Mar 8, 2014 | Wildlife Photography
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Took the D4s out shooting this morning and I can honestly say, it’s not your D4!
Headed out to the Greater Sage Grouse lek and at 05:13 heard the familiar sound of a male calling. Been working with this population for 25yrs now so know them pretty well. I shot the entire time from the cab of my truck with the D4s, 800f5.6 w/TC.25 resting on the Puffin Pad (just like in the video). The sun doesn’t hit the lek until 06:31 so I sat in the dark just listening for a while. Slowly, the ambient light levels rise and I can see the ghostly white forms jetting about the lek. At 06:00 I started to shoot when I normally wouldn’t have wanting to test the high ISO quality of the D4s. Shooting at ISO3200, I made come clicks as the males make claim to their particular piece of ground. At 06:06 the first territorial battle broke out and it happen to be right in front of me. You can see some of the results from that battle sequence above. When I say some, the D4s when I hit the hammer ripped and its buffer lasted longer than the battle with 81 images captured!
The D4s has a TON of new settings and means of customizing every button and I’ve not even scratched the surface there. The two new things I tried this morning were the higher ISO and the Group AAF. The ISO3200 performed very impressively. Understand, there sun has not come up yet, I’m shooting in no light. Yes, there is a little noise in the images above but those images are straight out of the camera. With my normal setting in ACR, you see no noise and that’s impressive! But Dave Black was right, I freakin love the new Group AAF! OMG, does that thing rock in speed and accuracy. Keeping in mind that I am shooting from the cab of my truck and handholding, I shot 984 images this morning and only deleted 18 because they weren’t sharp. That’s impressive. I mean, shooting at 1000f/8 in no light and have that kind of AF performance … OMG!!!
There were 17-21 GSG on the lek this morning, the first morning I’ve found them on the lek. Just prior to sunrise, 06:27, a coyote came through the back of the lek the same moment a Golden Eagle popped over the rise. This combo flushed the grouse and it’s then I saw the six females that were hunched down in the clump of sage as they flew with the males to the safety of the deep sage brush. Four males remained and finally at 06:41, they walked off to the sage.
It was a great morning of grouse watching, they are such a cool bird! And it was a delight to take the D4s out basically cold turkey and have it perform so bloody great. The rest of the weekend I’ll be nose deep in the instruction book to see what other treasures are to be found. I know there is mtc!
Mar 7, 2014 | Wildlife Photography
Spring is trying to sneak out from under this winter’s cold grasp. Grouse are one bird species that truly celebrate the coming of spring in a big way. Gathering on leks all around the globe, the males dawn their best plumage, rise very early and start to dance and call in their attempts to attract a mate. Leks, typically an area of topography that can be as small as a spot on a log to as big as a couple of acres, come to life just prior to sunrise and then the activity peaks as the sun hits them and then fades away not too long after the sun is shinning on the lek. It’s a fascinating right of spring the grouse pursue in their drive to create the next generation.
I’ve been very fortunate to photograph all the grouse of No America except the Ruff Grouse. These are simply really cool birds I love to watch and photograph. Above are the Greater Prairie Chickens whose mating ritual is dramatic and hilarious all at the same time. Below are the Greater Sage Grouse, large birds that dance up a storm ending when they inflate their air sacs calling for love across the sage. The Sage Grouse are literally in my backyard and I started looking for them this week to see if the annual celebration as begun. It’s been real quite so far but signs are it’s about to burst. Grouse are generally a long lens, low light, walk very softly photography proposition. Sadly, many leks have been closed off because of human disturbance. But other leks on refuges have tours that I highly encourage you to participate in. If you get hooked on this annual wildlife ritual, hopefully you’ll work with biologists to gain access and then share your photos. Many states no longer have any grouse, they’ve become extinct. Some are listed as endangered and fighting for their existence. The Attwater’s Prairie Chicken (below) is one that is just hanging on considering one hundred years ago, there were over a million of them. They all need your photography to tell their unique story!
Mar 5, 2014 | Landscape Photography
This blog post is real brief and simple. Don’t settle with the first click, don’t stop walking just because, don’t settle and CHASE the light! I see way too many photographers when they reach icon locations like Balanced Rock in Arches Nat’l Park get out of their vehicle, make their click, get back in their vehicle and looking at their LCD. Look, wonder, ponder, explore and make the one click that tells the story, brings out the drama and touches the heart and you’ll have the one great photo! This isn’t it, this is the first view of Balanced Rock from the parking lot. It’s lacking.
Walking around so looking to the east, the setting sun lights the entire rock evenly killing any drama or shape. Keep walking!
With just the Df and 18-35 (no tripod), we walk around and UP the trail (what stops many) to where we now have light and shadow giving shape and drama and color the tells a story and reaches out. While the skies are killer, location, location, location makes the best image by simply moving.
Mar 4, 2014 | Landscape Photography
Sharon and I have been into Rock Art for a long time. In many ways, it’s the beginning of photography, visually storytelling to relate and preserve what mattered to the artist at that moment. Where we live in the Sierras, there are lots of examples, panels as they are called, telling the stories of hunts, good times and bad. Just outside Moab on Hwy 279 is the Hwy 279 Rock Art panels. We visited them last week again to look, read and photograph.
There are many ways to photograph Rock Art. My preference for the last decade is to photograph it as rock … art, art that uses rock as its medium. There was a time I photographed just the individual symbols because they are way cool and I was collecting for a researcher. But now, I treat them as an element on that rock face, staring out from a time gone by of a people who lived and loved this land. What always amazes me when looking at the Rock Art is that they never seemed to hit a spot where as they were scratching away, the whole rock face fell awat. My luck if I tried it, I would just about be done with my drawing and the whole cliff face would peal away!
Me preferred method of photographing the Rock Art is around highnoon when we have contrast, shadows to help bring out the texture of the rock. They created their art in the desert tarnish, the darker rock, using contrast to make their art pop so I want to photograph it with the same idea. Shooting with the Nikon Df & 58f1.4AFS still using the Nikon 67mm Circular Polarizer, I wanted to shoot straight on to avoid any angular distortion. Other than the polarizer being used to remove the blue sky reflection and Clarity in ACR in finishing, these are simple clicks.
Mar 3, 2014 | Landscape Photography
There was a tree right under where the climbers where launching up the wall. The tree was really cool, still having its fall leaves but slightly drier and wilted appearance. Against the red wall, it was really cool especially with its shape. So I simply took my vertically oriented camera from shooting the climbers and shot the tree. I then went back on photographing the climbers. But the shot of the tree hung in my mind. It’s a great tree for February!
Well I came back to the tree because the vertical didn’t work. As you can see, I turned the camera and went horizontal. Now the camera is not plumb to the earth, but rather to the sweet shape of the tree. The shape of the tree along with its shadow (which is key) really took life in the horizontal format. A simply click with Nikon Df & 58f1.4AFS still using the Nikon 67mm Circular Polarizer, it took only seconds from shooting the climbers. I simply love finding subject like this that really require no thinking. Thinking hurts sometimes!
Mar 3, 2014 | Landscape Photography
There is some amazing climbing images out there like from Dave Black and Lucas Gilman. These photogs are up on the wall with the climber working their craft producing killer images. You’re never going to get me up on that wall, but I would really love to get some of those images. Well on our K&M Adventure to Moab, we hit the Hwy 279 wall where lots and lots of climbers scale the faces. The really cool thing, you can shoot them from the ground and they are still right in front of you! This is climbing I can relate too!
Shooting nearly at the same level as the climbers is the unique perspective that is unique. Just how close are you? I shot with the Nikon Df & 58f1.4AFS. Some in the group shot with 70-200 or 80-400 which worked as well, but I went short for a reason. I wanted to make it appear that these guys were scaling massive cliffs (and make it appear I had done some climbing … huh!) Shooting with the 58mm, I got the critical sharpness making the face come to life while getting the size for scale.
Now I shot vertical also to give the feeling of height. The road where they start their climb is literally at the bottom of the frame, just out of the frame. But you don’t know that just looking at the photo. I also used a polarizer to remove the massive blue reflection of the sky to bring the color of the rock to life. We spent a long time on the rocks shooting, shooting from the safety of the ground. My hats still off to Black / Gilman for physically getting up with their subject. Me, I’m keeping my feet on the ground!
