Aug 12, 2011 | Wildlife Photography
More and more Phalaropes started to land out in front of us. They motored around the Tufa and started to come closer as they chased the food source. Here you can see one coming up to a clump of Brine Flies. And while it might seem like they are trying to hide from the flies as they flatten themselves against the water, I think they are avoiding creating a splash from their bill when they strike. Being flat to the water, when they snap at the flies, their bill doesn’t touch the water.
Well, hunger works wonders in a short time, 45min or so, the flies lead the little flock into shore and my waiting lens. Now I had already positioned myself based on light and food source. How did I come up with that place to plant? Angle of incidence equals angle of reflection is how.
I had a hunch that once they came into the shallower water, they might start to bathe after munching a little. Sure enough, they did. Now bathing in water 7x saltier then the ocean really can’t do much for their oils but they did it anyways and with a lot of zeal. They were ignoring me so I took two steps closer, closing the gap two feet. I would have loved to be laying flat on the ground but the grasses were too tall and I saw no alley ways to shoot through so I remained standing.
After a bath comes preening of course. Knowing that, I started to watch for the signs. Because after preening comes…..
the wing stretch! This was a challenge to photograph because of the grass. Now you watch birds enough you will see that second or two second warning that a wing stretch is coming. That warning helps, it permits you to get wider or go vertical (based on body position) to catch the wing stretch. And if you’re thinking, the chance to close the lens down to capture as much DOF as you can. I never got the wing stretch but anything I was getting I felt was a gift from the photo Gods.
You must be asking yourself about the light?! At least I’m hoping you are. If you remember back to yesterday’s blog and one from last week when I bemoaned the horrible light of August on the Eastside, you might be looking at the photo above saying something like, “That doesn’t look so bad.” If you look at the second image, the little group shot and then the one above, you should see in a matter of the 10min I had with this flock, the light changed. The sun rose higher and when it did that, it made the water a reflector. You can see the difference for yourself, it bounced light into the shadow therefore “mellowing” the light a little. Angle of Incidence Equals Angle of Reflection!
And after their food and bath, it was time to head back out into Mono Lake to do whatever it is Phalaropes do to entertain themselves. They also went back to foraging. Mono Lake is their gas station where they fuel up on their migration south. There can be as many as 1 million of these floating cottonballs on Mono Lake within the next month. I still wanted that photo that said Wilson’s Phalarope on Mono Lake. So as the Phalaropes left their little beach I followed them in the viewfinder. The third or fourth one when it left gave me the photo I wanted, and my favorite from the morning.
The moral? I don’t know if there is one other then, photos only happen when you’re behind the camera. I went out to simply stretch the mind, the gear and keep all thinks sharp. After that, once out I just followed the clues to where they led. It would be great to say that’s how it always works but that would be a lie. Most of the time after such an outing, after I check for sharpness, I delete all the images because the light sucks. In this case though, I was rewarded for getting up early and willing to wait to play my hunch. Get out this weekend, exercise your gear and your mind and play the hunch. I hope you are rewarded as well!
Photos captured by D3x, 600VR w/TC-17e on Lexar UDMA digital film
Aug 12, 2011 | Photography
The light was bad but I was standing by huge food source and critters gotta eat, something in my head said, “Wait.” Mono Lake is a major stopover for migratory birds and I saw small flocks of Wilson’s Phalaropes darting about. They would touch down briefly on the water and then move on. They would have to feed at some point, the question is, when. They are a small bird, about the size of your fist. So the other question was, how close would they get?
They are a cool bird species, I like Phalaropes. They are very busy little bodies. The odds were great that what we were seeing were all females. That’s because the males have all the nesting duties, once the eggs are laid, the females are out of there. There being the Arctic Tundra. I see a couple of Phalaropes motoring around the Tufa out in front of me. There are Joe Tourists walking around so I didn’t know if they would ever come in closer so I made a couple of clicks. I wanted to tell the story I was at Mono Lake photographing the Phalaropes so I shot the reflection of a Tufa with a Phalarope. I also wanted to speak to their eating Brine Flies so made that shot. The light had gotten only slightly better, the food was still in front of me and I had time. I looked at the light, the food, imagined the shot I wanted and moved into position for that shot. Then I waited!
Photos captured by D3x, 600VR w/TC-17e on Lexar UDMA digital film
Aug 11, 2011 | Landscape Photography
This is not a great photo, not really good enough to be put in a slideshow but it felt soooooo good to just get out and click. It has been five days and I’ve not done anything really photographic so headed to Mono Lake this AM. It turned out to be a 600 click morning, did strike gold after putting in a little time but I’ve not edited all those images yet. The water level of Mono Lake is up which is great to see but some old favorites are feeling the pinch for real estate. The grasses which are normally a big carpet are smaller and by the time I got to them (I was shooting birds) the sun was up. I wanted to a simple click to just record the small patch. This is a 5 image hand held HDR with a little Glamor Glow & Silver Efex Pro. mtc
Photo captured by D3x, 24-120VR on Lexar UDMA digital film
Aug 10, 2011 | Landscape Photography
A very long time ago, I was told that once the subject or we leave the ground, the rules of light change. That’s because the physical relationship, the angles of sun, subject and camera change. It’s why you can photograph a bird or plane in flight have less contrast when shot the same time of day as a subject on mother earth. It’s really a mind boggling concept when you start thinking about it. Move the subject up towards the sun and the contrast lessons. This is not to say there is no contrast issues, just lesser. Now when you head up and shoot back down towards earth, on man, the possibilities are endless and your time to make magic seemingly forever.
Even with that being true, just being up doesn’t mean you can do no wrong. The play of light on the landscape still is what brings drama to the photograph. Flying up to Oshkosh last week, we played dodgeball with thunderstorms. Our pilots did an expert job of it making for some amazing photo opps. In the top photo you can see the effect of the God Beams painting light down below. The bottom photo is the one I like the best thought. The combination of the 206’s wing, down pour top center, low puffies in the lower left and the light break the whole experience together in a single click. I realize this is not everyone’s cup of tea, from being in a small aircraft at 8000′ to shooting aerials. But it’s another form of light many don’t think about nor take advantage of. It’s all part of photography, waiting to be experienced and then if it works for your style, to be embraced.
Photos captured by D3x, 16Fish on Lexar UDMA digital film
Aug 9, 2011 | Wildlife Photography
Just because you own a flash and seen a video doesn’t make you a flash photographer. I sat in what seem like thousands of classes on flash, from college to present and while I understand and kinda feel like I know flash, I know that what I’m seeing made to look so simple on the screen, isn’t! I’ve seen and worked with even more who have taken the same class and walked outside, turned on their flash and then have a blank look on their face. My first “flash” teacher back in ’78 told me something I share with everyone I’m teaching flash to. “You can only learn flash when you’re working with flash.” You might get ideas, concepts, have your creative juices charged in a class or watching a video and that’s great! But it’s not until you take the canned light and blast it on something do you start to understand it’s not as easy as it appeared in class. And just why the hell is that?
The MAIN problem photographers have with flash is, they don’t know light. We pull out flash the majority of the time simply because there is a deficiency in the light. There is either not enough or the quality isn’t what we need to tell our visual story. Without understanding that key component of photography, light, just throwing a flash in the hot shoe isn’t going to solve your problems. More then likely, it will make the worst. Taking a que from my book Captured (really a must own if you wanna learn light), is this photo of an Allen’s Hummingbird. Look at the direction of the light. It’s backlit so without flash (flash fill) the hummer and flower would be all black. The background which is an important element in the photo would also be gone. The last thing that would have been lost is the gorget, the bright red throat (it’s an immature so it’s not too bright). To bring that out flash was required. You might be looking at the flash set up and asking yourself, “You need that many flash units?” To find out the whole story you need to check it out in Captured, but I was shooting in FP – High Flash Sync mode to use a high shutter speed and fast flash duration to freeze everything in the photo. And you might be saying you don’t own that many flash units so it’s a pointless read. You can rent them and if you don’t push yourself in your “free” hours, you’ll never be able to use flash when you have to.
To emphasize my point, here’s the first photo in a series I started 10months ago. Having flash filled the Queen Mary while fireworks went off in the background and other large objects back in my youth, having practiced flash a bit since, I felt like starting a new project for myself. We had luxury of time, workspace and a shit load of gear and yet, when push came to shove on this first outing, I feel I went down in flames! It’s a backlit subject, not much different then the hummer other then there is a slight size difference. Still working with small flash (SB-900 on
Aug 5, 2011 | Landscape Photography
OK, now we’ve got something working. A little 5 image hand held HDR, a little Content Aware fill and I have a clean image.
I would have loved to have this storm over the salt flats or Great Salt Lake, but that’s not what I had. I had great clouds, great light and great fun chasing them. Perfect evening!
