Oct 31, 2019 | Landscape Photography
There are times when the wide-angle just doesn’t do it for that landscape photograph. There can be many reasons for that, the most common is simply you can’t zoom with your feet to do the dance: remove elements that take your eye away from the subject while including those elements that support the subject. That was the case this week when in Mammoth Hot Springs and wanting to work the gorgeous light and cold temp making the steam come to life.
The water flows of Mammoth Hot Springs is not what it once was so much of its glory has dried up. There is one edge though where you can still see that spectacular formation and color. It’s a ways off the road with no path to it so can’t zoom with your feet. In order to get the shot, you gotta pull out the big guns. Shooting with the Z7 / 180-400VR with the internal 1.4x engaged, it was possible to literally zoom right in on that detail and make the click. All that was really required was waiting for the breeze to move the steam about so the detail I wanted sharp was clear in the frame. Gorgeous part of our wild heritage!
Oct 30, 2019 | Wildlife Photography
There is a locale in Yellowstone that this time of year, the big boys like to hang. And if you’re lucky, they will come out of hiding and play with you, and the light. Such was the opportunity yesterday when we found him and a bud just doing what they do best, looking majestic. When we first found them, they were in a spot where we couldn’t park, there was no safe place to even stand to shoot. After watching for fifteen minutes, I decided to go on and then ninety minutes later, we returned and that when things began to happen.
We watched as this magnificent Rocky Mountain Elk bull strolled out of the shadows, heading our direction. The path he was going to take was office so I moved so when he went through that shaft of light, I’d be in the right place. Shooting hand-held with the D5 / 180-400VR, I dialed in +.7 exp comp, made sure the internal 1.4 was not engaged, I framed up the shot I was hoping to get. Then he strolled right through the spot. Click! Then he kept going out in the bright sun. While he was front-lit, this symbol of wilderness lost some of his magnificence. That’s because the mystery of his world was missing, a part that makes this forest dweller secretive. So there are times when less is more and light or no light, that is the question!
Oct 22, 2019 | Wildlife Photography
Except for when they nest, they spend their entire life at sea. When the kids fledge, it is literally their first flight and it’s straight out to sea. A pelagic species, the Northern Gannet has a six-foot wingspan and three-foot body length built to do one thing extremely well, fly!
On the Newfoundland Coast, you will find the St Mary’s Ecological Reserve, the home of 40,000 Northern Gannets during the nesting season (30k adults and 10k new kids). It’s a gathering of nature I heard about decades ago and just now was fortunate to see and photograph. It’s an experience I will never, ever forget and will always treasure!
The Gannets nest on the ledges of the sea stack. They mate for life and when they leave the sea stack after nesting, they don’t see their mate until the following spring. There is just enough room at each nest for an adult. So the other adult after it’s delivered the kid’s food just flies around the sea stack. They might do that for hours. And they do it effortlessly!!!
Their life is at sea and they fly with the grace of nature, what a challenge to bring to a single click! There was a spot when they flew their circuit around the sea stack they would briefly light up from bounced light. By standing at the right place, I could take advantage of that bounced light, the sparkling Atlantic in the background when they had their wings set in a glide. Shooting with the D5 / 180-400VR I just watched them make their circuit and when I saw one in the right spot, I shot. For me, the photos sum up my experience I had waited decades to live.
Oct 18, 2019 | Landscape Photography
There is a certain calm that comes with Friday morning and that’s the knowledge tomorrow is the weekend. When you’re able to train your lens than on a landscape with the rolling ground fog constantly transforming your view, it’s just the perfect start to it all. That was our morning this morning. Went to Plan A site to find no ground fog so went to Plan B site and bam … there is was!!!
There are many approaches one can take to shooting the landscape draped in ground fog. For example, color or black and white. Another is wide or long and this morning overlooking Townsend, TN, I went with long. That’s because I wanted to bring the calm beauty of the wrapping ground fog up close and personal. The Z7 / 180-400VR made it real simple shooting at times at 180mm and then 560mm and anything in between. And each time I saw a new detail, graphic, in the viewfinder I would decide to go either B&W or color. It was the perfect start to the weekend!
Oct 15, 2019 | Landscape Photography
Our time in Newfoundland last week was simply amazing! One of the cool things we did on a really dark day was spending time at Cape Spear. Cape Spear is as far east as you can get in North America. This amazingly gorgeous and romantic piece of land is so fascinating, we spent three hours in the very cold fog wandering around with our cameras shooting Z6 / Z14-30).
This is the original lighthouse that over time went from a single light in a dome to be enclosed in this structure. The new lighthouse you can see down the bluff. Going inside the original lighthouse, you can see how the lightkeepers lived and worked. One of the windows looks out on the Atlantic and takes in the new lighthouse.
The dark skies and the subject matter were an instant call to go to B&W. Cape Spear sticking put in the Atlantic as it does, the clouds swirl around so, in a short time, the skies will be different. I used this as I walked around to frame up the original lighthouse. I worked the thinner – lighter parts of the sky so they would be above the structure and I walked around doing a full 360 of the lighthouse. Being the furthest east part of North America, on the Atlantic and the mood of the skies really made the photo process pretty simple. The romance just oozed in!
Oct 4, 2019 | Wildlife Photography
When most hear the name Bighorn Sheep, they think of those high up in the Rockies, butting heads in the snow and braving the cold. The Rocky Mountain Bighorn is a spectacular creature but they are rivaled by their desert cousin, the Nelson’s or Desert Bighorn Sheep. My life long fascination and love for Bighorn began with the Desert Bighorn way back in ’84 when I was part of a translocation, there to document and work the move. When you are sitting on three animals (that’s a heck of a story) and one of them kicks your F3T out of your hand while shooting, you tend to have a whole lot of respect for that critter. I fell in love with them that day which still goes strong today.
As you might imagine, finding let alone photographing Desert Bighorn Sheep requires going to the desert. At the same time, finding them in that vast space when they move about so much is a huge challenge. There are a few locations like in Palm Springs and by Hoover Dam, you find small bands that are well known, but by and large they are a secretive species. That’s one reason why I’ve not gone after them for decades with a camera, just watched them every now and then with bins. Another reason is they live in a rugged word where triple digits and vertical faces are the nicest things you can say about their habit. This doesn’t lend themselves to a quick pic.
One well known but guarded secret place to find the Desert Bighorn Sheep is the Great Basin Nat’l Park. That’s where we found them for a couple of days until they moved downrange to forage. For those couple of days, we had a herd of ninty head, rams and ewes which had come together at the beginning of their rut. When sex is in the air, a big, white Suburban is not even noticed bristling with 180-400VR out its window. The time we had with the herd was the finest Bighorn Sheep photography I’ve ever experienced!
On the last day of our trip, the sheep were gone from the locales where we had been working them. After many hours, we finally found them downslope foraging and new greens and in a locale, there was no way we could access. I talked with a range manager a week later to find out they had walked over the mountain and were in a valley that was accessible by helo only. We lucked out with our three days with the herd, but what a magical three days. You can see more images from my time here but this is just a fraction of what I shot and doesn’t come close to fulfilling my love affair with this noble king of the desert.
