Aug 21, 2012 | Landscape Photography
Today turned out to be a great day at the feeders, the baby Douglas Tree Squirrels made their first visit. They are so much fun to watch as they try to figure out their way in the world. There were three of them and after they scurried up the tree and in the feeder, they were instant enemies. Douglas Tree Squirrels don’t like sharing their food source with anybody, that includes siblings. Well, the three of them argued verbally the whole time they ate. They did this with their mouths full no less! And as you see here, they sat with their backs to each other as if that would make their siblings disappear.
My biggest photographic problem was to shoot stills or video! I was sitting on a bar stool behind the D4 and 600f4VR2 with my morning cup of coffee watching and shooting. The activity was deserving of video because of all the action and chatter, but mom was the best show. Since she was perched about 20″ above the feeders, I figured I didn’t have the skill to pan up and down while shooting video so went all stills. Glad I did, got some great stuff of mom. The kids, not so much because they were in the feeder and I just don’t like seeing the feeder in the photo. There is always tomorrow for better of them. You might be wondering why I didn’t use flash. I really don’t like flash on Douglas Tree Squirrels, too many specular highlights in their fur.
And where was mom during all of this? Well, I don’t think she could believe what she was seeing!
Aug 16, 2012 | Wildlife Photography
Sharon & I are having a blast with the Kelby Training crew, Adam & Brandon here in our home and office filming my latest class, Beginning Wildlife Photography. The guys are from FL of course, so just being up in the Sierra and right now has them big eyed and clicking a ton of iPhone photos. Then we introduce the to our birds and squirrels (my Stellar Jay kid who flies into the office to say hi really got them!) and they really go gaga! I was hillerious watching Brandon try to photograph Alvin, our Allen’s Hummer with his iPhone. We finished our first day last night at 21:30 filming a segment with our Northern Flying Squirrels. This is one of our juvenal Hairy Woodpeckers posing for the camera during the class. This photo taken with a Nikon 300f4AFS, the main lens for the class. They are do back shortly to start our 2nd day and can’t wait. Had a bear the day before they arrived and hoping one comes by today. I want to see how their iPhones does with it! Oh ya, they say the class should be posted in the next 60days! mtc
Aug 13, 2012 | Landscape Photography
Last week I wondered about doing some remote video shooting. Hadn’t tried it before so started to work out the system. We had cloudy, thunderstorm weather all weekend and I needed to keep my nose to the keyboard to finish my new book. So remote triggering was essential. Setting up on an immature Allen’s Hummer that has taken possession of one of our feeders, I trained the 70-180mc attached to the D4 with Pocket Wizard IIIs as the trigger. The D4 had Custom Setting g4 set to Shutter release so whenever I wanted to start or stop the video, I just depressed the Test button on the Pocket Wizard. This also got me working on some shoots for this coming week with the Kelby Training crew coming in to film my next class.
The taping went pretty smoothly. My only issue was not totally paying attention a loosing track when I pushed the button to start or stop the tapping. I had to go out to the camera a few times and see where I was in the process. After I was all done, I realized I could have hooked up my Ninja2 to a long HDMI cable and monitored the action remotely. What you see here are five segments edited together in Photoshop CS6. Taking the individual segments and editing each down, drop in the Cross Fade, render the video and upload took less than 30min. I have to admit that I am enjoying video a whole lot more now that creating a finished can be so fast and simple. Enjoy!
Aug 3, 2012 | Landscape Photography
The emails are starting to come in asking what I think this fall will be like in the Eastern Sierra. Great fall color depends on lots of moisture and a good cold snap. Too early to predict the cold snap but we know we’re not getting much moisture. We’re having great clouds but they’ve not shed a drop to help. So we’ll have some great pockets of color in locations where this is water, lakes and major streams, but I don’t think we’ll have the huge blankets of color that are so spectacular. I can tell you a Kelby Training class on shooting fall color is due out shortly that we shot last fall. And I’ll be on the east coast and in the Sierra this fall looking for that color. Hope to see ya amongst the trees!
Jul 31, 2012 | Landscape Photography
Back in the day, one of the things to do was photograph a particular scene four times a year to demonstrate the change of seasons. At the time, I lived on California’s Central Coast where there were only two seasons. So I traveled throughout CA on the look out for a location that had four seasons I could travel to and make the shot. I was particularly looking for a great tree that I could focus on which would have that great fall color for one of the seasons. For over a decade, I was obsessed.
And thirty years later, I still don’t have the great scene! This is the closest I’ve come. This lone tree on the edge of Mono Lake has a classic shape, exactly what I was looking for so I started to follow it. The major problem is there is no real spring in the sage and in the fall, there always seems to be a big blow that removes all the leaves before they have an opportunity to turn all orange. When I was in school, we were encouraged to create an Idea File, a file where we would include ideas of photographs on what today folks would say are on their bucket list. This is one that still is in my file and on my list.
Jul 30, 2012 | Wildlife Photography
I just think these are the coolest birds, the Turkey Vulture. I am often asked what one critter have I not photographed that I want to. Obviously I’ve photographed the Turkey Vulture but never on a nest. I day a paper presented on these misunderstood birds long ago and say some cool images of their nest life and have always wanted to spend a season at a nest ever since. Where most look at birds like the Robin to signal the coming of spring, I look to the TV migrating up the Eastern Sierra. The one factoid I love about TVs is, they use more calories to perch then they do to fly. That’s pretty darn cool!
Then there is that red head, I just love it! It has a very specific biological reason, it’s all about cleanliness. Vultures stick their heads in places where heads shouldn’t go, into gooey, gory, parts of dead things eating stuff that smell alone would knock us off. Because of that, they have no feathers on their heads so they can keep clean easier. That’s cool evolution! North America has three in vultures, the Turkey, Black and California Condor. Other then the condor, vultures tend to be ignored even though they are not only cool, but an important part of our wild heritage. Some populations in North America have suffered some server decline in the last decade. If you have the opportunity, give them a little of your time. You might just find them like me, pretty darn cool! Photos taken with D4 w/600VR.
