in the last clouds of the storm. The sun battles to get all its rays through to warm the day only to be entangled in the heavens. You can’t help but be in aw of such an experience. So your stage is set the the lighting crew has done their job, it’s now upon you to bring back that story to share. What lens do you select, where is the exposure compensation, what is the subject you focus in on to make all these decisions? The responsibility can be overwhelming at times but if you trust your heart and not your mind which means letting go of the technical and tapping the personal, YOU can do it. You just need to fell it, the dance of light.
Mar 10, 2017 | Landscape Photography
I was there, I know the size, depth and majesty that was the sweeping landscape before my lens. You weren’t there so you don’t know. Now I try my best to tell that story by including a foreground, middle ground and background and while that helps, it really doesn’t convey some of the time the expanse of space the lens is encompassing. That’s why when it works, I love including a reference in the photo to give you a sense of scale to the landscape.
Shooting with other photographers, I had the opportunity to create a couple of examples. Shooting with the D5 / 70-200f4AFS I made the top photo which has the feel of a portrait but by shooting at f/4, the range out of focus in the background says just how far away they really are. Changing that up by having the person so small in the frame accomplishes the same thing. Now you might be saying, “We don’t see scale in Moose’s landscapes very often.” You’d be right that’s because, often, I don’t find scale that works photographically. So when I can find it, I love scale when it works.
Mar 10, 2017 | Landscape Photography
For the third morning in a row, the Winnemucca Desert produced a gorgeous sunrise. Had the gang from Shooting the West out again at 04:45 and we were rewarded with a totally different yet totally grand morning. We went to the exact same location as two mornings ago arriving to nearly no clouds. By the time the sun rose clouds and started to float back enough to be kissed by that make pink light of a desert sunrise.
The dust in the air in the desert creates the softest and sweetest pink sunrise. Many think of this color as a New Mexico sunrise but they have them in Nevada just as grand with possibly bigger sweeps of landscape to combine them with. The key to making the capture is first setting the White Balance to either cloudy or manually to 9000k to capture all the subtleties of that pink. I shot with the D5 / 24-70VR for think with early light then switched to 70-200f4AFS once the light got a little lighter. I choose those lenses to incorporate the white snow tricking the eye to see the pinks as even more intense. Finally in post, I REDUCED the saturation because otherwise, the pinks wouldn’t look real. I’m just totally blown away by our morning shoots here in Winnemucca this week. Simply, wow!
Mar 8, 2017 | Landscape Photography
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Sharon & I are at the Shooting the West this week … what a great event! Well me being me, I had all the folks up and gathered at 04:45 for a sunrise shoot this morning. Man, were we all rewarded! We went out to the Winnemucca Dunes, parked, walked a couple of hundred yards to the top of a mound and then didn’t move for two hours as the most gorgeous 360 sunrise landscape photography extravaganza worked its magic! I shot mostly with the 70-200f4 AFS & 14-24AF on the D5 never taking more than a couple of steps to take a new scene. It was the most amazing sunrise I’ve shot in years!
