Apr 26, 2016 | Landscape Photography
It’s been a few years since I was storm chasing but it took very little time for me to remember one of the things I love best about it. That’s seeing parts of our amazing country I didn’t know existed. We stopped in Ames, OK for an hour waiting for the wx to commit. It was right at the Ames War Memorial and Ames Astrobleme. The war memorial was pretty self explanatory and very well done. It represented some of our best young men who gave their lives for the freedoms we enjoy today. Amazing to me how this very small, rural town can do so much to say thanks when much larger don’t. Well done Ames!
The other cool thing was the Astrobleme. What’s that? It a meteor crater found during the exploration of oil that was some 900 feet under ground, covered up my thousands of years of erosion. Never knew there was this meteor crater here and if I hadn’t been storm chasing and stopped here, still wouldn’t know that fact. This land of ours never stops surprising me and so glad I have the opportunity for the next week to explore its back roads with my friends even more.
Apr 18, 2016 | Wildlife Photography
This morning was twenty years in the making and it DID NOT disappoint! The Sharp-tailed Grouse was a species I sooooo wanted to photograph on their lek. I have tried over the years many times to get on a Sharp-tailed Grouse but with no success but finally two weeks ago, it came true. Why were they so important to me? This vanishing member of our great central grasslands was the inspiration for many cultures and its performance one I’d seen in photographs since I was a kid. Seeing it in person let alone photographing it has always been on my top five list of wild heritage experiences. To look through the window and see them thirty feet away at the Calamus Outfitter blind was for me, a dream come true!
Smaller than the Prairie Chicken, even though they share the same habitat, they are very different. You can see how they look differently. They utilize the same habitat but evolution has changed the way they attract a mate. Where the Prairie Chicken jumps and does battle, the Sharp-tailed Grouse drums their feet madly on the ground and then goes running towards each other only to stare at each other until doing a little hop and going back to drumming. The lower photo is a “hybrid”, a grouse & chicken grouse combo (on the right) who is so confused. He still jumps like a chicken in the air causing true grouse to cock their head in bewilderment. The biggest part of the story you can’t get from these stills is the sound. The drumming of all the grouse on the lek is heard long before you can see the grouse. And when they start up, it’s deafening and when the stop, all in concert, the silence is deafening! I shot from the bus blind with the D5 / 800mm which made it possible to watch just the grouse and not the photography. The experience was long in coming and well worth the wait. I can’t wait until next year to spend more time with this very special and unique member of our wild heritage.
Apr 15, 2016 | Landscape Photography
Photography, so much more than f/stop and shutter speeds! Imagination which is the fuel for passion takes your photography beyond the everyday, inviting others into the world you’re so fortunate to explore. In Santa Fe, one thing I like to do is walk the town with just one lens, forcing me to look at the very familiar in a unfamiliar way. Last time, it was with the 35f1.8, before that the 24f1.4. This time I wanted to go the other direction so went with the 300PF on the D5. We started out long before the sun was up and to me, I instantly struck gold (which is a good and bad thing). Looking up at this sign straight one, the very subtle shadow created by the glow way off on the horizon brought life to what was otherwise, an ordinary store sign. And that’s what photography is all about. Taking the sign and using it to tell a story. Take your photography less seriously and let your imagination fuel your passion. Faith in yourself, brings life to photography that is very rewarding!
Apr 11, 2016 | Wildlife Photography
From inside their covered wagons, western bound immigrants heard the haunting sounds coming from the landscape before the sun rose and thought the world around them was haunted. It was spring and the Prairie Chickens in the thousands would be on their lek doing what chickens do. When the sun shined light on their “ghosts,” the pioneers realized breakfast had been provided them. The Prairie Chickens has been in trouble ever since. There are few refuges left for the chickens and we were so fortunate to spend time at one of them this past week. The amazing folks at Calamus Outfitters are conserving their habitat on their ranch and have created for us photographers an incredible opportunity to see, witness and photograph this very unique piece of our wildlife heritage.
These are Greater Prairie Chickens and the calm you see in the top photo, it’s hard to imagine all that goes on for this male to find a mate and their less than 30sec moment with that female. They bob their heads, stump their feet, boom, flare their “horns” or pinnaes, and so much more all in an attempt to get the female’s attention. And when that and a whole lot more doesn’t work, they spar. What still amazes me after decades of watching this sparing is how, with the naked eye, they simply appear to be jumping up and down. But when you photograph them (shooting D5 @12FPS, 800mm) and look at their leap frame by frame, you see just how cut throat these chickens are to each other. They are simply nasty!
Photographically, while freezing the sparing is very cool, showing the motion in a still image to me is even cooler. So then comes the dance of a fastest enough shutter speed to freeze the eye but slow enough to blur the wings. It’s a really low, low, low percentage shot. As in, shooting 30-40 images to get one that works like the one above. Shot at ISO 400, 1/200, it has just the right combo of sharpness and blur along with the story. I mean, look at the chicken, it looks like it’s going to land on the back of the other and stomp on it! The intensity in the stare and blur of the wings, it brings out the fierce competition in an otherwise, simple chicken. It’s just one of many reasons I love Prairie Chickens.
Apr 6, 2016 | Landscape Photography
Yesterday afternoon, the skies over Nebraska were really performing. The winds started to come up keeping the birds down and big game away so we went off exploring the countryside and were not disappointed. Shots lots and lots, here are a couple of my first finished. The image above was taken as we were driving down Hwy 96. That little white cloud grabbed my attention so made the click as fast as I could. It was gone by the time I was done. Shot at 50mph with D5 / 24-70VR finished in PS using the simple B&W technique. Now if that little white cloud hadn’t been there, I would have not even though about taking the photo.
Not quite as little, but this white cloud, again was the center of my attention. Way off in the distance, this was a D5 / 70-200f4 AFS shot with HSC. Where the top photo, the cloud is way off by itself in the corner, the elements in the frame suggested to me a centered framing. The cloud was lit up by a stray God beam and that unique lighting is what grabbed my attention. I have a whole lot more including a sweet pano I need to post. mtc
Apr 4, 2016 | Landscape Photography
click on image to see larger
Ok, those chores can wait even longer! We decided to head down the flats, the skies were just getting prettier. My thought was showing a before and after, the same basic landscape of the mountains shot up close with the 18-35AFS at 18mm and then down a few miles and shoot the same thing with the 70-200f4 at 70mm. I made the first stop and I saw the clouds along the Sierra Crest and said, hell with that idea, and raced out to the last stop to shoot a pano. At 70mm with the D5, it was a slam dunk to shoot and with the Panorama feature in ACR, a slam dunk to assemble. A few moments latter, the whole crest had changed, the pano had come and gone. That happens a lot with clouds which is why when you seem, them you gotta shoot them. Cause the clouds kept on rolling.
