When we first arrived at The Ranch, its trees were rather quiet. It concerned us as we are so used to and love hearing and seeing our birds. Then miraculously a pair of Red-breasted Nuthatches took up residency in one of our newly hung nesting boxes and raised a brood. Ever since then, the funny, squeaky call of the family of Nuthatches can be heard all around The Ranch much to our delight.
They are a very busy species busily moving about the property feeding, socializing, and luckily for me, constantly visiting the water feature we installed on the property. Nuthatches’ unique place in the bird world is flying to the top of a tree and then working its way down looking in the bark for a tidbit. They like to hang under branches doing the same thing. And when they head for water, yep, they keep up the same habit. The perch you see it hanging from is itself in a light stand placed to be used by the birds. And the nuthatch is waiting its turn at the water. The two adults are around every so often. Three of the kids are here all the time. And it’s so much fun to enjoy them all grown up!
Tucked up in the gorgeous mountains north of Missoula is Montana’s best-preserved ghost town, Garnet. This marvelous well-preserved example of a mining town was founded in the late 1890s and by the 1920s was basically a ghost town. Garnet was not your typical mining town. Its residents built schools and churches and kept out the ton of saloons and brothels you’d typically find at a mining camp. Because of this, the example of the buildings still left is a marvelous photographic subject. Much of their original furnishings and utilities still remain.
You can do a bit of walking exploring Garnet with your camera so you might wanna travel light. I shot the entire day with just the Nikon Z6 & Z24-200 and had a great time. In normal times, all the buildings are open for exploration. Today, just a hand full are open to promote social distancing. Go into every building you can and look at the light that finds its way in. You might recheck buildings just an hour later as the light will change bringing to life photos not there before. I came back with a few hundred images, all unique and the vast majority favorites. I shot in color, B&W, and a lot in Mode #17 Charcoal. If you don’t know what that can do for your photographs, you can see below.
Be sure to check the weather before you head up, it’s at 8000k feet and has snow in the winter. It’s about forty-five minutes outside of Missoula, the last 8 miles being a dirt road. Take food, water and a sense of adventure and being ready to take a step back in time. Garnet ghost town is a photographic gem you want to mine with your camera!
“I know you like to greet the sun, but how do you capture those great sunrises?” This question hits my inbox a lot. This person went on to say, “I looked at my iPhone and arrived minutes before it said it was time for sunrise, but I missed it!” I get that a lot from photographers, especially when they are going to a locale for the first time. Here’s my formula in calculating the time to avoid missing that glorious sunrise.
If you look at your weather-friendly app and it says that sunrise is at 06:00, understand that is when the sun breaks the horizon in that general area, not the exact location you want to photograph. Take that 06:00 sunrise time and start subtracting from it for your arrival time. First, subtract 30 minutes because it is at least 30 minutes prior to the posted sunrise time that the light comes up and if there are any clouds, they start to get color. This is when you want to be shooting. Then subtract the amount of time it takes you to set up your gear. Then subtract the time it takes you to get from your car to the place you want to shoot. In the photo above, it was a 20-minute walk down into Bryce to get to this spot so an additional 20 minutes was subtracted. Then subtract how long it takes to drive from where you’re staying to the place you need to park. Then subtract how long it takes you to get up, have coffee until you start your car engine to leave. This means being up at 03:45 to make this shot. This is my basic formula to greet the sun with my camera.
It sounds so simple but in application, it just isn’t!
Photographing critters at their level brings on a whole new feel to the photo but often can put the critter on alert or worse, scare them off. That’s because they are looking for predators at their level which is why moving our feet has to be done with care. Taking the time to get down flat with a critter watching is something few will tolerate. That’s why I love the flip out monitor!
This was a real simple click taken at the Big Hole Nat’l Battlefield of a Red Squirrel finishing off a mushroom it had found. I slowly bent over looking at the monitor to frame up the shot. I moved sideways a tad to get the grass the way I wanted it and then when click. Bending over put me at it’s level so I could see eye to eye.
Whether it’s a color or B&W image, the color white is simply the most powerful of them all! While it is the most challenging to also control. But by doing so, you can force the viewer of your photograph to look anywhere in your photograph you want them to look first and then over and over again.
At the same time, white is an anchor color to our vision. Our mind’s eye goes out and finds white and from that, it then determines what all the other colors are. The amazing thing is that both of these “white powers” happen without our knowledge or control. But we need control both of these and put the power of white in our corner.
One of the simplest ways to do this is knowing we can make something white, brighter by making elements around it simply darker. In this case, the clouds at the top of the frame and the ground and the bottom of the frame were made darker in post. By association, the mind sees the white and brighter goes to it first and then travels around the frame over and overcoming back to, the white.
This is the kind of mind trivia I’ll be covering in my landscape classes next month on The Landscape Conference. Come and join a passionate group of instructors to learn so much, especially about the how white pulls the eye!
When you think about the story you want to tell with your photograph, how much weight do you give the background? It is actually something I think about all the time when I stop and put the camera up to my eye. No matter the subject, no matter its size in the frame, that background is everything. So much so that it directly influences the lens I’m going to shoot with every time I shoot. The subject size is often controlled my zooming with my feet, the background is controlled by the angle of view of the lens. Case in point.
Here’s a Pine Siskin, a small bird a tad smaller than your thumb. They’re waiting in line for the water feature we’ve created at The Ranch. They are so friendly, seriously, they land on me and my iPhone while I’m cleaning the water feature! So a long lens is not needed for image size, but it sure it for controlling the background. That’s why I went with the D6 / 800f5.6 w/TC-12.5. The branch you see it perched on is really long and they scoot up it as they wait their turn to get their drink. By simply moving the whole tripod just three inches, I can go from the dark background to the light one. That minimal movement won’t scare the critter but will permit you to be a better storyteller. A better photograph could be just a matter of inches away.
