Nov 30, 2011 | Wildlife Photography
Winter is coming and hopefully with it, lots of the white stuff. Snow is a marvelous background or stage for photographing wildlife in so many ways. One that I recently pointed out is its great light bouncing qualities. It makes shooting critters anytime of the day a no-brainer. Next, it cleans up the world so nicely, making lots of the natural world’s clutter disappear. One of its greatest gifts though is its ability to set the stage for our photograph.
There is no body who sees a photograph of white sweeping across the landscape who won’t know it’s snow. That in itself is huge! Talk about easy story telling, put the white stuff in there and you can say it’s winter in a heartbeat. And with it being white, anything you stick on it will visually pop without any problem. That’s huge too! The three photos here, the Coyotes in Yellowstone, Polar Bear on the edge of the Beauford Sea or Dall Sheep in the Yukon territory demonstrate this. The “subject” in each one of these photos gets smaller and smaller yet, you can’t help but to see them. You don’t need long glass to make these types of images come to life. You’ve just got to see them and get past having frame filling subjects but let the whole world into the frame.
This brings up for many I’m sure the question of exposure. There is some really old, really bad advice out there on this topic but like anything photographic, YOU must find what works best for you. Personally, when shooting snow I don’t automatically do anything with my metering. Using modern cameras with meters connected to computers, I don’t find an issue so it comes back down to what it is you want to communicate. I’ve written about this before, if you wanna find out more, head here. The biggest trick of all if simply getting out in the snow because once there, the whole winter wonderland opens up and the photographs seem to be endless!
Nov 23, 2011 | Landscape Photography
Our home is in a forest and fire is a constant threat. That goes with the territory so keeping the property maintained and “cleaned” up for fire hazard is a constant summer / fall job. Part of that is trimming the dead limbs up to 8′ about the ground. We actually take that mark higher on our property, up to 15-18 feet except for one tree, #2. Yeah, we have numbered the trees on our property. It’s real simple, if Sharon says, “The Coops is on the tree,” I have no clue where to look. But if she says there’s a Coop on tree 1, I know exactly where to look. Tree 2 is right outside our office window and is the tree my 600mm is pointed at when I’m working at my desk. So when it comes to limb trimming, don’t you touch my tree 2!
Those limbs are the perches my subjects perch on. No perch, no photo. Here’s a classic example why shot a few years back. It was a dry year, we had very little snow on the ground but if you look at the bottom of the limbs, you’ll see the snow is filling in the shadows. That light is filling in the belly of this Douglas Tree Squirrel making the photo possible. It’s really no more then a “cute squirrel” moment that lasted only a few seconds (which is why you should always have your camera and at the ready). But with the image size, light quality and the cuteness, these images sell really well. Everyone loves a cute squirrel. Now when I look at the bottom photo, I always think of something Jake said when he was real little and real cute and everyone liked to take his photograph. He would hears the clicks and see the lens pointed at him and say, “Make them stop daddy.”
Nov 22, 2011 | Wildlife Photography
Ah, the first snow of the season that will stick has fallen, winter is on! I love shooting critters in the snow for many reasons. They have their thickest fur, densest feathers, most of the time they are all puffed up to stay warm giving themselves the “I’m full and pleased” look. It is also easy to photograph them. I have learned over the years what patches of snow to NOT remove as it acts like a natural reflector so flash fill is not required. No matter the time of day, the snow bounces light up and makes getting snap shots easy to take. All you need are the critters!
Attracting critters in the winter is real simple, food and water is all it takes. When it comes to food, suet works great because it is such high energy but even better, it doesn’t freeze. Lastly, suet hangs so snow doesn’t collect on it and even if it does get wet, it’s fat so it won’t spoil. We do put out seed but it’s a pain to keep clear on some days. Water is the best, it’s free and brings in everything critter from birds to mammals. The only trick is to keep it from freezing. There are bird bath (some even solar powered now) heaters which draw no power really and keep the water just a couple degrees above freezing. This “free water” as it is called is vital to critters since they still need to drink especially in the winter.
Now if there is a trick to this when it comes to photography, it’s putting up food and water so you have a shot. That means watching backgrounds! Now I tend not to shoot the critters at the feeders and baths, but when they come and go to them. In the top shot, this is the suet post, you can see the suet cage in the lower right corner of the frame. I hung it this way because the Clark Nutcrackers (who you see here), Steller Jays and woodpeckers love to land and argue about who gets to eat. I needed a beefy branch for all that activity. But it’s the line of birds waiting their turn at the offerings that I love to photograph the most. The bottom shot is a favorite from this spring (birds are missing from our feeders right now :-( ). I love the light and the gesture. You might be saying, “There’s a stick going through its head” and you’re right. If you showed me this image I too might make a joke about the skewered brains. But for some reason, it doesn’t bother me here which doesn’t make it right, I just like it. So with Thanksgiving just around the corner, remember to be thankful for the wildlife we have about and remember to set them a place at the table!
Photos captured by D3x, 600VR
Nov 7, 2011 | Landscape Photography
Sharon and I are back in Moab at Red Cliff Lodge for the evening, haven been dropped off here by the Westwind after our TX Air2Air Workshop. We held five DLWS events in Moab, the very first, the very last and a couple in between. To say I’ve seen and photographed these red rocks a few times is an understatement. There are some that you can never tire of and there are others, well, when you have bald skies I would personally drive right past. But not was the case this past week. It seemed no matter the conditions the photo gods presented us, we made some great images. When you put dates on a calendar to venture somewhere a year in advance and that happens, I not only count my blessings, I look at why that came to be to see if it’s repeatable.
So Sharon & I spent a couple of hours at dinner last night trying to figure out just why this came to be. We did six shoots with the group and only one had great clouds. Great clouds can make road kill look fantastic as a landscape subject. So take that one out we had five with no clouds, just bald skies. Bald skies mean you can include it in the journey of bringing drama to your landscape. It also means the light itself will go hard quickly since there is not natural diffusion material. So that very first morning when we headed to Park Avenue, past shoots here in such conditions and the less then desirable results came to mind as I left the car. When I got back to the car, I had some marvelous clicks and along with the surprise of the success of the location, I was pretty happy.
Then that afternoon we took the group on a long walk. I really hate wasting time teaching by walking at a workshop. I know you can’t find every location next to the road but with a clock that never stops ticking, it is important. We walked anyways over to Broken Arch and then to Sand Dune Arch and were some amazing images were made. Joe did a lighting demo that was simply spectacular with a great final result.
I could go through the whole week and talk about each shoot like this. Each shoot had disaster written all over it, from the light to my initial attitude to photographing it because, I’ve done it before. Yet each shoot just kept getting better and better. Sharon and I pondered this over a couple of bottle of marvelous Castle Creek Merlot, marvelous food and talking with our favorite waitress Kasey. Then at dessert it finally came to me, the one variable that made each and every one of these shoots so amazing. It wasn’t the light, it wasn’t the location, it sure wasn’t the bald skies. Nope, what made each and every one of these shoots so fantastic were experiencing this all with friends! And I think it was more than just shooting with friends.
There is no doubt that my group of friends are just as immature and goofball as I am, which is why they are my friends. That in itself makes a difference but that doesn’t make the great images show up on the LCD. What I’m so fortunate to have experienced is being with a group of friends who not only make it fun, but make shooting and being successful, successful. The bouncing off of ideas, the challenge of producing better then the friend and of course, sharing with other friends those special finds that you simply want everyone to share in. That gorgeous photograph!
While it was my fifth time to be here in the land of red rocks, I feel I came back with some of my best images ever of locations I would, until this last week, would never visited again. I made images that I not only enjoy looking at for all those photographic reasons you might hear uttered at a crit. But all of these images have memories of making them beside my friends. That’s why this was the best ever time here in Moab. To all my friends, thanks for the memories!
Nov 4, 2011 | Landscape Photography
I broke my mold and put a person in the landscape. Photography has brought me many blessings, way too many to ever count. One of those has to be the day this gracious man answered my email and said he’d love to join me on a venture known as DLWS. I have learned much from Joe, some are the obvious things like flash. But most are those things salts like ourselves have in common and can share from surviving on the road with a camera for three decades. Our last evening together at DLWS, true to form as repeated many times in the past, we were seated for dinner away from the rest of the patrons, out where we could be loud and laugh and celebrate the joys only the click can bring. For all the times from our past and for all those yet to come, I have no words except Thanks!
Nov 4, 2011 | Landscape Photography
I have been asked what are my favorite images from our recent time in Moab. I really don’t think about my images in that way, I don’t pick favorites. I do have those in which I have a personal attachment to because of the experience in making the image is special to me. That could be from a number of things. The first image was taken along Park Avenue where the recent rains left many puddles. I was shooting with my good friend Chris when I came up to him trying to make this shot. I laid down on the rock to give him a couple of ideas which is when I shot this image. If he wasn’t there working the spot, I know I would have not stopped nor lay down on the rock. Right after, McNally laid down next to me and in usual juvenal fashion, we were stupid there for all to see. That makes this image special to me.
This is another of those laying down images. After walking up into Double Arch, I laid backwards to just stretch my back and I saw this. I put the 16Fish to my eye and liked what I saw. I’m actually looking behind me in this photo. In this thumbnail, you can’t see the folks in the foreground and behind, just clear blue sky. Lots of information, lots of light so the 16Fish and a 9 images HDR handheld was the call for capture.
This photo has a whole lot wrapped up in it. Stormy clouds, long run coming to an end. Color meeting black. I have a lot of images of this nature from around the country in my files. I’ve always entertained doing something with them but I just never seem to have the right ones to tell my story. That’s because I’m still not sure what that story is. That’s the cool thing about photography and life, you might wake up each day with an idea where you want to go but that road you enter, it might take you in a totally different direction. So my “favorites” from the week don’t have anything to do with incredible imagery but the moment that went into the click. Life is a marvelous thing, I always feel fortunate I get to experience with a camera in hand.
